Kolzig

Alan Wake

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As in all games, the most interesting parts are the one where you're exploring, and not fighting. Unfortunately, as in all games, the developers think their combat system is so fucking awesome you should be shooting at enemies all the time. This can sometimes work if the combat system isn't terrible. Now I'm off looking for a playthrough video so I can see what happens.

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As in all games, the most interesting parts are the one where you're exploring, and not fighting. Unfortunately, as in all games, the developers think their combat system is so fucking awesome you should be shooting at enemies all the time. This can sometimes work if the combat system isn't terrible. Now I'm off looking for a playthrough video so I can see what happens.

Street Fighter? :-P Seriously though, that sucks. I was quite interested in this game, but bad game mechanics blow. Maybe there's a cheat mode?

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Just finished it. I looked it up on Wikipedia and noticed it got excellent reviews. One even mentioned it was too short, which is the complete opposite of what I experienced. To me, the game's greatest weakness was the constant drawing out of every little thing. No matter where you're going you have to brave through a bunch of old houses, mills and tunnels and a million trillion miles of hiking trails. The combat is the same all through the game, only it gets harder and more annoying towards the end. Even though the game looks great, the facial stuff is horrible. It was funny when they gave the possessed lady a "dead stare" and it was impossible to see the difference. At one point I thought it might be a plot point that everyone looked like the walking dead, but turns out it was just bad animation.

So, it was very fun, but twice as long as it should've been, and the story suffered from all the action-packed detours they felt they had to cram in there.

Sadly, but unsurprisingly, since this is a 2010 video game, it's not meant to be the complete story, and there's already two DLC things in the menu, and according to Remedy this is only the first season of a bigger story or some shit.

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I believe that the first DLC is at least free?

I have a copy on the way from Amazon. Waiting on the conclusion of Red Dead before I get started though. (Just got to Blackwater)

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Just finished the first bit of DLC, "The Signal." I enjoyed how it took place entirely in the surreal "authored" space that the last few moments of the game proper existed in.

They still haven't answered my real "what the hell?" moment from the end of the game though:

What does Alan mean by, "It's not a lake. It's an ocean," and how does that affect the "dark place?"

Guess I'll have to wait for the next piece of the story to (hopefully) fill that in.

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Oh yeeeaah, they DID send me a code for that DLC.

I'll have to check that out once I manage to pry myself away from Dragon Quest IX and League of Legends...

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I just beat the game and... it's good enough... There is too much combat for a horror game and running away doesn't seem to work as often as it should...

The collectibles are meaningless, except for the pages which can give a glimpse to the future and even hints, it was rather cool when the game talked about the future, that was the only scary part really...

The game is VERY annoying since it usually takes anything good you might have when the chapter ends and makes you start from zero in the next one and yet you'll never have to worry about ammo... (Unless you play Nightmare mode I think?) If the enemies kept spawning that just means you're supposed to run away, which doesn't work well because he gets tired quickly and slows down, while the enemies don't...

It's not a bad game, but it's not survival horror game, your health regenerates, there is too much combat and too much ammo...

How is The Signal? Better? Worse? I got a code for it, but I don't think I'll play it if it's more of the same...

Also, the ending makes no sense....

What the hell happened at the end? He talks about balance and consequences... Did he kill himself to save his love? The game makes it look like he's at least trapped in the darkness forever. If so, where is all this DLC coming from?

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Heh, interesting. I just started it earlier this week myself. Have only played the opening episode so far, but I'm liking it a whole hell of a lot. Not much else to say yet, but it's kinda cool that this thread revives right as I start my playthrough.

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What the hell happened at the end? He talks about balance and consequences... Did he kill himself to save his love? The game makes it look like he's at least trapped in the darkness forever. If so, where is all this DLC coming from?

The DLC

takes place in the Dark Place.

It's pretty goddamn awesome.

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No, no, Alan Wake will never be released on PC. A year and a half later, oh look, it's being released on PC. Go fuck yourselves and your fucking game. I'm so sick and tired of shit like this.

(I´m in a bad mood)

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"Exclusive" tends to mean it's only temporarily exclusive or just one console and PC? I'm sure we've said something like this on some other thread.

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When they made that statement about it not coming out on the PC, they probably believed it. Microsoft wanted to push it as a 360 franchise.

Anyways, with the game now rumored to be finally coming out on the PC, perhaps you'll get the sequel on the same date it launches for XBLA.

I'm just pleased that more people are going to have a chance to play it, considering how it sort of went unnoticed on the 360. It was such a great game, easily one of my favorites of the last few years.

Also, this sequel thing they're doing, Alan Wake as an XBLA download game. It's directly continuing the story, though. Perhaps they're kind of going episodic, maybe they're looking at Valve's HL2 episodes as inspiration.

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Agreed. I absolutely loved Alan Wake and was disappointed that it flew beneath the radar (not helped by its principal anticipating audience being completely left out until now). Hope more people get to appreciate it now.

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Shame it's not the quad core beast of a game anymore like it was during the times when they had the Intel demonstration years ago.

But if the price is right I will buy it. One obstacle is GFWL which I don't like at all. I seriously wish the game does not include GFWL.

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To be honest the game seems to feature the vast majority of the impressive things the showed off years ago, including the gigantic tornadoes and epic, open vistas. There are some particularly ambitious camera angles which are shown as pre-rendered in-engine cutscenes, but they don't include gameplay anyway.

The 360 isn't that far behind the PCs they were using to demo the game way back then so to my eyes the difference is nowhere near as significant as you might think. The only real area of visible downgrading was the resolution, which won't be a factor with the PC anyway. Add in high-resolution textures and more advanced particle effects and the PC version will look sublime I'd say.

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Alan Wake did take a pretty dramatic swerve half way through its development though. It went from being something huge and open-ended, to something very scripted and on-rails. (More Max Payne, less Deadly Premonition.)

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Yes, it was originally a huge open Twin Peaks world with no Max Payne like levels and such.

They scaled it down a lot due to unknown reasons and as I understood the levels are very linear?

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Yes, it was originally a huge open Twin Peaks world with no Max Payne like levels and such.

They scaled it down a lot due to unknown reasons and as I understood the levels are very linear?

Half-Life 2 is maybe a good comparison?

You're on a linear path, but the path can at times be very wide.

So unless you're looking for the barriers, you often won't notice any.

Definitely a linear game with linear environments telling a linear narrative though.

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I think they scaled it down because they realised the initial concept was too ambitious to work on budget. That it made the Xbox conversion much easier was just added incentive.

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I heard this game was kind of like Twin Peaks, is that true? I would love a Twin Peaks style experience that was more playable than the endearing but janky Deadly Premonition.

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I heard this game was kind of like Twin Peaks, is that true? I would love a Twin Peaks style experience that was more playable than the endearing but janky Deadly Premonition.

It's very Twin Peaks, yeah. It's much less overt about it than Deadly Premonition, but the tone and style are definitely there, as are a lot of small homages.

Had Alan Wake made it through development with its original open-world design intact, it would have been extra crazy that it came out in more or less the same time frame as Deadly Premonition.

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The making-of book for Alan Wake (it's called 'Illuminated' I think) explains the whole open world thing and why they abandoned it in some detail, as well as includes screenshots and maps of what was planned. In reality though they didn't get very far with it beyond producing an engine capable of it, so it's not like there's a long lost game or anything to speak of.

The general gist is that it just wasn't very fun. I'm going to be honest, I can't see how it being open world would have actually made it any better — it's not like the gameplay and all that shit was ever different, there was just less structure and not as strong a narrative when it was open world.

Sometimes being open world for open world's sake isn't necessary and from what I recall they didn't actually spend very long on the open world production before completely abandoning the idea. Unfortunately the engine was already well-equipped for the kind of views you get in open world games by this point. As such the levels are linear, but they're fuckin' gorgeous and have views to die for at times. IMO this adds to the immersion big time as you do feel lost in a big-ass rural forest.

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