Above the Sea and Fog But Still Perpetually Obscured.

Well, I finished Alan Wake earlier and I thought it deserved a review!  I did start playing with slightly less than high expectations.  I had heard several mixed views on it and a seemingly unanimous view on every character having fugly faces, but I pressed on.  I also forked out a bit for the collectors edition which contained a heap of stuff: unlock codes, bonus disc, soundtrack and an actual book adding to the story.  Not to mention the packing was made similar to that of a rather large hard-bound novel.  Fitting!

Gameplay:

One of the things that seem to be said about Alan Wake is that controls are finicky and strange.  Rubbish! Once you get a hang of the slightly bouncy camera control, everything is fine.  During the night sequences, the camera control also acts as your torch direction which is also how you aim your various weapons.  Straightforward but it does have a subtle impact on the atmosphere being presented.  (You can only see what your torch sees.)  Basically, you point your torch at a bad guy (they are called the Taken), whittle down their darkness level (there is a much better description in-game) and then fire at will.  Sounds simple but allows for some interesting tactics.  Apart from guns and torches, you can acquire flares, flare guns and flashbangs which all become extremely useful in sticky situations.  If I could count the number of times pulling a flare out prevented me from dying, I would have a very large number.  Overall, the combat is fun, stressful and exciting.

The enemies are quite varied but there are about 4 types that you constantly encounter.  There are sort of boss fights, i.e. when you meet a new kind of enemy or possessed vehicle.  These are great, especially the possessed vehicles, but are usually over within a minute.  The main evil you fight occasionally pulls out some tricks while you are walking around at night, for instance, a giant boat landing directly in front of you.  The enemies do have enough variation but their scariness is amplified when they appear in groups of 5 or more.  It becomes extremely tough and rewarding.  Much more rewarding if, for example, you get control of a searchlight and exterminate a couple of dozen enemies without a problem.  Also, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the fun that you get to have with the possessed combine harvester.  Rather exhilarating albeit over rather quickly.

There are a few driving sequences which are fun.  Nothing really to write home about.  Little bit too bouncy but thankfully there aren’t too many of them and squishing Taken is fun.

There are several extra things you can take part in while progress through the story.  One task, collecting the lost manuscript pages, is actually crucial to the main story but it is entirely optional if you want to collect them all or not.  Some are pretty hard to get and there are a few which you can only get in Nightmare difficulty mode.  You can also watch TV shows and listen to radio chatter.  The TV shows that you can watch, apart from the ones that appear in the story, are from a Twilight Zone-esque serious called ‘Night Springs’.  The first one you see will make you want to see them all!.  There are some funny extras as well.  Collecting 100 coffee Thermoses is hilarious (more so if you know that the Finnish are the highest coffee drinkers in Europe!) There is also knocking down pyramids of cans.  Hilarious!

I should probably mention the day time play.  Pretty much identical except it is all about exploring the town, meeting the residents and learning the history.  Of course no torches nor weapons required!  The people are all well done and the ones you actually interact with are great characters.

"...In a quiet mountain town..."

Story/Presentation:

Ok, the story was amazing! Simple as that. The episode format worked a charm, especially as all episodes ended on cliff-hangers where you find yourself clutching your head, screaming “WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!”  I won’t say much about the story apart from it was pretty damn flawless.  No plot-holes and no overly pointless stuff either.  Although at the end, you are left asking some questions, but I’m sure either the DLC or second game will clear them up.

The TV shows that you can watch are not just animations, Remedy have actually filmed these, with real people (shocking, I know!) and made the shows seem like a poor quality Twilight Zone.  It really adds to the atmosphere and the story.  Plus seeing real people on a small screen in a game helps humanise everything a bit more.  The radio shows are done very well also, but that is more to do with the characters.

The characters that you interact with are incredibly detailed (in personality) and are very human.  One character, Rose, who claims to be Alan Wake’s biggest fan is hilarious and a little bit sad.  Alan’s agent, Barry, is almost comic relief at points but he actually has a slight depth of emotions.  My favourite characters though were the two old rockers that you meet a few times.  I won’t say any more about them.  One character I did have a problem with though was the entirely random FBI agent who was overly clichéd.  He keeps referring to Alan by different author names such as H.P. Lovecraft and James Joyce.  Hilarious a couple of times but then it gets old.

Now something that seems to divide people, cutscenes.  Personally, I love them, no matter what and Alan Wake did not change my mind at all.  There are lots of them and they help break up the game-play and make you focus on the story.  Really useful and they are all extremely well done.  The coolest thing about the cutscenes though is what happens if you quit and comeback in mid-chapter.  A recap of what has happened in the chapter until your exit plays, making it feel like you are really playing a character in a TV show.  Also, really useful if you’ve forgotten a few things.  I did kind of hope that there would be a “next time on Alan Wake” thing but that would have probably ruined the story at times.

I should at least talk about the scariness of the game.  If you don’t mind jumping in your seat a few times or feeling generally uneasy for a few hours of play, it’s great.  Although it’s a pretty emotional story, it just doesn’t quite hit on the same level that Heavy Rain did, but then again Heavy Rain was made to really effect the player emotionally.

"A Quantum Suicide"

Sound/Music:

The sound effects were brilliant and matched everything perfectly.  Well, all except the car sounds.  They just weren’t that great or even that believable.  A very minor flaw in an otherwise perfect sound design.  The audio cues that played when enemies appear were quite chilling and especially hearing the shrill sounds of several hundred crows does send shivers down one’s spine.

The music was incredibly fitting, powerful and emotional.  Petri Alanko’s compositions were magical in places, haunting in others and it builds up the atmosphere tremendously.  No over the top orchestral pieces though, every piece was -almost- minimalistic, which was great for the cutscenes and the atmosphere.

The voice acting was stellar, really.  The voice of Alan was perfect as were the voices of every other character.  Not much else to say there.

Graphics:

The graphics seemed a little bit outdated (maybe beginning of 2009, late 2008) but still in the upper echelon of graphics on the 360.  The colour scheme was great, lots of greys and browns, really added to the atmostphere.  But the most amazing thing with the graphics were the lighting effects.  These were just phenomenal.  The bright enemy deaths, the blinding flares, the lights of the speeding bullets, all just meshed together beautifully.

All the cut scenes were pre-rendered and looked stunning. They too have great lighting effects.  The apparent ‘fugliness’ of faces I think comes from that when the characters talk in cut scenes, their mouths open a little too wide for what would be considered comfortable.  Nothing distracting in the slightest.

Late in the game there are some texture popping issues which are a bit distracting.  There aren’t any real clipping issues or extreme oddities that occur.  Strange as most games have at least one or two really strange issues.

The UI was very minimalist and intuitive.  There are whole screen warnings when you lose health and when get below a threshold. When an enemy appears behind you or you dodge an enemies attack, the game goes into slow-motion for a couple of seconds.  Coming from the people who made bullet-time a workable feature in games, the slow-mo here looks stunning.

The Stunning Lighting Effects In Action!

Overall:

As soon as I’d finished the game and was sitting through the credits (which contains ‘Space Oddity’ playing) I was regretting finshing it so quickly.  Ah well, maybe soon, when the DLC comes out I’ll play it all again!

Score: 9/10

Alan Wake is a 3rd person horror/shooter for Xbox360 made by Finnish developers, Remedy Entertainment. Official site is www.brightfalls.com

Well after a very rocky start with some annoying problems, Darksiders finally proved itself and continued to do so for the next 9 hours.  It turned out to be an awesome experience despite its several technical flaws.
Like most people that have played this, you just can’t help but think of Zelda, especially once you acquire the hookshot abyssal chain and Epona Ruin.  Let’s not forget the one syllable named protagonist, Link War.

Gameplay:
Pretty simple style of play with a few little variations thrown in.  Much of the time you’ll be hitting the X-button as it swings that monster of a sword about but combos and finishers help freshen that up.  Soon into the game, you’ll get a second weapon which helps change the style of play unless you’re like me and barely use anything your sword.  I was hoping that is was going to have multi-button combos (a la Devil May Cry) but you really only combo buttons with themselves or RB.  Little disappointing but it does keep you away from random button mashing and helps you focus on the awesome amount of carnage that War deals out.

There are a few set pieces such as flying a heavenly beast, fighting with one style in a locked arena and shooting with giant guns.  These help bring some more variety into the game but they mostly disappear after the halfway mark.  I personally found that the locked arena battles more of a tutorial or really extra practice on using a technique.  Quite handy for later in game.

What good would an action game be without puzzles? Well, that depends on the puzzles and luckily Darksiders has lots of pretty simple but enjoyable puzzles.  They kick up a notch once you get a hold of Voidwalker, which is basically the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device but with a tiny little difference.  You can have strong portals or weak portals.  I won’t go into much detail but it makes one of the final puzzles very long but very fun.

Story/Presentation:
The story is just awesome. Plain and simple. The story starts with a bang and pretty much the whole way through is intense.  A couple of awesome twists and a wee bit of emotion makes for a very memorable story but I don’t think it would be as memorable if it weren’t for the cutscenes and acting.  Not too many cut-scenes in the game, I personally would have liked a few more minutes worth but it did the job just fine.

Sound/Music:
Ok, these were the stand out points of Darksiders.  The score is incredible and it really annoys me that they have showed no plans to release it.  What do reckon one would need for the soundtrack to apocalypse and its following events? Heavy orchestras? Check!  Large choirs? Check!  Dark-brooding low notes?  Check!  It fits almost perfectly with the game but I wish there was more of it.

The sounds throughout are exactly what you would expect but they didn’t really have much environment processing done to them i.e. large stone hall sounds should have a good chunk of reverb.  I’m assuming this is due to memory/CPU constraints.

The voice-acting is stellar.  War’s voice is deep and a little gruff and not over-the-top like many people would one of the four horsemen sound like.  He actually sounds human.  Well, a rather evil, menacing one at that.  The biggest part of the voice-acting is the voice of the character called “The Watcher”.  He just so happens to be voiced by Mark Hamill.  Just like all of his other voice roles, he is quite amazing.

Graphics:
From a technical point of view, they are pretty excellent if not a little dated, no more than a year though.  Both pre-rendered and in-game cut-scenes look amazing.  The overall visual feel of the game is not quite apocalyptic but close.  The main thing that makes it not so is the weird colour palette they chose.  It’s not that it is weird, it’s that it is rather plain, boring and way too bold.  My initial impression of was that they took the Kingdom Hearts colour pallet and for much of the game, that remained by opinion.  I personally think everything should be have been a little darker, ‘more evil’ and other such apocalyptic shades of colours but I imagine that it was a design point.  It certainly helps it stand out from the other action games on the market.  A minor gripe I had was with the camera which would stay glued to you while you go up and down stairs giving a slight bobbing effect.  Basically, the camera really didn’t enjoy level changes much.

My main gripes with the graphics were the insanely large amount of screen tearing and frequent pauses.  Screen tears occurred roughly every 1 – 2 seconds which at some points got really annoying.  It was basically this much the whole way through the game.  The frequent pauses were very apparent in the early parts of the game and died off later but still occurred.  For the first couple of hours, they were terrible.  Any time an animation would load, everything pause for a very short amount of time but it did get in the way.  After a while, it does go away so I’m attributing this problem the actual Xbox360 itself.  I’ve heard that the PS3 version doesn’t have these issues but don’t take my word for it.

Score:
Overall, it is a most enjoyable game with a few large issues and a few minor ones (like not being able zoom out on the map) but the story and incredibly visceral combat makes up for these 10 fold.

8/10

Well, I’ve had a very mixed experience with this game over my fairly small clocked play time of 4.5 hours.

Initial: Marvellous graphics…until the intro cutscene ends then its WoW characters using the Kingdom Hearts colour palette.  Seriously?

20 minutes: Serious graphic glitches ensue. Pauses for half a second every 3 seconds. Uh-oh. Is it really this bad?

1 hour: Well, the story has picked up quite a bit and the colours are far better now. Not as many over the top bright colours. Bit repetitive gameplay though.

2 hours: HOLY SHIT, epic battles are epic! Keep running out of health way to easily. Story starting to get a little dragged out. This soundtrack is pretty top notch though.

3 hours: DIE GIANT BAT THING, DIE! *maniacal laughter as ripping wings off*

Sometimes, you just have to work at a game to realise that it’s bloody awesome.
I really hope that they release the soundtrack though, its quite amazing.

A couple of days ago, I picked up this game with pretty high expectations.  My last foray into the world of heavily stylised action games was in Devil May Cry 4, which is one of 2 games that I have played through twice.  I was hoping that Bayonetta, directed by the original Devil May Cry director Hideki Kamiya, was going to be just as good or better than Devil May Cry 4. It just so happens that I was in luck.  This truly is an amazing game.

Albeit it a bit short (took me 8 hours on easy), there is plenty of stuff to go back and do. As is typical with this style of game, there is a New Game + mode which gives you a head start on a harder difficulty. In my play-through I missed an awful lot of stuff and got a couple of very dismal scores on some levels, especially the final level.

The gameplay is very similar to that of the Devil May Cry series but I found that unlike all of those games, I actually tried to remember and execute combos instead of rapid button mashing. Sure, button mashing can get you so far but combos just feel so much more rewarding and of course deal far more damage.  The camera positioning is adequate although sometimes you have to press on the right thumbstick to fix the camera several times in a short space of time.

The graphics are quite amazing and for the quality of them, there are very little frame rate glitches or screen tearing and they mainly occur during a boss intro movie.  The overall presentation, the loading screens and the mini-cutscenes are excellent. Just like Bayonetta, there is a lot of red and black. The animations are quite excellent also, especially all the little sexy moves Bayonetta does and they show off the best of the movements until after the credits with an incredibly long dance sequence.

The cutscenes are longer and a bit more in number than other games in this genre and they bring the playtime/cutscene ratio to almost 50/50. Depending on how you view it, this is either a bad or a good thing. For me, a very good thing. Especially as the story requires an awful lot of fleshing out. It’s a pretty excellent story, granted it may have been done several times over.  If cutscenes bother you, you can of course skip most of them, the ones you can’t skip, usually will have a quicktime event.

The music takes a break from the Devil May Cry style and adds a lot of orchestral/choral pieces which are just stellar. Of course, there are the few techno induced tracks but the mainstay of the music and Bayonetta’s theme is a sort of jazzy, upbeat type of music.  The music during the bosses is just brilliant and helps build up the epic feeling of the boss fights.  I uploaded Bayonetta’s theme and you can hear it at the bottom of the post.

Overall, this is an amazing game, I personally prefer it over all the other stuff Hideki Kamiya has done and quite frankly, I want to play through it again and again and again.

9/10

One thing I haven’t touched on because I don’t consider to be part of the review is a bit of a touchy subject. That is, would you consider the character of Bayonetta to be sexist or empowering to women? I’ve seen a few comments around the place stating cases for one or the other.  I personally believe that it sits on the extremely fine line between the two.  But of course, I don’t think that my opinion on this matter counts.

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