Alan Wake Review

Post by Steve Farrelly @ 02:51pm 12/05/10 | 35 Comments

AusGamers has reached it to the end of Alan Wake's book, having watched and played through every episode, and reasonably happy with the outcome.

Definitely standing as one of the most unique narrative presentations in a videogame, Alan Wake offers players a television-series style format that sees levels played out as 'episodes' replete with each one opening "Previously, On Alan Wake...". It makes the game engaging and compelling in a different kind of way. However, we did have a few issues with various parts of it, all of which you can read about in our review.

Click here for the full run-down.

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Latest Comments

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parabol
Posted 02:54pm 12/5/10

Driving sequences are balls

I love Ausgamers reviews.

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d^
Posted 02:56pm 12/5/10

Dismal effort for something which was in production for f*****g ever.

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 02:57pm 12/5/10

the thing is, they're a really small team and the game is good, worth playing for sure, it just lacks the sort of development devotion the concept so sorely needed

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Dazhel
Posted 03:17pm 12/5/10

a) Buy
b) Wait for 1st price drop
c) Bargain Bin
d) No Buy
e) Send the developers some faeces in the mail

This game probably rates around (b) then

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Methz
Posted 03:30pm 12/5/10

Sounds like its another Assassin's Creed
good concept but just not quite there yet.

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Umoprexy
Posted 03:39pm 12/5/10

I really liked the concept and sound of this when it was first announced, but after reading this I feel let down again. It had such potential with the great ideas too :(

I will still check it out once it hits the bargain bin though no doubt!

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ravn0s
Posted 03:44pm 12/5/10

it was ruined the moment it became 360 exclusive

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 03:58pm 12/5/10

ravn0s you'd still have essentially the same game on PC, maybe just better visually

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ravn0s
Posted 03:59pm 12/5/10

yer i know :(

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kettels
Posted 04:07pm 12/5/10

it was ruined the moment it became 360 exclusive

agree, was looking forward to this then the made it less sandbox for memory and then xbox only when it was meant to be pc only at the start.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV2AYoKc1u8 oh how things have changed

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Crash
Posted 04:39pm 12/5/10

agree, was looking forward to this then the made it less sandbox for memory and then xbox only when it was meant to be pc only at the start

It was announced as a next gen console and PC title.

Nice review Steve.

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Khel
Posted 04:44pm 12/5/10

The atmosphere and the story are what I'm interested in. One of my favourite games of all time is still Silent Hill 2 because of the absolutely awesome atmosphere it built up. I mean, the controls and the gameplay in it were pretty s***, and some of the cutscenes and dialogue at times bordered on painfully corny, but I forgive and forget all that because the atmosphere they created was just so awesome. Games like Resident Evil "scare" you, but its just cheap scares with s*** jumping out at you, Silent Hill 2 genuinely freaked me, it was like a slow, get under your skin and f*** with your mind kind of scare.

I'm *hoping* Alan wake delivers something like that, still sounds like a good game, 7.9 is hardly a bad score, a flawed masterpiece maybe? Either way I've been waiting for 5 years for it, even if the game totally sucks, I still have to buy it, I'm too committed to pull out now.

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Trauma
Posted 05:08pm 12/5/10

ravn0s you'd still have essentially the same game on PC, maybe just better visually

As a port yea, but as a PC game hell no.

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Steve Farrelly
Posted 05:20pm 12/5/10

Trauma, how do you figure? They didn't cull the sandbox element because they were going to console, it was being developed for both 360 and PC with that in mind, but they couldn't balance the narrative and pacing they wanted with an open-world - it was a gameplay decision. Had nothing to do with tech, ergo, you'd still have the exact same game if it was on PC

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MatchFixah
Posted 05:54pm 12/5/10

I'm too committed to pull out now.

That's what i thought before sprogging all over your mum.

I'm sorry but someone had to do it.... i mean.. say it.

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Resonate
Posted 09:30pm 12/5/10

They will probably announce it for PC in a years time or so once all the hype over the 360 version has died down. Microsoft have already done it with a number of games which they publish.

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Josh
Posted 09:51pm 12/5/10

Go steve!! :P

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GunnerMcDagget
Posted 10:58pm 12/5/10

It's basically Alone in the Dark with lights instead of fire. Still good though, but very repetitive

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Khel
Posted 11:27pm 12/5/10

That's what i thought before sprogging all over your mum.

Heh, I realised as I was typing it that there would probably end up being some kind of "pull out" related joke. I'm glad it was you though <3

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Decepticon
Posted 12:12am 13/5/10

thanks for the review, now i'm definitely NOT buying this game....maybe one day when it's like 20 bucks.

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Spook
Posted 07:32am 13/5/10

a) Buy
b) Wait for 1st price drop
c) Bargain Bin
d) No Buy
e) Send the developers some faeces in the mail

heh, this should be our official game rating scores!

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Calsy
Posted 08:15am 13/5/10

Is this game out yet??? last i heard it drops on the 20th.

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EarthwormJLX
Posted 05:34pm 20/5/10

I still want to give this game a shot. I imagine it being really repetitive, but highly entertaining non the less.

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Khel
Posted 07:42pm 20/5/10

Picked this up a few days ago, I'm only a couple of hours in so far but I'm loving it, awesome atmosphere and nice and creepy when playing with the lights off.

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trillion
Posted 07:54pm 20/5/10

yeah it is awesome kiddies, get it up ins your slot drive

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trillion
Posted 10:12pm 21/5/10

Ok so SPOILER ALERT for anyone that hasn't picked this up like a hot cross bun just yet.

game story line is loosely related to Stephen King's newish one Under The Dome, in that it has fat cops running around like mad chasing some random guy and a small town is in chaos/confusion (although no mysterious Halo-like dome covers the town and the only externalities are freight locomotives and a blackhawk (that oddly goes down, just like in the movie)

It's a shame how the producers neutered the original plans for use of quad core i7 and physx and you can really see how it would have added to the intensity of the gameplay experience when you are watching the cut scenes where they have substituted unladen gpu and cpu power with sprites and bitmap overlay tricks

At a guess I would have to pick it as being an Epic custom Unreal engine or possibly Crytek based, and that's without even having any pre reading of the semantics of the tech used in this one so correct me if I'm wrong.

Bit harsh on a 7.9 Steve but I can understand how you came to that given your disappointments (yeah enemy diversity is very lax and gets boring quick like)

I'm giving this one a good old school C++ for the most engaging story outside of anything that doesn't have dragooons in it

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Khel
Posted 10:17pm 21/5/10

But doesn't pretty much EVERY stephen king story have a small town in chaos/confusion and inept country cops?

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trillion
Posted 10:54pm 21/5/10

you're the Kingopedia Khel do tell? Boring author?

maybe the recurring theme is because he likes the po po

last edited by trillion at 22:54:35 21/May/10

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Khel
Posted 02:59am 22/5/10

Oh, no way, not boring, I love Stephen King, I wasn't giving him s***. I was just saying, small towns, usually in the south west, are a pretty staple thing for Stephen King stories (I think he lives there himself), so it probably wasn't ripped from one particular story, its more just trying to be a stephen king style story in general. Which is a good thing imo, cos it works.

In fact, a friend of mine asked me over msn to give a quick description of what its like, and I pretty much described it as a playable stephen king story.

Thats just from my initial impressions though, I still haven't had a chance to play it more than a few hours yet, and I heard some vague rumour type stuff that the story involves old gods so it may even get a bit of H. P. Lovecraft in there, who knows (well, I'm sure people who've finished it know, but it was a rhetorical question, I don't want the answer, I don't want spoilers :P)

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trillion
Posted 09:38pm 22/5/10

is the voice on the radio in the Moonshine barn that of Moe from The Simpsons?

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trillion
Posted 11:43pm 23/5/10

Spoiler:
It's not a lake...... it's an ocean O_O

Spoiler:
Havok tornado towards the end almost one ups the nuke explosion in Half Life 2

brilliant game, even if it is darker than the ace of spades and more twisted than Conroys Internet filtering policy

last edited by trillion at 23:43:36 23/May/10

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DM
Posted 11:50pm 23/5/10

Gonna look for this on ebay and see if I can get it around 50 - 60. If so i'll pick it up and give it a burn

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fpot
Posted 11:54pm 23/5/10

There was a nuke explosion in Half Life 2?

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trillion
Posted 12:27am 24/5/10

or was it a gravity well implosion followed by a sudden rapid expansion? Would have to play through it again

actually now that i think about it, what im reffering to happened in either episode 1 or 2 but definately wasn't in the lost coast

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trillion
Posted 12:39am 24/5/10

cool mgc do progress tracking, who knew? :P

http://www.mygamercard.net/tracker.php#AlanWake

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