I recently finished the last DLC for Alan Wake, a game I loved to bits. Beautiful presentation, solid action and best of all a truly unique and original story that was well written and well told.
However, looking back on a lot of comments and opinions people have given for the game, a large portion of the complaints seem to stem in one way or another from one single fact, one that I feel was a bit of misinterpretation. It wasn't scary.
My response is: it wasn't supposed to be. It says right on the box that considers itself a 'psychological action thriller'. Every bit of the gameplay is clearly balanced with the idea that you have just enough power to survive, not necessarily win but survive at least.
And yet the story is deeply rooted in a particular subset of fantasy that is probably best labeled as horror, so obviously people expect that it wants to scare the crap out of us and then don't like it when it doesn't.* And that's where things stop making sense for me.
Last year I went back and re-watched all three Matrix movies, and discovered quite interestingly that Revolutions wasn't actually as universe bendingly terrible as I remembered it was. Was it as good as the first two? (I actually thought Reloaded was OK) Absolutely not, but it wasn't really what I could call bad and did its job capping off the series.
The first time I played Chrono Trigger I got about ten minutes in before I stopped, being extremely put off by age, old RPGs being one of the few old genres I had a problem with, and its Japanese origins. I know how incredibly unfair that last point sounds, I simply mean that I've never found a non-western anime or a Japanese game that acted too for-want-of-a much-better-term 'Japanese' that I liked. But then recently after I got on a bit of an old RPG kick I went back to tried it again and fell head over heels in love with unexpectedly workable combat and surprisingly intricate-for-its-time story.
My point that I am desperately trying to get to before this goes on for too much longer is that expectations can color our experiences in ways that we don't often expect or sometimes aren't even aware of. Whether this means hating something we should like or liking something we should hate the end result is pretty bad in either case. So I put the question to you Escapist, have you ever let your preconceived notions interfere with your enjoyment of a game, only to correct those opinions later? Or for that matter are there things right now that you are comfortable letting your preconceptions rule and have no desire to check and see if they are really accurate?
Topic open, answer at will.
*(I happen to think that horror games don't actually have to be scary as long as they have other elements that can hold them up. Probably due to the fact that I have never been scared by a game, even though I love quite a few that clearly try. Where or not that's an OK thing for the genre is a discussion for another day however.)
However, looking back on a lot of comments and opinions people have given for the game, a large portion of the complaints seem to stem in one way or another from one single fact, one that I feel was a bit of misinterpretation. It wasn't scary.
My response is: it wasn't supposed to be. It says right on the box that considers itself a 'psychological action thriller'. Every bit of the gameplay is clearly balanced with the idea that you have just enough power to survive, not necessarily win but survive at least.
And yet the story is deeply rooted in a particular subset of fantasy that is probably best labeled as horror, so obviously people expect that it wants to scare the crap out of us and then don't like it when it doesn't.* And that's where things stop making sense for me.
Last year I went back and re-watched all three Matrix movies, and discovered quite interestingly that Revolutions wasn't actually as universe bendingly terrible as I remembered it was. Was it as good as the first two? (I actually thought Reloaded was OK) Absolutely not, but it wasn't really what I could call bad and did its job capping off the series.
The first time I played Chrono Trigger I got about ten minutes in before I stopped, being extremely put off by age, old RPGs being one of the few old genres I had a problem with, and its Japanese origins. I know how incredibly unfair that last point sounds, I simply mean that I've never found a non-western anime or a Japanese game that acted too for-want-of-a much-better-term 'Japanese' that I liked. But then recently after I got on a bit of an old RPG kick I went back to tried it again and fell head over heels in love with unexpectedly workable combat and surprisingly intricate-for-its-time story.
My point that I am desperately trying to get to before this goes on for too much longer is that expectations can color our experiences in ways that we don't often expect or sometimes aren't even aware of. Whether this means hating something we should like or liking something we should hate the end result is pretty bad in either case. So I put the question to you Escapist, have you ever let your preconceived notions interfere with your enjoyment of a game, only to correct those opinions later? Or for that matter are there things right now that you are comfortable letting your preconceptions rule and have no desire to check and see if they are really accurate?
Topic open, answer at will.
*(I happen to think that horror games don't actually have to be scary as long as they have other elements that can hold them up. Probably due to the fact that I have never been scared by a game, even though I love quite a few that clearly try. Where or not that's an OK thing for the genre is a discussion for another day however.)
and the only way I'll see what that's like is to play it.
