Thing with Alan Wake is that I was unable to get out of my head just how good it SHOULD have been long enough to give what we actually got much of a chance. As a result it was just very average, slightly stilted and unconvincing story and character wise and though there were decently bright storytelling ideas they were stifled by dodgy game play design choices and those daft chapter recap efforts. The slips into slo-mo never upset me nearly as much as thinking "God, I wish this had the full open exploration/investigation we were promised all that time ago" or "I think this would be miles better on my PC contrary to the condescending bollox they told me about why it wasn't"-to be honest. The Steie King thing wemnt way too far as well but over all of this the big problem was that it was jst damn samey. The actual action wasn't just predictable and Yahtzee conplains but downright repetitive at times and there were just way too few variations in there to support a full game to my mind.
Some elements of the found story were really clever and in another situation with better writing could really have shone but the slightly over light tone, imo, for a game of this kind just left it feeling a shell of what we were once asked to get excited for(my mind goes back to promises of individually designed interiors to ever house which we were free to explore-every last one in Bright Falls and beyond!)and while his assertion about DS's monster arrival sounds is bang on that game is still head and shoulders above AW in terms of visceral thrills, narrative pacing and as an action AND survival horror game and also had much more variety and for a game largely set in similar confined spaces that's a bit of a sad thing for AW to have as it's fate.
not that AW was bad, it was fine, it just wasn't what it should have been and a wasted chance is worse than a game which never had one to start with as potential is rare than most of us think. AW had miles more of it than DS but DS trumped it on the basics of gaming and as a result AW's biggest advantage, atmosphere, was frittered away on a raft of altogether too dam similar encounters with the shadows. It didn't even have as clever a mechanic as the dismemberment in DS let alone carrying off it's light kills nasties mech. A shame but not indicative of any other game's failings as you suspect that MS had a hand in it's downfall by limiting it to the point making it 360 exclusive was a last option rather than a nice, system selling choice.
Some elements of the found story were really clever and in another situation with better writing could really have shone but the slightly over light tone, imo, for a game of this kind just left it feeling a shell of what we were once asked to get excited for(my mind goes back to promises of individually designed interiors to ever house which we were free to explore-every last one in Bright Falls and beyond!)and while his assertion about DS's monster arrival sounds is bang on that game is still head and shoulders above AW in terms of visceral thrills, narrative pacing and as an action AND survival horror game and also had much more variety and for a game largely set in similar confined spaces that's a bit of a sad thing for AW to have as it's fate.
not that AW was bad, it was fine, it just wasn't what it should have been and a wasted chance is worse than a game which never had one to start with as potential is rare than most of us think. AW had miles more of it than DS but DS trumped it on the basics of gaming and as a result AW's biggest advantage, atmosphere, was frittered away on a raft of altogether too dam similar encounters with the shadows. It didn't even have as clever a mechanic as the dismemberment in DS let alone carrying off it's light kills nasties mech. A shame but not indicative of any other game's failings as you suspect that MS had a hand in it's downfall by limiting it to the point making it 360 exclusive was a last option rather than a nice, system selling choice.
