Zero Punctuation: Alan Wake

[Mydnyght]

Another amusing review as usual. Epic in-credits remark too...

"Alan Wake" -> replace W with another L -> rearrange letters -> ANAL LEAK

That, Mr. Croshaw, wins the whole vid.

 

[Zudarkness]

See this is why I don't ***** when Yahtzee trashes a 360 game I like because he actually does it more professionally and doesn't exaggerate it's negative qualities (Alan Wake was one of the reasons I wanted a 360 in the first place and even I know the game goes overboard with it's Stephen King references) which baffles me as to why he can't do that with a Wii game review nowadays. I don't bash the pretentious soulless snobs that turned me off of the PS3 24-7.
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Good for you

Some of the Sony fanboys are nuts as well.

My favorite review from Yatzee was the Wii Resort game review. How does flying in the air shooting down the other planes ballons in a dog fight actually a sport game? Sounds kinda dangerous expecially for the Wii resort.

 

[Larry Carter]

I played it on normal. I play everything on normal then again on hard. See.. that idea doesn't really gel with me so well. I played Fatal Frame on normal and it was tense as all hell (not to mention terrifying). If the game is scary, or has tension, it simply has it. Silent Hill simply has tension. Difficulty has nothing to do with it.

You're right btw this quote function is iffy at best...

Personally I think that "scary" is very subjective. I didn't find AW to be scary but that's because my idea of scary isn't catered to by the game. And I'm sure what I find scary might make you laugh and vice versa.

However I will say that there was a lot of great tension in the game, that the atmosphere was superb and some really excellent dialog that, at times, made it at least a bit freaky if not out right pants-shitting scary.

 

[JakobBloch]

You are a very funny man, mr. Croshaw

 

[esliang]

I love how he brought back that figure from Nier to represent the wife. Clever as always. And if Stephen King does get mentioned so shamelessly this might be one to skip.

 

[rossatdi]

Considering who regularly he bemoans the lack of storytelling in games it seems a bit odd he's so angry at this one. Some of the characters do look scarier than the monsters but at least they're interesting.

But then if you don't like Stephen King you're not going to like it, so there's a big surprise.

 

[manas]

Alan in The Dark or Alone in The Wake whatever you want to call it, had FAIL written in capital letters all over it when Microsoft didn't have the confidence in it to even release it multi-platform. Remedy suddenly announcing that everything that appeared to be great about the game was now removed (open world exploration, day night cycles, random events like tornadoes and rock slides). Then Microsoft cans the PC version and tells them just to finish the damn thing. lol Something awful happened to Alan Wake when it went FAILBox only, that is really the only scary thing about the game, that they actually released it. XD

I couldn't agree more.

 

[blindthrall]

"Then Alan Wake was savaged by the biggest and most sexually frustrated bear that ever lived."

That is the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen on the Escapist.

 

[Amata]

To be fair, not all of Stephen King's novels are about a writer with personal problems being haunted by an ancient, unknowable evil in small town America. Sometimes, the evil is knowable.
And his best novels weren't anything like that. At which point I take the opportunity to recommend the Dark Tower books to anyone bothering to read my post.

Lol yeah, not that many of his books are about that. Quite a few of them are set in the same small town, but yeah, still. Plus the Dark Tower series is awesome.

A very good review though, even if we disagree on the quality of Stephen King's books.

 

[Moosh50]

The biggest problem Yatzhee has with horror games is that he plays them on Normal difficulty. Why the fuck would anyone do that? It's survival horror, but the Normal difficulty setting makes it a third-person shooter with bad illumination.

I find it funny that people still seem to be under the impresion that "the harder a game is the more fun it is" because really that's not entirely true. There's a lot of games that I love playing which you would never ever catch me playing on the harder difficulty settings. More often the case it would make me dislike the game because however good I may be on an Easy or Normal setting, I would quickly become shit on a higher one. That would lead to a lack of enjoyment as I would probably have difficulty adjusting to a higher setting.

Not to mention as someone else said, with all the other stuff a lot of people have going on in their lives, the Normal setting is as high as on really needs to go. Unless you're so damn good at every game in existence (which I'd probably call a lie, because I've yet to meet someone who is perfect at EVERY game, rather than at genres) that nothing short of Battletoads-esque difficulty will satisfy you.

Sorry, wasn't trying to say that at you specifically, it's just that the gaming world in general these days seems to have a misplaced or at least confused understanding of the world difficulty. I've been playing games since the early 80's, and I've noticed an increasing trend in the last 10 years for people to complain about games being too easy. Compared to the kind of "ha ha ha fuck you" difficulty back on the Atari and NES days, games that are easy by design can be refreshing and more enjoyable than getting a brick to the face. Which is certainly what a lot of games feel like these days, sometimes even on the normal settings.

Compare Megaman 2 to Megaman X8, and you'll notice they're actually getting harder. Sorry, went off on a bit of a rant here..

I'm not saying that games should be harder. I'm saying that when played on Normal, survival horror games tend to become so easy that they stop being scary, which is a pretty big downside for a horror game.

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

Lots of shit talk this week. I wonder if there's a reason behind that :S.

 

[stretchyman1]

YES YOU HAVE MENTIONED THAT YOU WROTE A NOVEL AND YOU CAN PRE-ORDER IT FROM AMAZON AND AMAZON.CO.UK!!! Good review though I enjoyed the bad decisions bit xD

 

[Carnagath]

Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

 

[MrDead]

Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

Aw. I rebooted and it bugged back in again.
12:09 AM May 28th via Twitterrific

 

[ManiacRaccoon]

Fun review as always.

So now that the creepy skull-ghoul has been used more than once, when can we expect an adorably creepy plush of it? And will it only be sold in stores hidden in dark atmospheric forests which will soon be mowed down so the trees may be used to make Stephen King novels in the new Stephen King book assembly line they will be putting up that runs right behind the creepy skull-ghoul store?

Also can I reserve it online on Amazon.com and Amazon.uk along with the book?

 

[Carnagath]

Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

Aw. I rebooted and it bugged back in again.
12:09 AM May 28th via Twitterrific

Bugged...in means it got fixed? Damn my southern European ancestry, need to refresh my English.

 

[Zudarkness]

RJ Dalton:
To be fair, not all of Stephen King's novels are about a writer with personal problems being haunted by an ancient, unknowable evil in small town America. Sometimes, the evil is knowable.
And his best novels weren't anything like that. At which point I take the opportunity to recommend the Dark Tower books to anyone bothering to read my post.

Lol yeah, not that many of his books are about that. Quite a few of them are set in the same small town, but yeah, still. Plus the Dark Tower series is awesome.

A very good review though, even if we disagree on the quality of Stephen King's books.
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Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile come to my mind as other great books/movies as well from Stephen King which show a different approach by Stephen King. No evil clowns, cars, motobikes, attacking birds, fog, psychis, untold dark demon creature, some screwed up dark half, processed semis, wraths of god or the devil, possesed steam close presser, basement vortexes, death gardens etc.

One deals with a business man/accounted who was falsly arreested of mudering his wife and the person she had an affair with, sentence to a life sentence and became corrupted in jail from a corrupted Warden and jail guards and the other waws an innocident angelic healer who was accused of a hindeous crime and deamed to death row to turn out that he was really innocident and was tired of living forever.

Sure would of hate to be John Coffie thats for sure.

Thanks you Yatzee for making us remember Stephen King. i like his writting but not as of late. I'm more of a Tom Clancy fan now.

 

[CrazedRaptor]

I've been waiting for someone to point out the crappy face animation!

 

[MrDead]

Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

Aw. I rebooted and it bugged back in again.
12:09 AM May 28th via Twitterrific

Bugged...in means it got fixed? Damn my southern European ancestry, need to refresh my English.

Don't be silly. The internet doesn't use english. It uses a hodge-podge of slang, acronyms, double negatives, and completely made up shit.

 

[Zudarkness]

MrDead:


Carnagath:


Zudarkness:


Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

Aw. I rebooted and it bugged back in again.
12:09 AM May 28th via Twitterrific


Bugged...in means it got fixed? Damn my southern European ancestry, need to refresh my English.

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LOL Thats too true.. The game does crash at times.

Or you can hunt down and skin every single animal that is there and listen to his comments and wandered what the hell is he talking about.

or land up saving someone from wolves, from a hanging even though they probally deserve it, and horse cart racing.