I never played "Alan Wake" at the time it came out, but I do have the remastered version from Playstation Plus a few months back, which, despite my general dislike of survival horror I decided to give a go a week or so ago. I found somethings that I admired, but I didn't play it for very long before getting frustrated and turning it off.
Alan Wake is an author, who heads to Washington State with his wife to try and break the writers block that he's suffering from. Alan appears to be suffering from blackouts and hallucinations and is chased by dark entities that live in the forest and are capable of taking over townsfolk. Viewed in the third person, the game requires the player to explore the surrounding area, to try and save Wake's wife. Combat takes the form of gunplay, but the enemies can only be defeated once Alan has used a torch to strip them of a dark defensive protection.
Again, this was the remastered version of the game and visually it had a bit of an overhaul from the 2010 original. The forest looked good and the light mechanism from the torch worked really well to cast scary shadows and as a target for the firearms. The story felt a bit played out, with real life mixed with a fantasy world and you never quite being sure where you are in it. I enjoyed the way the game filled out it's story with subtler moments, missing people posters in the Police station, and radio broadcasts. There's also a TV show, an homage to the Twilight Zone, which worked well.
But I only played to about halfway through the second of six chapters (or episodes in the games terms) before I ran up to a section that I couldn't overcome, where I was swarmed by more characters than the mechanics would let me fight off, and after half a dozen attempts quit in frustration and deleted the game. I accept here that part of the problem is me, I hate rationing ammo and supplies and I don't think I've ever made it through a game that requires me to do that.
It's a shame, because I was quite enjoying the game prior to that, though I think already it was started to get a bit samey. I have the game on 360 as well, which I've never actually gotten around to playing, so maybe at some point I'll dig that out and give that a go. But for now, I've had enough of this.
Alan Wake is an author, who heads to Washington State with his wife to try and break the writers block that he's suffering from. Alan appears to be suffering from blackouts and hallucinations and is chased by dark entities that live in the forest and are capable of taking over townsfolk. Viewed in the third person, the game requires the player to explore the surrounding area, to try and save Wake's wife. Combat takes the form of gunplay, but the enemies can only be defeated once Alan has used a torch to strip them of a dark defensive protection.
Again, this was the remastered version of the game and visually it had a bit of an overhaul from the 2010 original. The forest looked good and the light mechanism from the torch worked really well to cast scary shadows and as a target for the firearms. The story felt a bit played out, with real life mixed with a fantasy world and you never quite being sure where you are in it. I enjoyed the way the game filled out it's story with subtler moments, missing people posters in the Police station, and radio broadcasts. There's also a TV show, an homage to the Twilight Zone, which worked well.
But I only played to about halfway through the second of six chapters (or episodes in the games terms) before I ran up to a section that I couldn't overcome, where I was swarmed by more characters than the mechanics would let me fight off, and after half a dozen attempts quit in frustration and deleted the game. I accept here that part of the problem is me, I hate rationing ammo and supplies and I don't think I've ever made it through a game that requires me to do that.
It's a shame, because I was quite enjoying the game prior to that, though I think already it was started to get a bit samey. I have the game on 360 as well, which I've never actually gotten around to playing, so maybe at some point I'll dig that out and give that a go. But for now, I've had enough of this.