Alan Wake

[Sarevok]

Anyone played it yet ?

From the gameplay videos it seems they merely replaced the typical cross hair with the light from the flashlight. That is it ? Is that all there is to the innovation of Alan Wake where light and darkness were supposed to be core gameplay elements ?

[SilverWingedSeraph]

Errr... no? I mean, the flashlight does serve as your crosshair, but it's also one of your most important weapons. You need to burn the darkness off your enemies with it before you can damage them with weapons. But it's hardly revolutionary gameplay, and most of the potentially scary moments are completely ruined by the game itself. Still, I found it entertaining at points.

[Chardok]

You know what game came out before that which incorporated darkenss/light as a mechanic? The Darkness (PS - The Darkness is better)

[General Zod]

I'm pretty sure there were a few review threads when it was out. It's short, easy and not that scary at all. The flashlight also isn't crosshairs, it weakens your enemy so you can actually kill them.

[Manus Celer Dei]

It's pretty terrible frankly. Any chance of scariness is completely destroyed by the fact that you'll always know when an enemy is about to jump out at you because of the sudden and unsubtle shift in music, and the game throws ammo, health and batteries at you constantly. There's no survival aspect, and no horror aspect. For a survival-horror game that's pretty damning.

And seriously, what the fuck was the point of breaking the game up into "episodes" with each one having a flashback at the start? Does the player really need to be reminded of what happened half an hour ago? More than anything it just made it feel like the writers wished they were working on a tv show rather than a game.

The flashlight mechanic would've worked better if you could still harm them without shining it at them, but they'd be a lot tougher if you didn't. That way the player would have to choose between using more bullets or using more flashlight power. Add another dimension to the ho-hum gameplay. Of course for that to work it'd mean there'd need to be some level of scarcity to the bullets or batteries rather than the player being knee-deep in them.

[weemadando]

It's pretty terrible frankly. Any chance of scariness is completely destroyed by the fact that you'll always know when an enemy is about to jump out at you because of the sudden and unsubtle shift in music, and the game throws ammo, health and batteries at you constantly. There's no survival aspect, and no horror aspect. For a survival-horror game that's pretty damning.

Was it actually pitched as a survival horror? Or did you just make that assumption based on the fact that "oh, it's dark, it has monsters and it's third person?

Everything I read and saw in the lead-up to release showed that it was more interested in being an action game with some psychological thriller elements.

And seriously, what the fuck was the point of breaking the game up into "episodes" with each one having a flashback at the start? Does the player really need to be reminded of what happened half an hour ago? More than anything it just made it feel like the writers wished they were working on a tv show rather than a game.

Hey, maybe they were trying an interesting framing device to set it apart from other titles and their method of story development. And y'know, some people have jobs, families and lives and having a one hour block to play and then a recap next time is a pretty awesome device for them.

The flashlight mechanic would've worked better if you could still harm them without shining it at them, but they'd be a lot tougher if you didn't. That way the player would have to choose between using more bullets or using more flashlight power. Add another dimension to the ho-hum gameplay. Of course for that to work it'd mean there'd need to be some level of scarcity to the bullets or batteries rather than the player being knee-deep in them.

Yeah, let's remove the core gameplay mechanic and story conceit just because.

Guess what, not everyone has to live everything.

[Manus Celer Dei]

Was it actually pitched as a survival horror? Or did you just make that assumption based on the fact that "oh, it's dark, it has monsters and it's third person?

Everything I read and saw in the lead-up to release showed that it was more interested in being an action game with some psychological thriller elements.

I seem to remember a lot of people talking about it as a survival horror when it came out, but then again I didn't play it untill a good while afterwards and didn't pay a lot of attention to the build-up anyway, so yeah I could easily be mistaken on that. The psychological thriller elements fell kind of flat anyway, as most of the time they boiled down to "Is Alan bumfuck crazy or is everyone else terminally dense?"

Hey, maybe they were trying an interesting framing device to set it apart from other titles and their method of story development. And y'know, some people have jobs, families and lives and having a one hour block to play and then a recap next time is a pretty awesome device for them.

It didn't work as a framing device, though! It just served to break the flow of the gameplay every now and again. Having a skippable replay pop up every time you load up a save would be alright - several rpgs do similar text ones - but having a recap of shit I've just done in the middle of gaming session is just jarring and irritating.

Yeah, let's remove the core gameplay mechanic and story conceit just because.

I'm not saying remove it, just alter it so there's more strategy to it than boost-shoot-shoot.

[adam_grif]

Alan Wake sucked pretty bad. The core gameplay is super repetitive, the story is nonsensical and it fails to be scary. It was pitched as a Psychological Thriller and I was not thrilled. Not even a little bit. The high point of the game was watching those show-within-a-shows and a few Max Payne references in his Apartment.

[DPDarkPrimus]

I thought it was a good game that suffered from some repetitiveness and dated lip-syncing in cutscenes. I enjoyed it, though, and enjoyed both of the DLC packs, and hope we get a sequel that takes the solid core mechanics and builds on them.

Also, playing it on Nightmare difficulty is a completely different experience than Normal or Hard. Instead of mowing enemies down you're trying to save what few bullets you can scrounge up, and are running away from almost all combat, desperately playing your flashlight over them to slow them down until you can make it to the next safe point.

[adam_grif]

Like Assassin's creed 1, it was a game with good mechanics that did not have enough original content and stretched the gameplay out long past it's welcome. If you played this game over two weeks in small chunks maybe you would enjoy it, but playing it close together it gets soooo dull and repetitive.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Like Assassin's creed 1, it was a game with good mechanics that did not have enough original content and stretched the gameplay out long past it's welcome. If you played this game over two weeks in small chunks maybe you would enjoy it, but playing it close together it gets soooo dull and repetitive.

I played it a Chapter a day, which was pretty good pacing I think, except Chapter 3 which is like super-long for some reason.