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Thread: Alan Wake- Xbox 360 Preview

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    Default Alan Wake- Xbox 360 Preview

    Alan Wake: Five Biggest Surprises
    After years of waiting, it's almost here. So what blew us away?
    by Patrick Kolan, IGN

    July 5, 2009 - It's hard to believe that it's been five years since Alan Wake was first conceived by developer Remedy – but here we are. For the first couple of years, there was very little to go on – just a handful of screenshots, very vague environmental video to show off some early tech demos, and a story summary that sounded very un-gamer-centric. Writers? On holidays? Darkness? Forests? Where was the structure? How would this all come together?

    Years later, we finally have concrete answers – and now that we've seen a fair bit of the game, its nuances and concepts are finally coming into focus. By the gods, it looks great – that's the first thing you'll notice. But delving deeper into the experience, Alan Wake is going to shake things up for the thriller/horror genre. These are the five biggest surprises – the things that knocked our striped socks off – about Alan Wake.

    The Structure

    It might seem like a strange point to be impressed with – and it's not the first game to do it, but Alan Wake's structure is very interesting. The demo, for instance, actually begins with a quick video reel in the form of a 'last time on Alan Wake' montage. The game takes cues from serial drama television, reinforcing how critical it's going to be to keep track of the characters, their motivations and your decisions as the player.

    After the recap, an 'episode' kicks off. Again, just like a TV show, Alan Wake's stages appear to be hemmed into tightly-woven narratives. This means that, while you're not going to see much in the way of sandboxy freedom, you're going to get a cohesive storytelling experience, where the action really ramps up to the conclusion of that episode. What's more, these episodes will also be replayable, which is perfect for those who want to try to do a little experimentation along the way.

    In the example of the episode we saw, you start off with some narration; from there, you're introduced to your literary agent, Barry Wheeler, and his neuroses and allergies. Things begin to get strange as you leave the relative safety of your cabin and press into the wilderness. This is where the next cool point comes into play.



    Flares and Lights

    The humble flare. It saves lives – and holy moley it looks cool. In Alan Wake, fending off the darkness becomes critical; the quaint mountain town slowly seeps into night, and in the darkness, bad things come to play. When Alan triggered a handheld flare for the first time, we reeled back. With the 5.1 channel surround sound bellowing, the flare crackled to life. On screen, everything around you within ten yards is lit up in brilliant and menacing red as the flare gushes screen-filling plumes of smoke – thick and persistent in the air. It might seem silly or trite, but this is the best looking in-game flare we've ever seen – and it's not just detail – it's a gameplay tool, which is key.

    You see, as you wander towards your goal, humanoid monsters begin to trundle out of the darkness – in towards Alan. If you equip the flare, the bright light of the flare causes them to sizzle like vampires in sunlight. They spark and crackle, and after a little bit of exposure to this intense light, it makes them far more vulnerable to your gunfire.

    The lighting in Alan Wake is incredibly evocative. By using your flashlight as a weapon, it suddenly becomes a very important resource. Without your flashlight, you could soon find yourself overwhelmed by the forces of darkness – be it monsters or even possessed tractors and inanimate objects. However, all it takes is a quick burst of direct light to halt them in their path. Did we also mention this stuff looks utterly amazing?



    Visual Technology

    In a gaming landscape where most titles look impressive these days, it's getting trickier and trickier to impress cynics like us. However, Remedy has really done some amazing things with the proprietary technology in its engine.

    You can see the hallmarks of quality design all throughout Alan Wake's world beginning with Alan and the other main characters themselves. The facial animation, lip-synching, and the combination of careful key-frame animation and motion-capture, combine to create some stunning sequences in the game. During moments of action, watching Alan, who's no action hero, stumble slightly as he lunges out of the way of a flock of demonic birds, looks wholly convincing; other, less overt things like dialogue exchanges between Alan and Barry show subtlety.

    As we mentioned above, light and dark play critical roles in the experience. The engine handles all kinds of effects with panache. Every major object in the environment, including Alan and his clothing, is self-shadowing – meaning that light sources in the game cast massive and frightening shadows over surfaces all over the place. It's real horror-show stuff; the kind of detail that really builds atmosphere.

    On a grander level, there's a key moment in the game where a certain building suddenly gets torn very violently apart – and you will be floored by the dynamic damage, impressive physics and brilliant smoke and particle effects at play.



    Scale and Depth

    The other half of the technology card has to do with the seamless experience. There are no load sequences once an episode begins; it's just a series of events that you must deal with from start to finish. After pressing through the forest, in and out of cabins, long and winding paths, into a cable car and over a gully, you end up in an SUV, cranking the accelerator along a cliff-side road overlooking the ocean before ending up at your destination, face to face with a gigantic tornado. All of this – from the get-go, is seamless and enormous – a fair use of the word 'epic' if there ever was one.

    That's Alan Wake on a macro-level. On a smaller scale, there are a few details you'll really appreciate if you stumble across them; back at the start of the demo, if you turn off the light as you leave the cabin, you'll end up leaving Barry in the dark – and he's not too happy about this, so naturally he'll comment on what you just did. Hopefully the game is littered with little moments of normalcy just like this, because this is the kind of stuff that really adds extra flavour to the experience.

    The Quality

    Above all the other points we were impressed with, the amazing fact is that Alan Wake appears to a cohesive, compelling experience. You'd have your doubt, after five years in development and a lot of reworking of technology and themes, that Remedy would be able to keep this beast on a leash, but Alan Wake is under control.

    We won't know for sure until we've actually sat down with the game, but the controls and movement looks logical, the action is intense, the atmosphere foreboding and the direction and acting are top-tier. By drawing on classic design motifs from sources as varied as Sleepy Hollow, Stephen King and classic American gothic settings, the game appears to have sidestepped the Silent Hill or Resident Evil-clone pratfalls for a tighter, more original experience.

    We're confident that Alan Wake is going to deliver something that will surprise you in the same way it did for us, so let's hope Remedy can land this plane on schedule and with minimal bumps and shakes.



    Article-http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/100/1001162p1.html
    For you Nikka, lol

    This reminds me a bit of Alone in the Dark, which was a complete trainwreck of gaming disaster. I think it can implement these things much better than AitD did, and hopefully where it failed AW will succeed.
    Last edited by Shazam!; 07-07-2009 at 09:28 AM.
    "I may not be a mathematician, but I can count to a million." - Shannon Sharpe

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    The thing that is going to disappoint me the most is that this game was promised for the PC, and I'm willing to bet that we won't see it released for the PC.

    I am excited about this game if it doesn't become vaporware.
    I got mind control while I'm here
    You goin' hate me when I'm gone
    Ain't no blood clot and no fear
    I got hope inside of my bones

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    Available soon for PC and Xbox 360.

    I read this article and I knew how much you liked the game, I posted it here.
    "I may not be a mathematician, but I can count to a million." - Shannon Sharpe

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    I am very intrigued about how they are going to work Wake's insomnia into the story and game play.
    I got mind control while I'm here
    You goin' hate me when I'm gone
    Ain't no blood clot and no fear
    I got hope inside of my bones

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    Sorry, Nikka...

    Alan Wake PC delay hinted at by Remedy
    By Tom Magrino, GameSpot.com
    Jul 8, 2009

    Development director for long-in-the-making action adventure states all efforts focused on the 360 edition's spring 2010 release.

    Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake has taken on a quasi-mythical reputation, due as much to the shroud of mystery Microsoft has cloaked the game in as anything its developer has done. With Alan Wake first announced for the Xbox 360 and PC in 2005, Microsoft kept the game largely under lock and key until just last month, when Remedy trotted it out as a centerpiece to the publisher's Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference.

    As part of its E3 showing, Microsoft said that Alan Wake is expected to make its long-anticipated debut in spring 2010. And while the Finnish studio appears to be entering the final stretch with the Xbox 360 edition of the game--relatively speaking, of course--the PC edition may be in for yet more indeterminate lag.

    In a post to Alan Wake's official message boards this week, Remedy development director Markus Maki stated that the studio is completely focused on the Xbox 360 edition of the game, to the apparent detriment of the PC version.

    "I'm a PC gamer at heart (have a Core i7, Radeon 4890, 5.1 audio setup at home) so I do appreciate your concerns," Maki stated. "Unfortunately all I can say at this point is that we're focusing all our efforts on the 360 version and will be making comments in regards to the PC at a later in time."

    For more on Remedy's psychological action adventure, check out GameSpot's impressions of the game from last month's expo here- http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/acti...=1&sid=6211095.

    http://www.gamespot.com/news/6213101...dlines;title;4
    "I may not be a mathematician, but I can count to a million." - Shannon Sharpe

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    I'm very, very intrigued by this game. If it works, I'll for sure purchase it. I'll wait for the reviews for diving into it. As Shazam said, if it's like Alone in the Dark (which the preview insists is far from what will happen), then I'll be disappointed.
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