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Alan Wake

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KvP:
Anybody play it? I got it along with Red Dead Redemption and I've just started. So far the combat mechanics seem pretty okay. My thoughts -

The game starts off with "Stephen King once said..." and that right there pretty much lets you know where the game's going. Alan Wake is essentially a pastiche of Stephen King touchstones (writer protagonist + small town setting + supernatural evil), with a hefty bag of nods to other defining horror / mystery media. The Pacific Northwest setting and sense of the woods being a home to supernatural evil are straight out of Twin Peaks, as is an old woman character who cradles an inanimate object with her wherever she goes and who seems to have a greater knowledge of what's going on than anyone else (though she speaks in riddles). There's a smoke monster. Etc.

This is boilerplate stuff, so far. And it's fun for the moment, when I can pick out all the references, but I'm 99% sure that the fun will wear off. As the AV Club noted in their review, the telegraphing of plot points and stupidly literal narration is a hindrance. When a maniac strikes a door with an axe the narration states "the man struck the door with an axe just like Nicholson in the Shining". The main character's VA is passable but not great (the other characters seem better). One of the central conceits of the game is that you go around and pick up pages to a manuscript that sort of narrate the story in advance, which I guess is supposed to be spooky but all it does is deflate tension, since you know several minutes in advance when and how a character will die, or a momentous plot point will be revealed. Again, this being in the early game (I'm on the second chapter), they could turn this around. There's been one or two instances where you'll find a page in which the future will be foretold but key info will be left out, and that's somewhat suspenseful.

This is from the same team that made Max Payne and they share a lot of elements, to Alan Wake's detriment. The VA is one such example - the pulpy overwrought humor of Max Payne lent itself to the hardboiled PI narration, but here, where an attempt is made to convey actual suspense and drama, it doesn't really work. There are also some common gameplay elements - you can turn on TVs and watch a Twilight Zone-esque show called "Night Falls", ala Max Payne's immortal "Lords and Ladies".

Really the game feels like a full-length game made up of the dream sequences from Max Payne. It's a fun game to play, but I doubt I'll remember it much after I'm done (Alan Wank, more like). It may yet surprise me. For now, though, it's more silly than creepy. Every time you encounter an enemy it's exactly like you're up against a game full of the drugged-out mental patients from Max Payne, doing the typical "yell mundane things in a crayzee voice" maniac thing. Ho hum.

Anybody else play it?

Alex C:
It should be right in my wheelhouse on so many levels and yet it makes me want to punch the writers right in the mouth sometimes. I hate to admit this, but I don't even really mind boilerplate Stephen King level prose anymore. When it comes to books direct, obvious and sorta clumsy is fine by me, since frankly, some people actually ARE direct, obvious and sorta clumsy. Maybe it's not the most elegant voice, but it IS a voice. But in a video game? Eh, I don't need everything telegraphed and spoon fed to me when I'm playing a video game; I expect to have to figure out a thing or two every once in a while when I'm playing a game. Plus, the marriage of good audio and visuals with clumsy narration makes for a weird dichotomy you just don't get when reading. Even a crappy book is usually pretty consistently crappy.

KvP:
Part of me wants to think it's just writers who are used to other languages. Maybe it was just coincidental that Max Payne turned out as well as it did.

Tom:
I was thinking about getting this game and then I heard about the Stephen King quote, that was the deal breaker.

KvP:
Yeah this is pretty much exactly a Stephen King game. Like, exactly. The twists are all King twists. It's not getting any better.

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