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Picked this up along with RDR - haven't had a chance to try that yet, but I'm a little over an hour into Alan Wake.

Their outdoor atmospheres are pretty damn good. It's a little weird getting used to the flashlight cone being your crosshair, but the autoaim is enough to where it hasn't been a problem yet.

This game might be worth it for all the radio shows/TV shows alone.

I am past the first episode. This game oozes atmosphere. Alan and everyone talk a little fast but it's a very high quality game. I am a bit annoyed that certain collectibles are obscure, like can pyramids. I'll be playing through it at least twice but I wanted a taste before going back to RDR.

I'm hoping the game surprises me with the truth of the situation but it's giving too many clues too early.

I'm in the same situation of trying to juggle this and RDR (with RDR so far getting the lion's share of my time).  The only complaint I have so far from what little I've played is that the facial animations in the cutscenes are just as bad as I heard they were.



The opening Stephen King quote pretty much leads be to believe that we won't find out the truth of the situation.  That to explain things would only serve to make it less scary.

This and the horrible compression they use on the pre-rendered cut scenes continuously rip me out of the immersion.  I also kindof wish they had opted to not implement a collectables system for your first playthrough (or normal difficulty).  I find myself scouring every little part of the maps for thermoses and I think its wrecking the pacing of the game.  I can't bring myself to not go after them though.

Overall its been pretty great so far though.

Perhaps, but that may be more insightful about how the game changes upon a second playthrough. The author definitely "knows" what's happening (necessary to keep actions consistent), even if its spurred by mysterious forces, and things are just happening where one of the possible provided explanations is the truth of the situation.

I expect to be surprised though. We'll see! My viewpoint is only slightly cynical.

Finished the first three episodes so far.  Kinda glad I got RDR at the same time as this since I like Alan Wake but it can get a bit repetitive at times.  Still one of the best survival horror games to come out in recent times although it helps that RE5 barely qualified as horror.

Finished the game. Not sure I liked the ending,
Overall it was very enjoyable though, not exactly scary but very atmospheric. Would've been wayyyyy better if the focus had been on exploration and dialog instead of combat, which was ok but not deep enough to carry the game. Still, AW is ranking as number two after ME2 for my favourite games this year.

Oh man, no replies in my absence? Is this game bombing or what? Kind of funny because Alan Wake is the biggest ever Finnish entertainment product, and as such it seems like hot shit to me.

I thought that was Koskenkorva.

I was seeing a lot of stuff that identified it as a Remedy game, from its story to its implementation. But the level design fell apart the later you got into the game. The final episode, Alan hardly says anything, and you go from setpiece to setpiece with little logic between it.

It's... it's actually kinda good and bad. Bad for the game reasons, but good in the sense that you figure as Alan was getting deeper and deeper into the manuscript, he was repeating himself or running out of ideas and was just trying to finish. Like as his desperation at the situation increased, the story kept losing more of its logic. No proofing either in the week he spent writing it.

So it's like... everything in the game is justified on a thematic / artistic level, even if the gameplay suffers for it.

It isn't selling that well. Less than 300k units sold worldwide (http://www.vgchartz.com/game.php?id=13817). The current thought is that it has been swallowed up by Red Dead Redemption's massive launch.

I haven't picked it up yet.

Also, having less than stellar reviews, viable complaints regarding its story, level design, and other factors that affect the word of mouth campaign, and having spent most of their marketing budget on promotional films aimed at an audience that was already going to buy the game anyway.

Part of the issue there is that the reviewers are comparing it to the game that was announced 3 years ago though, instead of actually just reviewing it as the game it is today. It's gotten criticised for linearity, for example, in several reviews I've seen - and yet it's far more "open" than Resi 5 / Uncharted 2, both of which didn't take any knocks for that. But because the original game was supposed to be an open world game, it's somehow okay to bash it for not being. As a gamer, I don't care what someone years ago said - I just want to know how good the game is now.

Really think this is, overall, a superb game that's getting sadly ignored. After ME2 it's my favourite game of the year by a long way.

As a fan of more open environments in games, sometimes linearity bugs me, sometimes not. Recently in Uncharted 2 I felt the linearity was almost suffocating at times - but I haven't felt bothered at all by Alan Wake's linear nature, so far the progression through the gameworld has felt completely natural. Really digging this game so far.

I hated checking all the nooks and crannies in Alan Wake because I assume the dev would hide something there. Lots more wasted space off the beaten path.

This doesn't really sound like the problem lies on the design side to me.

It's actually a common complaint because the manuscript pages make you paranoid that you'll miss something, which leads to obsessing over every crevice of the map.

You should probably play the game and see what all the nooks and crannies look like.

The game failed to keep my attention past the first several episodes/chapters because I never felt like there was any real progress being made.  The day segments felt like filler to get to a night segment, like being drugged during the day to wake up in time for nightfall.  The low point was being tasked with getting to a meeting spot by noon, wasting "the day" there waiting in a cut scene, only to be told the meeting wasn't going to happen there.  Now it's night again.  It felt like a giant waste of time with no forward progress.   I felt the same during a segment running around in the forest only to end up exactly where I began with nothing to show for it.

My time playing Alan Wake could have been spent starting Red Dead Redemption and in hindsight I chose poorly.   This is along the lines of what UnSub mentioned and may also explain its reception.

I just sat down for an evening and hammered out half the game so I can get back to other games.

Got through episode four last night. I like how the story *seems* to be coming together. And the "stage battle" setpiece was great. The game just really hits a sweet spot for me, like it scratches an itch I didn't know I even had.

Yeah, Alan Wake felt like one of those games to me where I wanted to sit down and beat it in a few settings, because I knew if I ever put it down, it would be forever (if ever) until I was able to get back to it, so I was glad I beat it.

Some of the setpieces in that game really are incredible, especially in the later parts of the game. The final 'boss' was a little :uhrr:, but whatever.

I know a lot of people were pupmped for this, but the idea never really appealed to me. FWIW, I really liked both Max Payne 1&2, but I've been slightly curious at best for this and considering it for the super bargain bin.

 

I would like to state for the record that as a matter of national pride I have decided to get all the achievements in Alan Wake.

I think the only difficult thing is the collectibles; the rest of the achievements seem reasonable.

Indeed, we Finns like to set the bar comfortably low.

Does the Finnish version contain the Verizon TV Ad?  :why_so_serious:

I'd like to think the product placement was a cunning, underhanded commentary on the silliness of product placement in certain games.

I think you're giving them too much credit.  :awesome_for_real:

That's funny, without reading this thread I was going to come in and post that I lost interest in the game due to all the product placement I'd heard about.

Especially in a game that is supposed to be about immersion and atmosphere a wall-breaking money grab is a real turn-off.

I don't know, I haven't seen it. I think I missed only one tv show on my first playthrough, so the odds are that it's not there.

Oh crap, there's a bar?

I asked because apparently there's a related achievement - "Boob Tube"

Just played through half of this.

It's memorable just because when you leave your agent in the cabin, if you turn off the lights, he says, "I might be eaten by a grue."

That made it worthwhile for me right there.

The Finnish version has it too, can't remember where exactly it was though.

That ad was so badly placed too - you are in the Clinic, trying to escape the Dark Presence chasing you and oh let's stop and watch an ad from Verizon and Mustang.

Arise!

Picked up Alan Wake out of the bargain bin. Finished the first game on Normal and Nightmare and now onto the DLC episodes.

 - It strikes me as an attempted remake of Silent Hill and / or a narrative written by putting a lot of mainstream horror cliches together and hitting frappe.

 - Alan's voiceover is just irritating after a while. It doesn't help that the vast majority of his manuscript pages come across as more new James Patterson than old school Stephen King.

 - The previous writer, Thomas Zane, is a lot more interesting and his manuscript page is the only one that stuck with me as being at home in a decent horror novel.

 - It's only survival horror on Nightmare; there are too many resources scattered about when you are playing Normal for it to feel that "should I run or fight?" aspect of a good survival horror title.

 - Using light to fight the darkness is a good mechanic, but it would have been nice for there to have been a view more variations on the theme.

I think I'll aim to complete the game 100% (including DLC) more from the point of view in seeing how it ends than actually loving the game.

Isn't the game essentially unfinished? With an expectation that you'd buy the DLC to complete the story? And then due to stellar sales(!) all of that DLC never materialised?

Two DLC episodes - The Signal and The Writer - were released. I haven't played through them fully yet.

An extension of sorts - Alan Wake's American Nightmare - is coming out on XBLA. Apparently it is going to use the episodic approach that made no sense in the original game, but will here since it will come out episode by episode. American Nightmare sees Wake up against what look to be vampires and his evil alter ego Mr Scratch.

UPDATE: Okay, finished the DLC. In short: