The Xbox 360!
A console where my first online multiplayer experiences took place.
The first time I ever tried Halo or Call of Duty just to fall in love with both franchises
like the angsty teenager I was.
It was a great time to discover new games and experiences all through the comfort of
your living room couch.
It was also when I first discovered wireless controllers were becoming an industry standard
and the days of sitting on the carpet in front of my television to play games were gone.
Albeit it's still nostalgic to do so!
But the thing I remember the most are the titles I played.
GTA IV was a masterpiece in comparison to San Andreas with online multiplayer functionality
giving me hours of play.
Portal 2 being arguably one of the best single player puzzle games I've ever had the pleasure
of playing.
Sonic 06 showing me just how terrible our upcoming titles could be, if not worse!
Not all things could be good I guess.
If I had to choose one game that I would say stood out to me.
One game that in my eyes has stood the test of time from the Xbox 360.
A title that changed the way I looked at game design while still being entertaining and
interesting from beginning to end.
I think I would have to give that title to Alan Wake.
Alan Wake was developed by Remedy Entertainment.
That name should ring at least a little bit familiar to you since they were the minds
behind Max Payne.
In recent years they've also developed and released Quantum Break!
Which, I haven't had the pleasure of playing yet, but I will look forward to doing so.
Alan Wake is about a published author who is currently experiencing writer's block.
In an attempt to get away from his work, Alan and his wife take off towards Bright Falls,
a quaint little town with quirky people.
After listening to arguably the best song in the entire game, we get a key from a creepy
old lady and are sent to reside in a cabin in the middle of the lake.
Once there, Alice and Alan get into a dispute over work and Alan leaves for a bit.
Angry that his wife cares for him.
Whilst Alan is quietly sulking on a bridge we hear Alice scream for help as the cabin
lights go dark.
Oh, is it too late to mention that Alice is a grown woman with a phobia of the dark?
Which I also find funny since she's a photographer who develops pictures in a dark and dank room.
Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.
ALICE.
(Zoom on Alice in her office.)
Got off track there for a second.
Alan hears her scream and comes running to her rescue with only a flashlight in hand.
Once there, he realizes that Alice somehow fell into the dark lake surrounding the cabin.
He jumps in to try and save her, and the screen fades to black.
The next time we see our lovely protagonist he's been victim of a car crash and can't
remember the last week of his life.
Upon making his way out of the wreckage, he picks up a few pages of a manuscript allegedly
written by him.
These pages being collectibles as well as being a cool way of foreshadowing events you're
going to encounter later on down the lines.
They talk of a darkness that has taken Alice, and controls the people engulfed in shadow,
causing them to not be themselves.
So, it's your job as the player to go out and figure out what happened in the past week,
and save your wife Alice, whom we presume is alive.
Now that we got the basic premise out of the way, let's talk about the game.
The first level you're dropped into begins before Alice is even missing and it serves
as a tutorial for combat and basic gameplay.
In this tutorial, Alan is having a nightmare in which he just hit a man with his car.
After briefly investigating the body, it disappears and Alan is starting to get a little worried.
Seeing a lighthouse off in the distance he proceeds to move towards it as he's convinced
something is waiting for him there.
Unfortunately, it's never that easy as the hitchhiker he allegedly killed with his car
now has an axe and wants to kill Alan.
Can I just mention that this character is the best thing about this tutorial?
He has no importance to the overall story, but he does yell criticisms about Alan Wake
and his previous works.
He is a character that Alan Wake created in his head to spout criticism about his previous
best selling novels.
Alan has some serious issues if he's effectively criticising himself whilst he sleeps.
Alan Wake plays like a 3rd person shooter, although it's a bit unique.
Basically enemies are not immediately vulnerable to attack.
They have an essential shield that protects them from most bullets or projectiles.
You have to essentially deplete their shield in order to be able to kill your shadowy attackers.
This, is where the game starts using the premise to its advantage.
Just to be clear, normal weapons will not stop your shadowy attackers in their tracks.
Though the game makes brilliant use of different types of weapons.
For example, you can have a flair gun that is typically a one hit kill!
Not always the case with certain enemies but usually it's a one hit KO.
You've got flares that you can activate to act as a sort of safety hub for a few minutes.
Where light will enshroud you and enemies can't get close.
You've also got flashbangs that can act as a one hit kill, but these are thrown and
take a bit more time to go off than a flare does.
The use of bigger flashlights can mean that your batteries won't die as quickly and
you can whittle down an enemies health much more effectively.
Now that I've talked about the different type of weapons you can have, can I quickly
tangent to tell you why I like this so much?
The use of light in this game flatters it's design quite well.
Light is not only your weapon, it's a safe haven.
Fighting enemies can deplete your health, but standing under a streetlight can rejuvenate
you.
It creates this cool dichotomy between light and darkness that the player can immediately
understand.
Seeing a light in the distance represents safety, it shows your objective and is often
very prominent in the world due to how dark the environments are.
Going down a dark corridor is dreadful due to the enemies you can encounter at night
or in the shadows.
It creates this nice contrast the player can feel when traversing the world, and makes
it much more gratifying when you're finally safe!
When a light goes out, you feel threatened and endangered, but not helpless.
As long as you have a flashlight on hand, there's no enemy you can't defeat.
Even if it is super tough.
Let me tell you though, this game can be super unfair.
While I don't necessarily hate the combat system, I do hate the level of difficulty
I was experiencing on normal.
Enemies are thrown at you in waves.
Where there's more enemies than Alan can effectively point his danky flashlight at.
Sometimes you are pit up against more enemies than you're prepared to handle.
There was a point in the game where it threw three large enemies at me that not only took
more time to deplete their shield with a flashlight, but took more bullets than most regular enemies.
THESE GUYS ARE HUGE AND THEY SUCK.
Did I mention that Alan doesn't have invincibility frames in between hits?
Meaning he can get hit by 2 enemies in a row and take more damage than you should?
Cause that's kind of important since most enemies gang up on you rather than take you
on one at a time.
Keeping your distance is imperative to surviving this onslaught of poop this game throws at
you.
Combining this with the fact you probably can't keep your camera on all enemies at
all times, it means you'll get hit from behind more times than I care to admit.
Don't even get me started on the chainsaw guys who are arguably the hardest enemy in
the game to kill.
They take the longest time to deplete the shield, the most bullets, and do the most
damage.
They are the bane of my existence.
Though, to be fair with you, the game makes me dread the sound of the chainsaw.
So, they achieved a cool correlation between sound and enemy that players learn to dread.
Your flashlight can also deplete in battery life, so on top of managing your ammo, dodging
for your life, and overall being in max pain.
(Laughing)
That wasn't even clever, I just really wanted to say it.
You also have to manage your batteries to make sure you can continue fighting the
onslaught of enemies.
I think it's funny that Energizer decided to support this game as your batteries die
SUPER quickly in the game.
Especially when you have to deal with multiple enemies at a time.
They do recharge if you don't deplete them entirely, but I enjoy how replacing the batteries
in your flashlight every few seconds is more ideal than using the pair of batteries they
claim will last days.
As for Verizon, can't say I can complain.
Alan seems to get signal wherever he goes and the phone even survives some interesting
weather scenarios.
Good job game.
You made Verizon look moderately ok.
As for how the ads are integrated into the game, I'm not really upset about that.
It is mostly unintrusive and it's not like they force you to watch a commercial.
Overall, pretty good.
On top of your weapons being helpful to destroying enemies, there are also environmental hazards
that you can use to your advantage.
This can be something as simple as a giant searchlight, some construction lights, and
even electric hazards.
Using these lights and hazards in conjunction with your flashlight will lead to getting
rid of enemies much faster than you could on your own.
Which is always a good thing.
You can also drive cars into your enemies and kill them!
Which is cool.
Aside from that, the game is relatively straightforward.
You have an objective, and you have to move towards it, solving any environmental puzzles
along the way.
The game isn't entirely complex, and it has some nice set-pieces here and there.
Besides a few segments where they either give you close to no weapons at all, or are expected
to be kept alive by a stupid NPC.
The game's only major flaw is probably it's difficulty.
There's also hidden caches you can find across the world that give you things like
extra ammo, batteries, and even weapons.
You can reveal these by moving your light across different surfaces and following the
trail of yellow invisable paint that only you can reveal.
These even have significance to the story, so it's pretty cool that they're here.
I'm not going to lie to you, I was having a really hard time playing through certain
segments of the game.
Mostly because I was being overwhelmed by enemies that just were not having any of it.
Occasionally the game would intentionally handicap you, like when they have an NPC poorly
protecting you with a gun, and all you have are flares and a flashlight.
They'll intentionally limit your resources and overall make it not a fun time.
I felt like on normal the difficulty was a bit too high for my liking, however there
was no way to really change that once you're in the game.
You just had to deal with it and move on.
Unfortunately that was really hard to do in certain segments and I found that sometimes
the best solution is just running for your life until you hit the next streetlight.
The characters in the game really make this title for me though.
With characters being quirky, funny, and overall fun to listen to.
The game made lots of unique characters and set pieces that stick with me to this day.
I still love Barry and his anti-darkness uniform that consisted of a headlamp, some christmas
lights, and a flare gun.
That's still one of my favorite things to date.
Overall, I think I would recommend Alan Wake.
It's unique in it's own way, and I love the way it uses light to it's advantage.
The way it's worked into the narrative is also pretty cool overall.
I think there's a lot to be explored here should a sequel ever decide it wants to come
our way!
You can pick this game up on the Xbox 360 or Steam.
The footage you were watching came from the PC version of Alan Wake.
The game is fun.
Buy it.
American Nightmare sucks though.
Don't buy it.
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