MasterMegid (723) on 5/19/2010 4:28 PM · Permalink · Report

I got this game the other day, and spent most of the night playing it. As I have been following this game off and on after it was annouced, I was not sure what to expect.

I am in currently as of this post in Chapter 3. The chapters themselves are longer than I expected. Even more so if you stop to find all the manuscript pages.

Speaking of which, this will likely irrate some gamers. Like in the excellent Condemned. To fully understand the story you have to collect pages from Wake's manuscript. These flesh out some of the people you encounter. And often foreshadow upcoming events.

Like Max Payne, Alan Wake talks....alot. While it may annoy some, I find it helps the player get invested in the story more.

The combat is odd at first. You have to break the "darkness" barriers first than you can kill the shadow people. Once the darkness takes over some one they say some really creepy things, like in Bioshock.

The chapter set up is interesting as well. Why was the new Alone in The Dark, not more like this? Then again, I got that game for free...so I cannot complain to much.

Oddly or interestingly there are a LOT of Max Payne refrences in Alan Wake. And also like Max Payne, there is a TV show, Night Springs, that often parallels Wake's plight.

Forgive my stream of conscious style here. But as I said I got little sleep playing this game.