Gaming Alan Wake Review

Alan Wake has come a long way since it was announced as a Vista and DirectX 10 exclusive back at the 2005 E3 games show. Indeed ‘a long way’ may be understating things slightly as, five years on from the original unveiling, it's finally been released as an Xbox 360 exclusive...

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/xbox-360/2010/05/30/alan-wake-review/1

 

Hmmm. It a shame it falls a bit flat, but good that it's not quite as flat as everyone was half-expecting. I'll definitely be picking it up at some point, but 10-12 hours isn't all that good for £40.

 

I'll be playing the pc version....

Ha, stupid developers.

 

Duke Wake (nearly) Forever.

I wonder if the next game in this vein would have a choose your adventure type of gameplay, where one episode has many next episodes, and so on.

 

Sounds pretty good but I think I'll wait and catch on offer at my £17.99 pricepoint for buying games. That should give me enough time to finish Bioshock 2 and BFBC2.

 

Five years development time weighs heavily on the mind. This is a good time to use the word 'meh'.

A PC release, I would have got it. An Xbox 360 release, it still doesn't make me want to go and buy a 360.

Sorry Remedy, sorry Microsoft. Meh.

 

I loved every minute of it. Brilliant storyline, satisfying combat, decent visuals for the 360 - all in all great game.

 

Expected more my m8 has this and we played through 3 episodes and it's decent but there's little reason to play it again, 8 is a fair score maybe even generous. it's not the game of the year most expected it to be, as. 360 owner it won't make me setup my 360 again ( it's been in a box since forza 3 was finished )

 

First review right Paul? Good job, you'll fit in well here.

I'll certainly be picking this up when the price falls, I love this sort of thing. 8-10 hours is about right for me too, I don't have as much time to play games as I used to.

 

Did you find that this game is "unsuitable for the PC" as the devs said it would be?

 

Thanks Bauul, and yes, it is my first review. Pretty scary stuff.

I should be introducing myself properly next week with a blog post or something.

bob - honestly I cant see why it wouldn't work on a PC. I'd have actually preferred it on the PC as I've got a preference for using a mouse and keyboard as opposed to a 360 controller.

Maybe they thought it would be more cinematic if you were playing it on your TV in your lounge as opposed to on your PC. Seems like a pretty silly reason to cut out an extra revenue stream though. Unfortunately I think the fear of piracy may have been more of a contributing factor. If you spend five years developing a game you need to be damn sure you make a return on it I guess.

 

Cheers Material. Piracy is of course a major concern, but I'm pretty sceptical, and would say that Microsoft wanted a 360 exclusive to match Sonys. Afterall, Xbox exclusive sounds better than Microsoft exclusive!

 

From my play through I couldn't see any reason at all it wouldn't be perfectly suitable for the PC.

 

True, I'm sure this was a factor too. It'd be interesting to see how the financials of exclusives work out - will any extra revenue that Alan Wake generates from being an Xbox exclusive offset lost revenue from not releasing on the PC & PS3?

 

I will give it a try when it comes out on the PC, looks ok

 

A lot of people, myself included, have the HDTV as a second monitor for games that work well with the xbox360 pad such as racing games or things like Just Cause/GTA. It's nice when developers make full use of the pad on PC and make the onscreen button prompts the actual xbox buttons.

 

At £4 an hour to own it really isn't worth it, especially if, like me, you don't have a 360. I think anyone interested in this would be much better off renting it for a weekend.

 

Hopefully not. I know it's not a very nice thing to say, by I don't like it when they ditch my favourite gaming platform.

 

polynesian beef cactus

 

Makes you wonder just how far down the line in terms of development the 'DX10 exclusive' version on the PC was and how much it resembles the finished product on 360.