Some of you might remember how I got totally pissed off when Remedy totally
sold out to Microsoft, and then Microsoft decided that Remedy's new game
would be published for the Xbox360 only (which I didn't own) as some kind
of marketing ploy. Then the only logical reaction I had to this stupid
marketing ploy was to fall for it, and I just went and bought an Xbox360.
So you could say that I bought the console just to play Alan Wake. (Well,
not really, but it's true that this situation was the final straw that
made me do it.)

  So, is the game any good, or was all this just a huge waste of money?

  Graphically the game is superb. I especially like how everything, and
I mean *everything*, casts dynamic shadows, which works especially well
in this type of game both to increase visual quality and to enhance the
overall mood (lighting is quite an essential element of the gameplay and
story). Sometimes I just play around with a flashlight just to see the
dynamic shadows of the scenery move around. The graphics engine feels
also otherwise quite polished, as I have yet to see any graphical glitches
anywhere (sometimes in some games you will see some erroneous pixels here
and there, at the edges of polygons or shadows, random pixels due to
coincident surfaces, etc, but not here). It also helps that the game seems
to use antialiasing, so it diminishes any annoying aliasing artifacts which
may happen in small details.

  That's not the only thing that feels polished. After having played several
games where the controls feel unpolished and a bit hard to use, this game
feels a lot better in this matter. One would think that getting the movement
and camera controls to work properly with the thumbsticks would be a trivial
thing to do, but deducing from many games where they suck, it's probably not
so.

  The story is very strong. In fact, the game is extremely story-oriented.
The game has been sometimes criticized for being very linear, but I suppose
that with such a heavy emphasis on story-telling it's understandable.

  Overall, not a bad game. I have definitely played much, much worse games.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 29/09/2010 02:54 PM, Warp wrote:

>    The story is very strong. In fact, the game is extremely story-oriented.
> The game has been sometimes criticized for being very linear, but I suppose
> that with such a heavy emphasis on story-telling it's understandable.

I remember when I first played Psychonauts, I was absolutely stunned by 
how fantastic the story and acting are. Which made me realise something: 
most games have abysmal story content.

Think about it. What's the story behind Quake II? Well, uh, actually it 
doesn't matter. Just shoot anything that moves! What's the story behind 
HL1? Well, HL1 manages to add a little bit more drama, but it's still 
basically "get out alive, shoot anything that attacks you".

Even CoD4 is still about being teleported from place to place so you can 
shoot things. The shooting becomes a bit more complicated, and you have 
to actually *listen* to the various NPCs if you want to survive, but 
basically there's still not much of a story there.

Now consider Psychonauts. From the very beginning where I watched the 
intro sequence, I was impressed. The graphics (both the cut scenes and 
the game itself) are pretty poor. But the story is compelling. This is 
almost feature-film stuff. (!) And compared to this, suddenly you 
realise just how weak the story behind most games is.

Think about it: When you complete HL1, what do you know now that you 
didn't already know by the time we got to Unforeseen Consequences? Er, yeah.

By the time you complete Psychonauts, you've been on a complex voyage of 
discovery, and if you've been paying attention to your surroundings, 
you've met all kinds of interesting people, travelled to strange and 
interesting places, and found out quite a large amount of backstory to 
the whole game. (Backstory that actually affects the game itself...)

The only other game I've seen that really compares is Gunman. It's a HL1 
mod. Kinda cowboys in outer space theme. Technology is unimpressive. 
Story is comparatively good. But it still can't touch Psychonauts.

Pity they don't make games like that any more...

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Invisible wrote:
> Pity they don't make games like that any more...

I thought bioshock had a pretty interesting backstory. It's still a shooter, 
so it's not going to have a whole *bunch* of story, but the story is told in 
terms of you investigating and picking up optional pieces. There's actually 
some deduction to it. The best way, I think, to put a story in is to tell it 
in terms of finding diaries or conversations or something like that, rather 
than trying to force the player into something. But hearing some of the 
descriptions, along with thinking about what's going on, actually lets you 
figure out by deduction a fair number of the surprises before they're 
revealed, which is a lot of fun.

Each of the Thief stories was basically a mystery. Indeed, several of the 
levels were basically "break into place X and find out Y."  The games had 
most excellent stories that were very fulfilling. (Well, I haven't quite 
finished the third, as it's relatively poor compared to the other two, but 
it's certainly a mysterious story that progresses the plot well.)

Myst and Riven and such, of course, were story driven.

There's a game called "The Longest Journey" which is essentially an 
adventure game that's actually just an interactive story. There are very few 
puzzles of note, hundreds of lines of optional dialog giving you backstory 
of irrelevant characters, and it's so linear that it's painful. (For 
example, at one point you crawl out of the sewers into the mall. There's a 
fancy clothing store and a fancy restaurant you're supposed to get thru. You 
think "I better get new clothes."  Character says "That clothing line is 
expensive. I should save my money."  So you try to go into the restaurant, 
they won't let you because you're a mess, character says "I should go next 
door and buy nice clothes!"  Duh.  That said, there was some good humor in 
there, worth playing thru if you don't mind the fact that it's closer to 
watching a movie than an adventure game.)

HL could have had a great story just by putting around notes from the G-Man, 
or passing conversations with scientists about what's going on, etc. It's 
not hard to do if you take the resources to add it in.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Quoth the raven:
        Need S'Mores!

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> Myst and Riven and such, of course, were story driven.

Backstory driven, maybe. A few things happen in Riven, but almost 
literally nothing *happens* in Myst until the end. I'd say that these 
games were much more character driven than story driven.

  - Slime

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Slime wrote:
>  > Myst and Riven and such, of course, were story driven.
> 
> Backstory driven,

Fair enough. I wasn't really distinguishing the two, since (as in bioshock) 
half the fun is figuring out the backstory.

Some of the later games have more of an active story to them.

Of course, in Thief, the story is told entirely in inter-level cutscenes, 
too, since you're completely free to go anywhere and do anything in each 
level (very sandboxy). So I don't know how much that counts either.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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