Zero Punctuation: Alan Wake
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
Well, thank's.. now I don't need to go out and spend $60 on getting it, If it's as bland as he said.
Thought he'd actually REALLY hate Alan Wake myself(given his love of SH2-and make no error AW is NO SH2 whatever else it might be even if it might quite like to be put in that bracket)asand after finding he hates SK almost as much as I do I'm incredulous he didn't leave it a bloody mess in gaming's patchy memory.
Amusing stuff, though i've only played about half the game myself,I find a lot of things to agree with-especially the synching issue, Wake's ugly missus and that bloody daft recapping of the not-very-bloody-hard-to-grasp story every time the game wants a breather.
Thought it was VERY fair of Yahtzee, also, not to bring up any of the game's history. For me Remedy(or MS or whoever made the choice)the way the PC gamers were tagged along for FIVE EFFING years before seeing the game taken away from them was atrociously bad form. Christ, I bought my 360 largely to play AW(yes, at launch too!)so I guess I'm thinking how wound up I'#d be if after all that time they turned round and told me I couldn't have the game because sitting at one platform isn't as suitable as the other for survival horror style games I might be hugely wound up. Add in the fact that til this year ALL the footage of the game we'd seen had been the PC version and it gets even more annoying-although saying that most PC only gamers I talk to had long since given up on the game as it seemed to jetisson every and any good feature along it's protracted dev cycle! We lost sandbox gameplay, we lost individually designed houses(down to interiors) all open to explore and a host of other stuff as the game grew less and less ambitious.
Oh, I won't go on but suffice to say I have a lot of reasons to be sus about what we finally got from Remedy and worry about the exact reason all the original good ideas got ripped out. I just hope it really wasn't to avoid that pesky DVD9 storage issue and the costs of multiple discs, eh?
Anyway, I'm very disappointed in the game, find it's a shadow of what we were promised and sometimes think it's got a VERY OTT metascore right now. From where I'm sat ZP was very kind to it too!
Amusing stuff, though i've only played about half the game myself,I find a lot of things to agree with-especially the synching issue, Wake's ugly missus and that bloody daft recapping of the not-very-bloody-hard-to-grasp story every time the game wants a breather.
Thought it was VERY fair of Yahtzee, also, not to bring up any of the game's history. For me Remedy(or MS or whoever made the choice)the way the PC gamers were tagged along for FIVE EFFING years before seeing the game taken away from them was atrociously bad form. Christ, I bought my 360 largely to play AW(yes, at launch too!)so I guess I'm thinking how wound up I'#d be if after all that time they turned round and told me I couldn't have the game because sitting at one platform isn't as suitable as the other for survival horror style games I might be hugely wound up. Add in the fact that til this year ALL the footage of the game we'd seen had been the PC version and it gets even more annoying-although saying that most PC only gamers I talk to had long since given up on the game as it seemed to jetisson every and any good feature along it's protracted dev cycle! We lost sandbox gameplay, we lost individually designed houses(down to interiors) all open to explore and a host of other stuff as the game grew less and less ambitious.
Oh, I won't go on but suffice to say I have a lot of reasons to be sus about what we finally got from Remedy and worry about the exact reason all the original good ideas got ripped out. I just hope it really wasn't to avoid that pesky DVD9 storage issue and the costs of multiple discs, eh?
Anyway, I'm very disappointed in the game, find it's a shadow of what we were promised and sometimes think it's got a VERY OTT metascore right now. From where I'm sat ZP was very kind to it too!
Ok, which one and when? Since Remedy have always maintained there will be no playable demo and they even mock up gameplay segments for demo videos, I would be very interested in the details.TheGamerist said:I played the demo at a gaming expo actually, so before you start trying to put people down, maybe you should ask how I did it instead of making your own assumptionsMako SOLDIER said:Nice try troll. There is no demo. Jeez, do your research before you start sharting from your mouthTheGamerist said:
Normally I would completely agree. I usually find harder difficulty modes to be contrived and unbalanced. In fact this is the only game where I've found the hardest difficulty to genuinely add to the experience. Sure, Silent Hill and Fatal Frame do tension without any real contributing gameplay factors, but that's because they are horror and the setting and story itself are pretty nasty. Heck, the Wii Ju-On game is scary as hell, just through jump-out shocks, despite consistently score around 50% etc due to having no real gameplay other than 'try not to jump when a shock moment comes up'. Alan Wake isn't really a horror, so the tension really tends to be proportional to the percieved threat imo.MrDead said: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.What difficulty did you play it on? I didn't find it scary at all really on normal, but it becomes practically a different game on Nightmare. It's still balanced and fair, but the Taken actually become threatening and it not only heightens the tension but transforms the combat system into something much more strategic. I wouldn't say I'm more sensitive to it, SH2 is one of my favourite games of all time, so I ought to be desensitised to it rather than the other way around
Sorry if I was a bit bullish earlier, I've been championing this game since release and genuinely believe it does something pretty darned special, enough to be my Game of the Year so far, even over Mass Effect 2. Sadly it's not doing anywhere near as well as the fans would like sales-wise and there are already people spreading actual misinformation about it over at Gamefaqs and 4chan, which people are actually believing. Sadly, some people take Yahtzee's opinion far too seriously and I just really don't want to see this game fail when it easily deserves way more success than a heck of a lot of games that get sequel after sequel. So, yeah, I flew off into fanboy rage, which really isn't like me. Lol, THAT's how much I love this game
Is the video not working for anyone else? Every time I try to play the video it says
"200 Stream not found"
And 3 more lines of something I don't understand ):
"200 Stream not found"
And 3 more lines of something I don't understand ):
I have to say without giving anything away the last bit you play through right before the final FMV had me go, ok, THIS is REALLY neat. But for me that was 2 minutes vs however long I played the rest of the game.Mako SOLDIER said:Sorry if I was a bit bullish earlier, I've been championing this game since release and genuinely believe it does something pretty darned special, enough to be my Game of the Year so far, even over Mass Effect 2. Sadly it's not doing anywhere near as well as the fans would like sales-wise and there are already people spreading actual misinformation about it over at Gamefaqs and 4chan, which people are actually believing. Sadly, some people take Yahtzee's opinion far too seriously and I just really don't want to see this game fail when it easily deserves way more success than a heck of a lot of games that get sequel after sequel. So, yeah, I flew off into fanboy rage, which really isn't like me. Lol, THAT's how much I love this game
Edit: Oh and frequently turning around and seeing the sun or moon through the trees and hills.. as an outdoors simulator it REALLY excels.. no sarcasm intended.
Episode Ein? Episode Funf? That isn't proper German, Yahtzee.
But I do agree with the point about how the game seems to constantly find ways to get you into the woods somehow. Even though the forests are done better than any other environment, you spend so much time in them that by the end they just seemed like the blandest and most tedious parts of the game.
One thing I'll add is that the voice acting is very good. Every character I remember from the game had a great and suitable actor, even for the more annoying characters with the more annoying voices (Barry).
But I do agree with the point about how the game seems to constantly find ways to get you into the woods somehow. Even though the forests are done better than any other environment, you spend so much time in them that by the end they just seemed like the blandest and most tedious parts of the game.
One thing I'll add is that the voice acting is very good. Every character I remember from the game had a great and suitable actor, even for the more annoying characters with the more annoying voices (Barry).
Am I the only one who thought Agent Nightingale was going to turn out to be some embodiment or servant of the darkness? The moment I heard his name, I just thought, "Wow, what blatant foreshadowing." I was surprised when it turned out he was just some random agent after all.
I see Heavy Rain, Alan Wake, and the Robert Zemeckis Animated movies get a lot of criticism on their uncanny valley moments and creepy faces. But I don't think it's fair criticism considering they're all playing up horror. I think they're supposed to be creepy.
I actually had alot of fun with this game. I'm not gonna say that Yatzee didn't have some good points. I do think that alerting the player every time the enemies spawn was a bad idea and it would have been nice if you could play in more varied locations. However i liked how Alan narated the story as it happend and the setting and story was at least different.
Now lets be clear, i really liked Max Payne and this game is made by the same people and has a very similar feel to it (hell Max payne's voice actor plays the voice of one of the characters).
so i don't think it's quite as bad Yatzee makes it out, that being said i did enjoy his review.
Now lets be clear, i really liked Max Payne and this game is made by the same people and has a very similar feel to it (hell Max payne's voice actor plays the voice of one of the characters).
so i don't think it's quite as bad Yatzee makes it out, that being said i did enjoy his review.