Zero Punctuation: Alan Wake

[theultimateend]

The Stephen King parts had me in stitches.

That's just where he wants you.

 

[Michael Dagastino]

I liked the game. I liked the writing, and the atmosphere. Character design needed work. I agree with most of the complaints. One thing they should have changed is the health of the enemies, and work more on scaring the shit out of the player. If enemies had vastly varying amounts of health, even within the 3 or 4 classes of enemies they had, it would make it a lot more hectic.

I agree 100% on the enemy health; this is why myself and a few others are advocating that everyone play the game on Hard. Nightmare is even better, unfortunately it's not available right away. On Nightmare, the axe men have considerably more darkness and health. They take a long time to burn away and then it takes like 6+ bullets to kill them. They have plenty of darkness to move in on you, and the whole while the other Taken are flanking you. You still have the fast sickle guys that only take 2 bullets, but everyone else takes 4, 6, or more, with corresponding darkness protection as well. The result is that even a small group of 3 or 4 Taken, depending on your arsenal at the time, can be a hectic and anxious battle.

On a side note, the animations that show the guys coming I think worked great. When you get a gang of Taken coming for you, it's a little "oh shit" moment. But more importantly, it sets you up for the times when they *don't* announce their appearance. Sometimes you'll be running along and you suddenly realize there is another set of footsteps in the grass behind you and you panic and quickly dodge at the last moment. Awesome. But again, this only works because in the harder levels the enemies will actually fuck you up. In Normal, it would be like walking along and realizing there is a kitten following you home. So again, PLAY ON HARD. Remedy really screwed the pooch by making the game as easy as it did.

I will try nightmare as soon as i forget some of the story elements Too soon a replay makes almost any game kind of boring, because you know what happens next.

 

[Aiberg]

why speak so slowly?

 

[Mako SOLDIER]

To anyone who has completed the game (as this video contains a spoiler) and finds Yahtzee's comment about Stephen King funny (or just appreciates that Alan Wake is heavily influenced by Spephen King), check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjbF-n88JdY&feature=related

 

[Ashbax]

Pretty funny review. I personally liked the game, but what the hell, it's comedy. And many of the points he made I could relate to.

Yeah, people take these reviews too seriously, I personally enjoyed the game.

But he was right about stephen king - I had just read IT and The Shining, and after a while I decided to check if this was actually a game based on a fucking stephen king book. It had all the symptoms - Main character is a writer! (Just like Bill and Jack in IT and the shining) weird nightmare/reality crossover mindfucks! It even had an axe murderer making a hole in the door the protagonist was hiding behind. I half expected the villain to put his head through the hole and yell "HERESSSS JOHNNY!"

 

[punisherjb]

i did not even know about this game till i saw the review lol
guess its just that bad

 

[mtf612]

i did not even know about this game till i saw the review lol
guess its just that bad

How did you not hear about Alan Wake? The damn thing has been in development since Super nintendo first came out!

 

[Tyrannowalefish_Rex]

Yahtzee's reviews get increasingly confusing to follow. Maybe that's just me. But he got the point across that the game is about as tedious as it looks, and that there is no greater surprise waiting to pique the player's interest.

 

[rddj623]

You pretty much nailed my thoughts on it. Good atmosphere, nifty moments, overall meh.

 

[TheZaius]

Soooo... it's Luigi's Mansion set in a forest.

Got it.

EDIT: Sorry if I bumped an old thread but I'm viewing this thread as more of a comments section of an article and less as a forum thread.

 

[Antiparticle]

Alan Wake isn't a bad game, but Yahtzee is right about it being too easy, as well as about the strange plot points. The game does keep returning again and again to haunted forests at night, and atmospheric as those sections are, a little more variety would have been nice. And indeed, the part where they somehow don't realise there's something wrong with the waitress girl even though her behavior is totally different than before was retarded, and the part where they decide to get drunk and pass out in a house surrounded by murderous shadow monsters made even less sense.
I also didn't like the ending much.
But as I said, all in all it's not a bad game, I might even do a second playthrough on Hard difficulty some day.

 

[Phoenixlight]

Wow, the combat mechanics sound like horeshit, i'll have to buy this game to see how piss poor they were.

After recently completing the game it seems that he was overly harsh on the game. It's enjoyable and very interesting, you get access to a nice range of weapons and the combat itself is fairly well done.

 

[Phoenixlight]

Alan Wake isn't a bad game, but Yahtzee is right about it being too easy, as well as about the strange plot points. The game does keep returning again and again to haunted forests at night, and atmospheric as those sections are, a little more variety would have been nice. And indeed, the part where they somehow don't realise there's something wrong with the waitress girl even though her behavior is totally different than before was retarded, and the part where they decide to get drunk and pass out in a house surrounded by murderous shadow monsters made even less sense.
I also didn't like the ending much.
But as I said, all in all it's not a bad game, I might even do a second playthrough on Hard difficulty some day.

Yeah I wasn't particularly pleased with the ending either, it could have been rounded off quite nicely but it seems the developers were wanting to creating an opening for a future sequel.

 

[Antiparticle]

Yeah I wasn't particularly pleased with the ending either, it could have been rounded off quite nicely but it seems the developers were wanting to creating an opening for a future sequel.

Yeah, it was a very open ending, noone really died and nothing really got resolved.. And you're right, they did that for a reason, not so much for a sequel but rather DLC... there's multiple downloadable episodes for Alan Wake coming. For a price, of course... At least the first one's free, for original buyers of the game anyway. It's coming July 27th.

 

[dekuben]

Wow, the combat mechanics sound like horeshit, i'll have to buy this game to see how piss poor they were.

After recently completing the game it seems that he was overly harsh on the game. It's enjoyable and very interesting, you get access to a nice range of weapons and the combat itself is fairly well done.

Thanks for the heads up <3

 

[stabnex]

I finally got around to finishing Allen Wake. 6 Episodes in total with an autosave at the beginning of each chapter and bright light you stumble into and a flowing narrative make for a great game. Yahtzee was spot on about the screepy fish-people animations and voice-overs, but the hectic gameplay of being completely defenseless is fun as hell as far as I'm concerned.

For those of you who take Yahtzee's reviews as reasons not to buy games: You don't know the real meaning of a review. He's a critic. It's his job to point out flaws game-makers forget to fix in beta.

I rented Allen Wake. Half-way through I bought it because I knew I wanted to finish it and replay it on Nightmare with only the beginning flashlight.

 

[Arella18]

The combat thing is ripped straight from Obscure...if anyone has heard of that game for the ps2...you use flashlights to make the dark aura dissipate from around the creatures then just wail on it until it dies...

 

[evilpilch]

"like an indecisive hitman / optician" rofl. Isn't this game from the same guys who did Max Payne, which despite the name was thoroughly enjoyable?

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

having gotten about half way through this game before stopping this is what I have to say: when your main character is the most likable and interesting by process of elimination you have problems. And even then he isn't beyond stupidity like with the aforementioned sleeping pill incident. The editor is annoying, the FBI agent is an uninteresting, intolerable douchebag, the kidnapper sub-plot is just killing time, and quite frankly it's not even all that scary. Looks like horror games in general have a long way to go before they can be frightening again. Maybe the worst thing this game did was try to model itself after TV. There's a difference between taking inspiration from something and then being two steps away from plagiarism.