Review: Alan Wake on Xbox 360

Alan Wake is a new psychological thriller from Remedy, the people who made Max Payne. The game follows the story of fiction writer Alan Wake who goes on vacation to Bright Falls with his wife Alice in the hopes of finding some peace and quiet. He finds everything but that after Alice is abducted, he loses a week of memory, and he is hunted by a dark presence.
The story is a big part of Alan Wake, as you move on through the game you realize that pieces of a manuscript called “Departure” are all over Bright Falls. This manuscript was supposedly written by Wake but he doesn’t remember it. To keep spoilers to a minimum I won’t go any further into the story itself but it is a bit of a mind bender at times and slightly confusing especially towards the climax and end.
The gameplay is classic over the shoulder third person but with a twist. The enemies you encounter are called the “taken” and they are villagers that the dark force has possessed. They are protected by a layer of darkness that makes them impervious to damage. In order to do damage to the taken you will have to peel off the darkness with your flashlight, flares, or flash bang grenades. Once the darkness is gone conventional weapons like pistols, shotguns, and hunting rifles will dispatch the enemies. You will need to put more batteries in the flashlight periodically since focusing the flashlight drains the batteries quickly, and focusing the light is the only quick way to deplete the darkness.
Poltergeists will also possess inanimate objects and hurl them at you so you need to constantly be running, dodging, and destroying possessed objects. There is also a tornado of the dark presence that chases you throughout the game. These chase scenes are always very intense and get your blood pumping.
The game is full of great action and fantastic cinematic experiences. There are several supporting characters like Barry, Wake’s publicist, and the sheriff who add to overall experience with witty dialogue and realistic portrayals of ordinary people in an extraordinary circumstance. Wake himself is an interesting character because he doesn’t start the game as the traditional “super soldier” of most action games. He is a writer who is forced to adapt to his situation to try and save his wife and keep himself alive.
The graphics are fantastic, both cut scenes and in-game sequences are truly impressive. The gameplay mechanic is pretty smooth but dodging attacks can get a little weird at times, the run button and the dodge button are the same so Alan will kind of do whatever he wants to.
The content is episodic with six episodes to the game; a seventh and eighth are planned and the seventh will be free with the code that came with the game. After each episode there is an intermission with a song and then a recap that starts with “previously on Alan Wake.” This makes it feel like you are watching a TV series and it is done very well.
Overall Alan Wake is a fantastic new IP that I hope to see a lot more of. The creative story, well written characters, and awesome graphics serve to add to a solid core of great action gaming.
Pros
-Awesome graphics
-Creative story
-Fun gameplay
Cons
-Running and dodging can get a little mixed up
-The games difficulty can spike a bit at times
10/10

Coming Soon: Game Reviews and E3 2010

So, I've been a little absent the last couple of months while I was finishing school but I'm ready to get back into the groove of things. I have played several games that I am looking forward to reviewing including Alan Wake and Splinter Cell: Conviction.
June 14th marks the start of E3 2010 and I'll be sure to cover the press conferences and any other media that comes from the show floor just like last year. So stay tuned

Memory in Video Games

I recently rediscovered my Playstation 2 after coming home from school and after playing through Tony Hawk 4 for about five hours I realized that I needed to find the memory card to pull up my old game saves. This got me thinking about how we have become so disconnected from external memory cards in just one generation of systems. I thought it would be an interesting topic to take a look at the history of memory in games and to look forward into what may be down the road.

When games started in arcades the only real reason for memory was to record maybe the top ten scores on a particular machine. The arcade games were meant to kill you quickly so you had to keep putting quarters in the machine and because the experience was quick, story was not a big part of the game. This changed when RPG’s began to make their leap to video game consoles. These RPG’s (like Zelda) needed memory so the player could complete the game without sitting at the TV for hours and hours. The game itself held some memory but it was mostly seen as a thing that was only needed for those types of games.

Before external memory cards were introduced the password system was implemented in many games to allow a gamer to pick up where he left off. Usually at key points in the game the gamer would be given a code that they could write down and then enter when they restarted the game so they could pick up where they left off. The passwords were hit and miss; some were too long and complex (like using upper and lower case letters as well as numbers) and some were so spread out that it was easy to forget to jot down the password when it came up.

Eventually games began to become more involved with storytelling and it was necessary for there to be sufficient room to store the data. Passwords weren’t cutting it and something new was needed. Around the generation of PS 1 and N64, memory cards were a must have for most games. The memory allowed for more features like a franchise mode in a sports game, longer and harder challenges in action games, and much more. The cards had to be purchased separately so it was another strain on the wallets of gamers. The cards usually held a good amount of memory so you only needed a couple to cover an average size game library. The N64’s memory card plugged into the back of the controller, which stopped you from being able to put in a rumble pack which kind of stunk. The Playstation 2’s card plugged into the system itself, which was an improvement.

But at the same time that the PS2 was using cards Microsoft’s Xbox had a significant amount of memory built into the console itself so the need for cards went away. When the Xbox 360 came out in 2005 and then the PS3 in 2006, the idea of a hard drive with gigabytes of memory was second nature to gamers. Now gamers could save profiles, videos, and other features. This corresponded well with the push to make game consoles more of a “media center” and not just for gaming.

Now, the higher end hard drives have upwards of 120 GB of memory and can store a ton of information. But game developers are pushing to add to digital distribution with full length games. (The Xbox has about 20 titles that can be downloaded and saved to the hard drive) This will cut costs and if games eventually become a solely digital thing, the used game market will disappear however, before Gamestop has to worry about being out of business, memory on consoles needs to skyrocket. Each game takes up several GB and that is the smaller 8-10 hour experiences, not the massive 100+ hours of a game like Fallout 3. So, until hard drives hit the terabytes, I think it is safe to assume that our game libraries will not become just digital space. We will still have discs, boxes, and manuals.

Memory has always been a part of gaming in one way or another and now with hard drives built into systems it is easier to hold all kinds of information without remembering passwords or switching out memory cards.