Zero Punctuation: Alan Wake

[manas]

Alan in The Dark or Alone in The Wake whatever you want to call it, had FAIL written in capital letters all over it when Microsoft didn't have the confidence in it to even release it multi-platform. Remedy suddenly announcing that everything that appeared to be great about the game was now removed (open world exploration, day night cycles, random events like tornadoes and rock slides). Then Microsoft cans the PC version and tells them just to finish the damn thing. lol Something awful happened to Alan Wake when it went FAILBox only, that is really the only scary thing about the game, that they actually released it. XD

I couldn't agree more.

 

[blindthrall]

"Then Alan Wake was savaged by the biggest and most sexually frustrated bear that ever lived."

That is the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen on the Escapist.

 

[Amata]

To be fair, not all of Stephen King's novels are about a writer with personal problems being haunted by an ancient, unknowable evil in small town America. Sometimes, the evil is knowable.
And his best novels weren't anything like that. At which point I take the opportunity to recommend the Dark Tower books to anyone bothering to read my post.

Lol yeah, not that many of his books are about that. Quite a few of them are set in the same small town, but yeah, still. Plus the Dark Tower series is awesome.

A very good review though, even if we disagree on the quality of Stephen King's books.

 

[Moosh50]

The biggest problem Yatzhee has with horror games is that he plays them on Normal difficulty. Why the fuck would anyone do that? It's survival horror, but the Normal difficulty setting makes it a third-person shooter with bad illumination.

I find it funny that people still seem to be under the impresion that "the harder a game is the more fun it is" because really that's not entirely true. There's a lot of games that I love playing which you would never ever catch me playing on the harder difficulty settings. More often the case it would make me dislike the game because however good I may be on an Easy or Normal setting, I would quickly become shit on a higher one. That would lead to a lack of enjoyment as I would probably have difficulty adjusting to a higher setting.

Not to mention as someone else said, with all the other stuff a lot of people have going on in their lives, the Normal setting is as high as on really needs to go. Unless you're so damn good at every game in existence (which I'd probably call a lie, because I've yet to meet someone who is perfect at EVERY game, rather than at genres) that nothing short of Battletoads-esque difficulty will satisfy you.

Sorry, wasn't trying to say that at you specifically, it's just that the gaming world in general these days seems to have a misplaced or at least confused understanding of the world difficulty. I've been playing games since the early 80's, and I've noticed an increasing trend in the last 10 years for people to complain about games being too easy. Compared to the kind of "ha ha ha fuck you" difficulty back on the Atari and NES days, games that are easy by design can be refreshing and more enjoyable than getting a brick to the face. Which is certainly what a lot of games feel like these days, sometimes even on the normal settings.

Compare Megaman 2 to Megaman X8, and you'll notice they're actually getting harder. Sorry, went off on a bit of a rant here..

I'm not saying that games should be harder. I'm saying that when played on Normal, survival horror games tend to become so easy that they stop being scary, which is a pretty big downside for a horror game.

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

Lots of shit talk this week. I wonder if there's a reason behind that :S.

 

[stretchyman1]

YES YOU HAVE MENTIONED THAT YOU WROTE A NOVEL AND YOU CAN PRE-ORDER IT FROM AMAZON AND AMAZON.CO.UK!!! Good review though I enjoyed the bad decisions bit xD

 

[Carnagath]

Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

 

[MrDead]

Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

Aw. I rebooted and it bugged back in again.
12:09 AM May 28th via Twitterrific

 

[ManiacRaccoon]

Fun review as always.

So now that the creepy skull-ghoul has been used more than once, when can we expect an adorably creepy plush of it? And will it only be sold in stores hidden in dark atmospheric forests which will soon be mowed down so the trees may be used to make Stephen King novels in the new Stephen King book assembly line they will be putting up that runs right behind the creepy skull-ghoul store?

Also can I reserve it online on Amazon.com and Amazon.uk along with the book?

 

[Carnagath]

Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

Aw. I rebooted and it bugged back in again.
12:09 AM May 28th via Twitterrific

Bugged...in means it got fixed? Damn my southern European ancestry, need to refresh my English.

 

[Zudarkness]

RJ Dalton:
To be fair, not all of Stephen King's novels are about a writer with personal problems being haunted by an ancient, unknowable evil in small town America. Sometimes, the evil is knowable.
And his best novels weren't anything like that. At which point I take the opportunity to recommend the Dark Tower books to anyone bothering to read my post.

Lol yeah, not that many of his books are about that. Quite a few of them are set in the same small town, but yeah, still. Plus the Dark Tower series is awesome.

A very good review though, even if we disagree on the quality of Stephen King's books.
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Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile come to my mind as other great books/movies as well from Stephen King which show a different approach by Stephen King. No evil clowns, cars, motobikes, attacking birds, fog, psychis, untold dark demon creature, some screwed up dark half, processed semis, wraths of god or the devil, possesed steam close presser, basement vortexes, death gardens etc.

One deals with a business man/accounted who was falsly arreested of mudering his wife and the person she had an affair with, sentence to a life sentence and became corrupted in jail from a corrupted Warden and jail guards and the other waws an innocident angelic healer who was accused of a hindeous crime and deamed to death row to turn out that he was really innocident and was tired of living forever.

Sure would of hate to be John Coffie thats for sure.

Thanks you Yatzee for making us remember Stephen King. i like his writting but not as of late. I'm more of a Tom Clancy fan now.

 

[CrazedRaptor]

I've been waiting for someone to point out the crappy face animation!

 

[MrDead]

Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

Aw. I rebooted and it bugged back in again.
12:09 AM May 28th via Twitterrific

Bugged...in means it got fixed? Damn my southern European ancestry, need to refresh my English.

Don't be silly. The internet doesn't use english. It uses a hodge-podge of slang, acronyms, double negatives, and completely made up shit.

 

[Zudarkness]

MrDead:


Carnagath:


Zudarkness:


Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

Aw. I rebooted and it bugged back in again.
12:09 AM May 28th via Twitterrific


Bugged...in means it got fixed? Damn my southern European ancestry, need to refresh my English.

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LOL Thats too true.. The game does crash at times.

Or you can hunt down and skin every single animal that is there and listen to his comments and wandered what the hell is he talking about.

or land up saving someone from wolves, from a hanging even though they probally deserve it, and horse cart racing.

 

[zeratul123]

Thanks Yatzhee you make my Wensdays.

 

[SW15243]

Incidentally, Alan Wake could be an anagram for 'Weak Anal' if you're desperate to go that route.
Like, a request for anal that was poorly delivered upon.

 

[LightOfDarkness]

Hmmmm, I thought combat would be a little more unnerving when you have to look at a monster for 4 seconds or so before you can even DAMAGE them. I guess the unnerving part IS brought down a bit when you can move backwards almost as fast as they move forwards, although would you have rathered they just not let you move and shoot at the same time like Resident Evil?

Little off topic: Would you revisit Team Fortress 2 after the Engineer update? It has truly changed into a different game, for better or for worse. Although it would most likely be buggy as fuck.

 

[Tinneh]

Not really that good IMO.

Possibly because I really really want to play this game but M$ says no to us PC pricks.

According to the devs, it "works best on a console and a bigger screen."

So?

That doesn't mean I wouldn't play it on PC.

Dummköpfe!

 

[Kojiro ftt]

The biggest problem Yatzhee has with horror games is that he plays them on Normal difficulty. Why the fuck would anyone do that? It's survival horror, but the Normal difficulty setting makes it a third-person shooter with bad illumination.

I find it funny that people still seem to be under the impresion that "the harder a game is the more fun it is" because really that's not entirely true. There's a lot of games that I love playing which you would never ever catch me playing on the harder difficulty settings...

This is all true. But the difference here is Remedy made the Normal so easy that the scary bad men are no longer scary, even when a large group of them jump out at you. I played the game on Hard first, and even that was not terribly difficult, but it did add a bit more anxiety, making it really feel like a thriller. When 6 guys appeared at once I ran like a scared rabbit. If the game is too easy, you become so confident that you can easily wade through anything it throws at you, then that defeats the thriller aspect. I made that mistake with Dead Space. I thought it was a mediocre game because I was never fearful of what might come at me. I should have played that game on Hard. I learned from my mistake, and I played Alan Wake on Hard.

EDIT: The key indicator that you should play a game on Hard and skip the Normal is when there is no Easy difficulty, and especially if there is a "Harder than Hard" difficulty, such as "Nightmare".

There are exceptions, of course. Tenchu Z comes to mind; it had Easy/Normal/Hard, but still needed to play on Hard because Normal was like sending Rambo in to destroy a den of kittens. Devil May Cry is an exception in the other direction: Hard is actually Hard.