Alan Wake (360)

[mrprice33]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

pre-ordered. that looks awesome.

[NEOPARADIGM]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

This is the ONE game that makes me wish I had a 360.

[Flawless]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

IGN: X10 Impressions

Some of the non-combat stuff was shown off early on in the demo, as Wake gets out of his car to head into a diner and retrieve the key. It turns out the waitress behind the bar is a big fan of his writing and recognizes him as soon as he walks in. She's even put a cardboard cutout of him from a publicity event next to the diner's entrance. The initial interaction here takes place in a cut-scene style, but you're soon given control of Wake and can pilot him around the diner from a third-person perspective.

As he wanders numerous other NPCs will start to interact with him. A pair of elderly gentlemen at the far end of the bar, for instance, request that he put a certain song on the jukebox, then proceed to argue with each other over the song as Wake continues on his way. In addition to the chatter from characters in the environment, you'll also get to hear Wake's inner monologue as he assesses and analyses the situation. In this instance, Wake's thoughts were made audible as he approached a dark bathroom hallway where the NPC who had his key was allegedly located.

Here you see some foreshadowing of events to come, as a lady cowering near the hallway entrance starts talking about how the dark can be dangerous. Seeing as Wake needs that key, he keeps moving past to the bathroom door. At this point he's jumped by a veiled woman who speaks with an ominous voice and, surprisingly, hands over the key, saying the guy Wake is looking for isn't available. I think we can assume she might show up later, but who knows.

The bit of the game shown off here showed Wake near the Bright Falls dam. It was night, the moon shone with an eerie brightness overhead, and Wake was alone in the woods. Nearby was the page of a book, which he picked up and read aloud, and just beyond that was a crashed helicopter. Wake was looking for his buddies Sarah, the town's sheriff, and Barry his friend and agent. They weren't there, but a bunch of flares were, which Wake picked up and continued to pick his way down a path lined with shadows and prickly branches.

Then in a clearing not far beyond the helicopter are Sarah and Barry firing bullets and tossing flares at these bizarre ghost people who are streaming in from all sides. Wake gets in on the action by stunning the enemies with his flashlight and then hitting them with a shotgun blast as his two friend call out frantically in the background, engaged in their own struggles.

Once the enemies stopped Barry and Sarah kept up their chatter. Barry, who serves as a source of comic relief in the game, went on at length about the Christmas lights that were strapped around his coat, and his headlamp that he referred to as his "flaming eye of Mordor." Wake proceeded to the dam, and at various intervals was attacked by more enemies. From time to time he the game would also transition into a slow-motion sequence as he dodged underneath the arc of an enemy's axe swing, and once he was able to pick up a flare gun he was able to put foes down a lot faster.

The party didn't stay together long, unfortunately, as Wake was separated from the other two as he proceeded further toward the top of the dam. A large pile of debris fell between him and his friends, leaving him to fend for himself as gigantic wooden objects were mysteriously hurled at him from a distance. He could try to dodge them, but also suspend them in midair by using his flashlight, presumably because the objects were affected by the darkness that was causing all the uproar.

Eventually Wake was able to make it up near the top of the giant structure, where he was able to use a giant spotlight to mow through opponents, sort of like using a turret except without any bullets. He also took advantage of a bunch of flashbangs he'd picked up, which detonated in a brilliant white-blue blast, disintegrating anything dark and evil in the vicinity. This was about the end of the demo, but it didn't cut off before showing a tree-high rolling ball of objects hurtling toward wake, held together by some kind of magical energy.

Overall the third-person action seemed to be tight and responsive, and the build shown looked impressively polished. The visuals in particularly were a pleasure to look at, and the interplay of light and dark looked really cool depending on the type of light source used as they varied in light color and area of effect. From looking at the user interface while all this was going on, it's clear Wake has a health bar, a limited selection of weapons he can switch between, and a charge bar for his flashlight. Both the flashlight bar and health bar were regenerative, so it doesn't seem like you're going to have to pick up health packs or anything like that.

Some hands-on time will be able to deliver more detail about how the game actually feels, but from what was shown, the game looks to be really impressive.

[Pokes]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

I went ahead and pre-ordered this. Luckily its awhile away so I'm not getting too much at once.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

I think I preordered this over a year ago on Amazon - I can't wait.

[Flawless]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

Low quality, but here's 5 minutes of new footage. It looks amazing!

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...

Eurogamer Hands-on

If you were to tick off the influences, Stephen King and David Lynch would be near the top of the list. But Remedy keeps the game fresh with compelling level design and presentation. The way the developer toys with the player's emotions is impressively frightening; as Wake picks up the keys to his cabin from a diner, the entire mood of the scene spins on a dime from friendly and folksy to chilling.

It's also a testament to the storytelling that Alan Wake himself is a man of substance. He's a bruised, conflicted individual; intelligent but also prone to violent outbursts. What makes him compelling, however, is less that he's flawed, but more that he knows he is and that he's trying to resist the weaker side of his personality. He's already facing a fractured marriage and writer's block, but the game suggests his problems run a lot deeper. Wake's fallibility also enhances the gameplay, which puts a premium on light as a weapon.

Aiming and firing is your standard left and right trigger setup, but unlike most everymen in videogames who turn into a crack shot the moment they pick up a weapon, Wake's not a natural gunman, and the gameplay has been tweaked to this effect. Switching from running to taking aim feels a little slow, and while a quick reload is available, a mistimed tap of the button can slow this down as well. Not every shot is on target, aiming skill only increases with familiarity, and sometimes the best option is to cut your losses and leg it.

To compound this, Wake's enemies understand self-preservation. If you're staring down multiple opponents, the moment you draw a bead on one of them the others fan out. There's a dodge move, but the quickness of Wake's opponents and their ability to blend in with the darkened woodland is disorientating. Since it only takes around three or four well-placed hits to be killed, you're advised to put as much distance between yourself and attackers as possible.

Alan Wake will never be mistaken for Max Payne, then, but it remains exhilarating and dramatic. You often find yourself running out of bullets, and the gap between Wake and a pack of enemies closes fast. At one point you turn and see a generator next to an unlit outside light, and charge towards it while shadowy attackers hiss and snarl behind you. But when you reach the generator and hit the requested face button, it merely sputters. It takes another attempt to get it going, bathing Wake in glorious yellow light and destroying an attacker only inches away.

Meanwhile the presentation is stunning, caught in a beautiful twilight between ethereal and realistic. The game's story, gameplay and atmosphere all creep into the player's periphery at an elegant pace, but the visuals win you over before you pick up the pad. Remedy's latest adventure is set in the Pacific North West and every item in the environment looks and feels authentic: there's not a vehicle model or a style of building or a piece of vegetation that looks out of place. The team also boasts that the weather, lighting and even the animals on the soundtrack are region-specific, as are the clothing styles and accents of the townsfolk.

The game also has a trump card in the way its camera blends functionality with cinematic flare, because rather than being glued to every tiny movement the camera is staggered by a split second. This is hardly noticeable when the player is engaged in mundane activities like fiddling with a jukebox or investigating the interior of an unlit house, but when the action kicks into gear it becomes a little more pronounced.

The way Wake almost seems to duck out of shot as the player reacts to a rapid attack feels as though the action on-screen is being filmed by another person. The camera also occasionally unhooks from behind Wake's shoulder to hurtle forward for a reveal shot or a slow-motion close-up track on a hurled weapon. It then returns to its original position swiftly and intuitively with no break in the action.

If a sporadically roaming third-person camera sounds like it might be a pain though, don't worry. Judging by the sections we've played, Remedy doesn't front-load its cinematic effects; if you die, you won't have to sit through a series of pre-programmed scenes before you get back into the action. Rather the game's camera responds to the player's sense of timing; ducking out of the way of a spinning axe at the last minute rewards the player with a slow-motion steady shot, for example.

Videogamer Hands-on

Good things come to those who wait, or so they say. It took almost half a decade for Remedy to drag Max Payne through development hell, and now, several years later, Alan Wake seems to have gone through a similarly drawn out process. It's been a long journey, to the extent that some of us started to worry whether it would ever reach its destination. But now, almost five years after its E3 2005 reveal, Alan Wake is finally getting ready to step into the light.

Guns are the weapons you'll use to ultimately kill your human foes, but before you can open fire you first have to rid your enemies of the darkness that surrounds and protects them. As you might expect, your basic tool for this job is your torch: if you direct the beam at nearby Taken, it'll slowly start to burn away the inky blackness that surrounds them. If you're feeling impatient, you can also concentrate the beam for a more powerful attack – but this will drain its power quicker. Alan can carry several spare batteries with him, allowing for quick changes mid-combat, but if he completely runs out of juice the last battery will recharge itself, albeit slowly. In short, energy is a resource that has to be spent carefully.

In addition to the torch, Alan can also carry a number of supplementary light-bringing devices. Hand-held flares do an excellent job of cleansing several enemies at once, and keeping large groups at bay, but if you manage to find a flare gun, you'll have what essentially amounts to a rocket launcher. Flashbang grenades also take on a far more destructive quality than what we're used to in standard action titles.

So, the game looks beautiful – but it's the general atmosphere more than anything else that really gets under your skin. As the Wakes enter the town we're given ample opportunity to soak in the surroundings. From the rusty railway bridge that crosses the harbour to the kooky locals to the giant, forest-strewn hills that dominate the skyline, Bright Falls is a town that has been built around a very familiar image of the American Midwest. The story works quickly to establish Alan as an outsider in this place. As our hero enters a local diner, he's immediately confronted with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of himself; one of the waitresses in the café recognises him immediately, much to his shame, and then he engages in a slightly weird conversation with two elderly bikers slumped in one of the booths. The old-timers ask Alan to put a tune on the jukebox, which he does. Then, just as the scene is beginning to get really weird, things start to get a bit dark. Wake asks where he can find Stucky, the owner of the cabin in which he's staying, and the waitress directs him towards a shadowy corridor at the back of the diner. And just as he approaches, a strange old woman pops up and starts mewling about the dangers of the dark.

I won't spoil what happens next, but suffice to say that the whole scene is absolutely dripping in the spirit of Twin Peaks – David Lynch's seminal weird-out drama from the early 90's. Remedy has been very open about its attempts to emulate the feel of high-budget television, and from what I've seen so far the results have paid off. I won't go into detail exactly what I learned of the game's early plot (time is short, and I'm not allowed to anyway), but I will say this: the mysterious tone of the story sucks you in very quickly. And Remedy isn't just interested in using TV as a source of inspiration, either: as was the case with the Max Payne games, Alan Wake will often use in-game media as a means to tell its story. If you listen in to the radio at your shack, for example, you might hear the star-struck waitress calling in to a local radio station to discuss Wake's arrival. Even better than that, at one point later in the game you'll get the option to watch a re-run of Alan appearing on a Jay Leno-like chat show... an appearance which is presented in the form of genuine live-action video, starring the real-life actor who provides Wake's voice and likeness. Oh, and if that isn't odd enough, Sam "Max Payne" Lake is also a guest on the show. As himself.

If you've read all this and are now thinking, "Alan Wake sounds awesome" you'd be right on two fronts. It does sound awesome, but it also sounds awesome. The audio work on this game is really impressive, from the moody backing score to the licensed music tracks (yet another thing I can't mention) to the ambient noise of the woods at night; the latter was actually recorded by a member of Remedy staff who went on a lengthy camping trip, solely for that purpose. That's the level of detail we're dealing with here. It all adds up to what should hopefully be one hell of a package... and I, for one, can't wait to open the box.

[ExtremeGamer]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

My God that looks incredible.

Any word on the SE and the regluar versions? I remember Major Nelson saying that the regular basically comes with everything that the SE does, sans the book and packaging.

[Pared]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

First Heavy Rain, then this... can't wait!!

[DickDalewood]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

Incredible! When the heck does this come out?

[ODogg]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

Sometime in May is what they said over the last few days. I'm just glad they finally got a release date!! I was beginning to think this would be another Duke Nukem Forever or Gran Turismo 5.

[DickDalewood]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

Sometime in May is what they said over the last few days. I'm just glad they finally got a release date!! I was beginning to think this would be another Duke Nukem Forever or Gran Turismo 5.

I sure hope not... looks fantastic.

[ODogg]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

Ok, I just found the article. May 18th is the date. It's confirmed by Microsoft.

http://thegameraccess.com/news/360/alan-wake-release-date-and-special-edition

[DickDalewood]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

Ok, I just found the article. May 18th is the date. It's confirmed by Microsoft.

http://thegameraccess.com/news/360/a...pecial-edition

[Flawless]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

More Hands-on impressions:

IGN

What consistently impressed me about Alan Wake is how well it is constructed. The visuals are striking, the sound effects and music are fantastic, and the art style is unique enough to make this game stand out from the pack. But it is the clever writing and well-woven themes that made my time with the game so memorable. Alan Wake constantly toys with the player, making them question what is real and what is a nightmare. The story seems to be coming to life, and even those corrupted by the dark presence fit into this theme as they appear to have wet ink wafting from their forms. Light and dark are toyed with constantly, both in the combat and in the clever dialogue and presentation. It all comes together to feel smarter than most any other action game I've played.

Kotaku

Alan Wake is a thriller that appears to be the exception to two gaming genre rules. Games that are scary often have two deficiencies: controls and graphics.

The former can frustrate in a Silent Hill or a Resident Evil, forcing the player to deal with clunky or muddy controls. The inability to move a character with swiftness and finesse is arguably an essential element of the games' creators' intent to make the player feel overpowered and afraid. Recent, more dynamic controls, such as in Resident Evil 5, seemed to help make the game more of an action movie and less of a horror flick. Better controls produce fewer scares?

Alan Wake's scheme denies that better controls necessarily alleviate fear and tension. Alan may have controlled pleasantly, like a man and not a tank, but the need to illuminate enemies and then shoot them — and to do so while batteries swiftly drained and then needed to be recharged or be replaced in the flashlight — provided just enough enjoyable trouble to make skirmishes a fright, without being a frustration.

As for graphics, well, it's hard to say if the darkness enshrouding many of the games in the genre excused less than industry-leading graphics or if it is smaller development teams, not armed with the resources to make industry-leading graphics that turned to the horror genre. Whatever the case, it is rare to see a game in the dark-and-creepy category that could be a Best Graphics candidate, but Alan Wake, like EA's Dead Space before it, represents a pleasant exception. The Pacific Northwest is a rare and magnificent sight in video games, rendered in real and spooky detail in the episode I played. The forests were tall, dark and dense, light playing through branches. As Alan ran into a house for refuge, I noticed it was full of details, chairs and TVs and wall-hangings, meeting my newfound Uncharted 2 standard of amount of stuff I think a developer can render in a realistic indoors space. As some dark presence shook the house apart, I felt not that I was in a primitive diorama but that I was in a big-budget blockbuster. Even in the dark it felt I could see far across the valley, that this was a detailed world so well-rendered I could almost smell the sawed logs.

[ODogg]

Re: Alan Wake (360)

Sounds awesome. Any idea on the amount of hours this one will take to solve? Will there be any replayability?