Board 8 > FINALLY playing Alan Wake to celebrate this Halloween month

(+) Yeah! (+)

(and also because I love Control and really want to play the DLC but it's based on Alan Wake and I want to fully appreciate it)

I've never been a big fan of survival horror as a genre. I love horror movies, shows, etc. but I tend to not really have the nerves to handle things like jump scares in games like I can in movies.

That being said, my all-time favorite game is Bioshock, so there are obviously exceptions, particularly in games where the driving force is the story and characters more than the scares and zombie/possessed/infected/shadows/whatevers shooting.

The other reason I never played Alan Wake is because I've never owned an Xbox. I still don't, and am finally trying to play it on my piece of shit cheapass garbage laptop. It's so bad it literally froze up for a couple minutes while trying to make this topic, hence why I very rarely play PC games.

Wish me luck!

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Good luck!

Great game if a little repetitive at times.

Tag. Happy to see this game getting some love! One of my fave games.

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Good luck, one of my favorite survival horror games ever.

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I'm so thrilled at the amount of spooky content filling the board! Have fun, I like this game a lot.~

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Finished playing this game a lil while back. it is, in a word, lit. It's got Walking Simulator-levels of background lore content, like any Remedy game, but paired with a Twin Peaks-esque narrative, it's so good. And the music, man...absolutely on point as well.

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so first experience playing was kind of a disaster

my worries about my shitty laptop were correct, and somehow the low resolution settings I had the game set on somehow prevented the game from properly progressing? I ended up stuck in the intro dream sequence thing for like an hour, because just after the cabin shakes and the door opens up to leave, the checkpoint narration and the first enemy wouldn't spawn. Gotta say, the cabin shaking thing definitely loses some of it's scare effect once you've watched it 5 times in a row.

Aaaaaanyway after an absurd amount of time fucking around with resolution settings I did finally get the game to play!

Made it through the first chapter, and I'm really digging it so far! A lot more focus on the story and exposition than on the combat, which is perfectly fine by me.

Alan Wake himself is kind of an ass. Like seriously, that waitress is so nice, leave her the fuck alone. Love the ZZ Top lookin dudes listening to Lime in the Coconut.

and ultimately the very concept is what interests me the most; Alan is living a script that he himself apparently wrote, about himself, which is bizarre and creepy and definitely has my attention

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Alan is sort of the lovable jackass, character wise. As the protagonist I'm certain you'll grow to love him despite his obvious shortcomings as a human being. He's a flawed character in that way (much like James Sunderland, for example). The best survival horror leads are always sort of dicks or immoral characters.
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just finished Episode 2, gonna try and post some random thoughts I had while playing, not necessarily in chronological order

-rip stucky
-the music at the end of the episodes is so good it makes me not want to continue with the game
-LOVE the twilight zone knockoff in the torn up cabin
-Barry looks really familiar and I don't know why

-Everything about the death of Rusty was done so well. I think it was finding the "Rusty Dying" manuscript page that really kind hit with my first real "OH SHIT" moment. You find the manuscript page about him dying before actually finding him having been attacked, so as soon as I found the page I just felt my stomach drop. Even the title of the page makes it so you know Rusty doesn't survive this, so when you find Rusty hurt but still alive, and he repeats the same line he said in the manuscript page... man it all just hits hard. And then fighting Rusty makes it worse, but the bizarre recitations of the ranger guidelines during the boss fight? so goddamn creepy

-where do these guys get so many fucking axes for fucks sake
-oh man there's a bathroom stall that's locked despite the others being opened I WONDER IF THERE'S A GUY IN THERE WHO'S GONNA TRY TO JUMPSCARE ME
-I went to the back room of the bathroom and came back out and OH MAN THERE WAS A GUY IN THE LOCKED STALL WHO JUMPED OUT AT ME WOOOOOOAAAAAH
-ok but most of the jumpscares get me pretty hard. I about pissed myself the first time I stepped in a bear trap

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so in general I'm not a crazy fan of the combat. Feels really repetitive so far. Which, to an extent Control was the same way, but that also had superpowers going for it and not just "shine light, shoot, dodge, run away, repeat." It's not a huge knock against the game, because the main appeal is the story and atmosphere, which are both great


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also I'm a big fan of the Stephen King book "The Dark Half," and this is like... exactly this game

The Dark Half was about an author who was unsuccessful under his own name writing dramas, but became very popular writing dark, grizzly thrillers under a pseudonym. When he stopped writing that series, his pseudonym kind of came to life, recreateing murders from the series and terrorizing the author to try and make him continue writing. It even had constant crow haunting! It was especially weird as a book because King wrote it under his own pseudonym Richard Bachman. The inspiration from that book is just EVERYWHERE

oh btw speaking of crows, this feels relevant

http://mercsfilmandtv.pbworks.com/w/page/114909754/The%20Birds

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This whole game is basically Stephen King: The Videogame

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super minor spoiler that you need to know about: do NOT, under any circumstance, skip the end of episode 4 music. It's the most important one in the game!

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also yeah, Alan Wake is like, 80% Twin Peaks, 100% Stephen King, and 20% Max Payne DNA and it's fuckin good that it is. Such a cool setup.

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I feel like they do give you a little more interesting combat pieces later on in the game. There's one particular scene that's so unbelievably cool and fun on the farm. I won't say anything more than that.

The story is absolutely tops and I loved every second of it. I can usually play through most games that become redundant if the story is great.

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If youre a fan of the music then give Poets of the Fall a listen. That's the band.

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I was a fan of the game. It does get a bit repetitive at times, but the music is top notch and the atmosphere really put me on edge.
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Lucavi000 posted...

If youre a fan of the music then give Poets of the Fall a listen. That's the band.

I think you're confused. The band is called the Old Gods of Asgard.

i am joking

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

I think you're confused. The band is called the Old Gods of Asgard.

i am joking

It's the same thing lol :P

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Was playing episode 3 on stream and it was a total disaster

During the police chase, assets just weren't loading in my game. I needed to activate a generator to progress the game, and the generator just... wouldn't spawn. It was a black wire leading up to an empty space in midair. Tried reloading the chase 3 times, and each time it got worse. On the second run assets like a crashed police car didn't show up, and the chase music wouldn't end when I lost the cops. Third run I ended up entirely surrounded by cops who shot me like 50 times at close range for no damage during the run.

anyway Alan is either a deluded narcissist or an idiot for not noticing that Rose was literally a possesed robot

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-24vhIQYqo

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some highlights from the stream tonight





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so I've come to the realization that for whatever reason streaming the game on discord has been causing game-breaking glitches; checkpoints aren't saving, assets aren't loading, cutscenes aren't triggering

might try it on twitch and hope for the best, or might just have to do without.

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I remember this game being glitchy at the best of times. And yeah the combat is the weakest part and the game maybe runs a little too long but it's still good. If streaming is making it significantly worse then just play it by yourself I guess, the atmosphere is what drives the game imo so losing that is pretty bad for it.

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http://www.alanwake.com/tag3

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I'll get more actual thoughts posted in here eventually, but for now

https://imgur.com/YDkKR0d

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https://imgur.com/hPJGI6L

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fuckin love this game

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It's not a lake, it's an ocean

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Time to do the (required) DLC now

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ok various thoughts offhand now that I've finished it

• Loved the story overall. The slow explanation of what happened with Zane really drew me in, and I started to really appreciate Wake more as a character once he had more chance to interact with Sarah and Barry. Episodes 4 and 5 were really strong because of this.
• That's part of what dragged Episode 6 down for me. There are some decent setpieces, but the whole episode was just kind of a slog through mostly familiar-looking locations and enemies. Facing off against the tornado was great though.
• The way the game handled the birds was so cool and creepy, and pretty visually impressive for a 2010 game. Particularly the shadows of the birds that started to appear on the ground as they loomed overhead was probably the best part of the horror atmosphere.
• I don't really have a problem with some in-game ads, but multiple giant Verizon billboards in the final stretch of a horror game kinda took me out of it.

Overall I really enjoyed the game. Combat still wasn't a big draw for me, and car physics were all sorts of wonky, but the story and atmosphere more than make up for it.

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Barry's the GOAT.

Best part of this game is easily the concert. It was just the coolest thing to me and uses the game mechanics perfectly.

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2AwUAr-jPo

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Oh man I fucking loved the concert; definitely one of the biggest highlights of the game

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