SC On Stonekeep: Bones of the Ancestors (Wiiware)

More like Defiling the Ancestors.

Even considering that this is a Wiiware game, it should not be inferior in almost every way to its predecessor.  I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that a game released in 2012 be better in some way to the game it's based off which was released about 17 years ago.

17 years!  And not only did you not improve anything, you made it WORSE!  Everything--controls, gameplay, graphics (debatable), story, design, the list goes on--is a step down.  No wonder this shit only costs 500 Wii Points; it's a goddamn trap!

 I am fully aware of how this sounds so far.

I'm not just pissed, I'm fanboy pissed.  

I played the original Stonekeep when I was a kid, a game that came in a big tombstone-shaped box and had what were, at the time, pretty solid FMVs (albeit with really obvious green screens), but the dungeon-crawling, atmosphere, and allies fought with along the way progressed the story and game well enough to become a game that's memorable to a decent amount of people nearly two decades after its release.

I would know.  I saw one of their rage-filled, 1-out-of-10 reviews as I was looking up images for this blog post.

Then this game came along from the same publisher (Interplay) as well as Alpine Studios, who proudly boast on their website that they're working on new PS2 and GameCube titles and list their newest release as a Windows 98-compatible Bible trivia game, and licensed by Bear Naked Productions Games, the same people who brought you Dance Sensation for the Wii.

This is it.  The lowest of low standards.  Trying to visit the sites for Alpine or BNP brings up webpages I swear I made on Geocities in the late-90s.

 I really liked wolves.  And using every color possible.

But wait, we haven't gotten to the game yet!  For those who need a refresher, this is the intro to the original Stonekeep:

Oh, that robed figure that saved the protagonist?

Never explained who that is.

Compare that to the WiiWare game's ungodly epic... uh... wall of text.  This is word-for-word what it said:

You have entered Stonekeep, the home of your ancestors.  You are now in the dungeons.

An evil force has entered the keep and driven out most of the former residents.

Only a true descendent of the clans can solve the mystery of Stonekeep and give the restless souls of the dead peace at last.

To survive your journey you must pick an ally to guide your path.

Choose a door to pick your ally and begin your quest.

Everybody got that?  Now here's what's wrong with this. 

#1. What dungeon?  The only thing close to a dungeon in Stonekeep from the first game was the sewer.  Unless you're talking about the various places BELOW Stonekeep, which, you know, aren't Stonekeep. 

#2.  How did we get to the dungeon?  Did we just waltz through the other parts of Stonekeep before this point?

#3. What evil force?  Is it the Shadow King from the first game Khull Khuum? (Spoiler: ha, no)

#4. "Driven out most of the former residents?"  That sounds about as threatening as a cranky 70-year old landlord.  This evil force can't get rid of and/or kill everyone/anyone?

#5. What clans? 

#6.  Souls of the dead?  I thought the resident were "driven out."  This becomes even more unclear later on.

#7. Pick an ally?  Why just one?  In the original Stonekeep up to three other people could tag along.  This becomes even more appalling later on.

#8. This plot is go generic and nondescript that I can summarize it in two sentences without leaving out any major details: Evil is attacking your home.  Find a random person to help you do something about it.

So now it's time to actually play the game and, instead of taking the role of a particular character like Drake in the original, Bones of the Ancestors offers two generic-looking character models with their only significant differences being name and gender.  One is named Marcus, the other is named Sheena.  Which one do you think I picked?

What were you expecting, a Gears of War reference?

Now the journey begins with standing in a room with three doors, each leading to a different ally.  Before I could even do this, though, I was instantly baffled by the design of the game itself.  For one, the interface is horrible.  The bottom quarter of the screen is blocked by a massive gray slab with a huge compass wedged in the middle, which is useless thanks to the map function.  On either side are a red and blue canteen-like thing which are supposed to display health and mana.  Had I not accidentally looked down by tilting the Wiimote and nunchuk forward (...) I wouldn't have known my character had a sword in her hand.

Even worse were the controls.  It's strange to say this about a game released so many years after the Wii launched, but this is easily the worst-controlling Wii game I've ever played (yes, worse than Escape from Bug Island), largely because it's awful on both possible fronts.  Not only is the responsiveness of the controls sluggish or at times nonexistent, but the control scheme itself is like something thought up by a seven-year old.  Or a bunch of forty-year old men who are trying way too hard to seem edgy.

Want examples?  Oh don't worry, there are plenty of bullets left in this magazine.

 Hold on, this is way too good for this game.

That's better.

The simple act of moving is a chore, with every turn feeling less like a person walking down a hallway and more like driving an 18-wheeler through a slalom course.  Oh, quick turns aren't like that, though.  Quick turns are in fact so quick that there is no animation for them; your character goes from facing one direction to another in a single frame.

But let's say you want to attack something.  Good for you!  You might try doing the obvious thing and swing the Wiimote to absolutely no effect, as well as hitting every button to no avail (except for discovering jumping and the map).  What you have to do is hold A, swing the Wiimote up, then release A while bringing it down, or doing the same thing from side to side.  This causes an attack that's delayed by almost half-a-second and, sometimes, will glitch on the upswing and not complete its animation, resulting in no attack at all and likely getting you hit by whatever is attacking you.

Spells are even worse.  Each spell involves some combination of holding a D-pad button, aiming it up, down, or at the screen, and performing some kind of motion.  Some require aiming at the screen and doing a "rainbow" motion.  Others require aiming at the floor and making a clockwise circle.  Throwing objects require holding B and either slinging the Wiimote, making a lasso, or doing some other movements which register about 60% of the time.

And I'm rambling now so here's a picture to break up the monotony.

Guess why I chose this one?

But what about choosing an ally you say?  Well, you open one of three doors, walk up to them, and teleport to somewhere else entirely, which still looks like the same old generic dark dungeon.  The thing is, you're actually choosing an ally the moment you open a door, so if you can't see the small, crudely-drawn picture on the door showing which ally it is, you're stuck with whichever door you accidentally open first.

Then the game becomes outright insulting to my intelligence:

I know where the A button is, thanks.

After that the ally says you have to strike him/her five times before he/she can strike you once.  After getting hit about eight times I hit five non-consecutive slashes and completed the objective.  Wow, we've got a winner here folks!

I got what is supposed to be a Sharga as an ally.  I say "supposed to be" because it looks like someone took the Shargas from the original game, dressed them up like medieval Christmas elves, and made sure they were constantly stoned out of their minds.

Feels good man.

After apparently teleporting to a new dungeon (a new dungeon that looks remarkably like the last dungeon) my ally was missing.  That's because allies in this game, instead of following you, simply appear in certain areas and never leave them. Usually you'll have an ally, they'll follow you around a room and halfway down a hall, then disappear for awhile.  After entering another room they'll either walk out from around a corner up ahead or simply appear in front of you.  Make no mistake, these allies can die, but the enemies are typically so incompetent or so weak that the ally will mostly be killed by your accidentally hitting him/her/it.

Speaking of, the enemies in SK:BotA (I am not typing out all of that again) are shockingly stupid.  Most of them are skeletons that either have swords, swords and shields, or rocks/spears to throw.  The ones with melee weapons slowly walk up to you and attack at the rate of roughly one sword or axe swing every three seconds, leaving lots of time to attack even with the botchy control scheme.  If one enemy of a group is attacking you, the other one will either attempt to use magic, throw things or, if it's another melee monster, wander around wondering what it's supposed to do.  Hell, even the allies will do the latter at times.

This bad AI can lead to the enemies killing each other without your having to attack, especially in the case of magic users.  If they have a projectile magic attack, just stand so another enemy is in the way and not only will they happily block the spell with their bodies, but the casters will happily cast the spell over and over until their friend dies.

Just trying to stay thematically appropriate.

But not to worry, because if you do take damage there are healing potions and mana potions aplenty all over the map.  You can only carry about ten of each, and the game helpfully reminds you of this every damn time you step over one of them when your inventory is full.  It does the same thing for when you pass by a door you don't have a key for yet, so the game will almost constantly be treating you like this is not only the first game you have ever played, but that it's the first game you have ever played every second you spend playing it.

Oh, and by "inventory" I don't mean "collection of items you can use," I mean "items you have which the game uses and you have no control over."  Health and mana potions are used automatically when the bar/lantern/jug/thing runs out, and keys are used automatically when near the right door.  The player doesn't even have control over things like equipment, as the hammer and sword are used according to different Wiimote motions and magically change in the player's hand when switching. 

As if my intelligence hasn't already been insulted enough, I got one key which unlocked a door leading to a room with nothing but a treasure chest in it.  In the treasure chest was another key.  Did I get a Wiiware title or a bullshit point-and-click Flash game?

Even the act of saving the game is horrendous.  Save points are little circles on the floor that look like teleporters from a Looney Tunes cartoon.  You step on them, the game saves.  It's simple, but that's the problem.  It's actually too simple.  There are no multiple save slots, so you're running only one game at a time.  And if you accidentally hit a save point when you didn't want to, which is incredibly easy to do as they're sometimes in the middle of a narrow hallway, well...

What he said.

Maybe I should clarify a bit: things do technically change in this game.  The levels do technically look different and the enemies aren't technically all the same... technically.  However, they're all so dull, monotonous, and ultimately similar to each other that their appearance is virtually the only difference between all of them.  The second level has brick walls and the same pictures of ponies (what?) showing up, but that's just about the only thing separating it from the first level.  The dwarves look like dwarves and sometimes have different weapons, but they still attack in similar patterns to all the skeletons from earlier.  BotA is simply blandness piled on top of blandness.

But that's not what ultimately drove me over the edge.  No.  Take a look at this quote from Interplay's website about this game from some time ago:

"The new Stonekeep is expected for initial release during the third quarter of 2010 and is planned for electronic distribution through Nintendo's WiiWare™ service"

-Interplay.com news release

This game was delayed for over a year.

Over a year!

OVER!

A!

YEAR!

And not one person in that time said, "Guys?  How about

we fix the, um... everything?"

What in the hell did we--"we" meaning Wii users, Stonekeep fans, Interplay fans, dungeon crawler fans, humanity in general--do to deserve this?  This is the kind of game I wouldn't wish upon those guys in high school that tried (and failed) to stuff me in a garbage can.

And I'm aware that because it's 500 Wii points I could technically do a Five Dollar Gaming on it, but fuck that.  This is the kind of game that needs to be quarantined.

Close enough.

LIVE! Bloody Roar Marathon

Watch live video from SCXCR Does Things on www.twitch.tv

SC On Escape from Bug Island (Wii)

Not a Universal Studios ride.

In my never-ending quest to find a survival-horror Wii game worse than Calling, I now come face-to-face with a rather infamous title.

Ha!  I wish.

Let's get this over with.  Escape from Bug Island is known as Necro-Nesia in Japan.  I'm not sure why they changed the name, but I'm guessing whoever is responsible only watched the first few minutes of the game and said "The island has bugs on it!  The characters must escape from this place- HEY WAIT A MINUTE!"

That's my best guess because Escape from Bug Island, while it has giant bugs, also has flying fish, bear trap-like plants, spiders, giant frogs, and giant gorillas, all of which are most definitely not bugs.  How do you- fuck it, moving on.

The game centers around Michelle, a woman (I'm assuming) who is studying insects and came to this island to find a few rare species that only live there.  She's... over-enthusiastic about it, to the point where I fear she may have the brain of a sugared-up five-year old.

HOLY SHIT A FLY IS THAT A FLY I'VE NEVER

SEEN A FLY LIKE THAT ONE!

Mike is the token tough guy douche bag who totes a shotgun and is supposedly Ray's best friend.  He constantly aims the shotgun at everyone and everything and, at one point, it sounds like it fires mid-dialogue and no one acknowledges it.  He's on the island because... uh...

Not this shit again.

And then there's Ray.  Ray came to the island with his smilie-faced backpack despite his crippling fear of insects, wearing shorts might I add, because he has a crush on Michelle and Mike is a friend of his.  Mike, however, uses his horribly written/translated dialogue to make advances on Michelle right in front of him, to which Ray mopes around and falls asleep.

I want you to guess which of these three characters ends up in the camp alone and we have to play as in this game.  Keep in mind which one has the best and worst reasons to be there, as well as the most and least knowledge of the surroundings and the best and worst physical abilities.

If you said Ray, congratulations!  You get to suffer like I did!

"With limited skills and ability..."

You might think it would go without saying that, since this is a Wii title, the graphics aren't that great.  However, I am going to dwell on this. The visuals are on par with an early Dreamcast title, and even with the flashlight on you'll rarely see more than forty feet in front of Ray.  Turning the flashlight off helps Ray not get noticed by enemies as fast, but it also turns most of the environment into a blurry gray blob.

In fact, before I go any further let's get one thing out of the way: controls.

May or may not be a better control scheme.

Despite having a massive tutorial at the beginning of the game which explains absolutely everything Ray can (sort of) do, the controls are still rather hit and miss.  Movement, while it takes some getting used to, works okay.  However, shaking either the wiimote or the nunchuk too hard (read: slightly) causes Ray to roll left or right.  The motion-sensitive three-hit melee combo is sometimes sketchy about detecting the final attack, and almost always reads one swing as two.

The worst part, however, is trying to do anything in first-person view.  It's set up so that wherever you point the wiimote, Ray looks in that direction, and pointing directly at the TV has him look straight ahead.  The downside of this design choice is that the looking is extremely sensitive and makes using ranged weapons (which must be used in first-person view) unnecessarily difficult, especially since throwing weapons depend on how hard the wiimote is swung.

The one thing I will give the controls credit for is having a left-handed option (despite Ray always holding a weapon in his right hand).  Thanks for realizing not everyone is right-handed.

YOU TURNCOAT MOTHERFUCKER!

 That's assuming you can see what you're doing, which isn't always guaranteed.  There's a flashlight Ray carries which lights up everything, including things that the light isn't pointed at.  When it's off, everything becomes a dark grey amorphous blob about twenty feet in front of Ray.  I understood why they limited the draw distance in games like Silent Hill 1, but this game from the last 2000's not only uses the same trick, but does so worse than those early titles on far less powerful systems?

And the environments aren't detailed or complex enough to warrant this trick, as they consist largely of the same three trees and a few different ferns most of the time.

And speaking of variety, the enemies are varied enough to stay interesting, as the section-by-section progression introduces one or two new enemies at a time, usually as the same over-dramatic music starts, stops abruptly, then starts again.  However, these enemies tend to be named incorrectly.  I'm quite phobic of insects and usually don't bother learning specific names for things, but I can tell the difference between a roach, an earwig, and a centipede, which this game can't.

SCXCR 1, Escape from Bug Island who cares?

Look!  It's a wild Beedrill!

More importantly, they aren't even strong enough to be a threat.  The "centipedes" are understandable because they're smaller, crawl on the ground and can be killed with one whack of a stick.  The giant mantises though?  Just hit them with a stick five times and they'll go down.  Hell, they recoil after every shot so there's no risk of getting hit either.  And this is assuming you didn't use the hunting knife found at the beginning of the game, which kills them even faster.

Giant crickets?  Throw a rock at them.  One rock.  That's all it takes to kill them despite their being much bigger and allegedly tougher than the shoebox-size "vampire" moths, which take two to four rocks to kill.

Spiders?  While they do move at Sonic-esque speeds, they are easily foiled by the wildly-swinging-at-the-ground-until-they-jump-into-the-melee-weapon-face-first strategy.

And even if the enemies do hit Ray, they don't do that much damage and there are enough healing items laying around that dying is almost never an issue.  Whether they're in cabins or boxes or growing at the base of or in the canopies of trees, healing items like mangoes, cans of food, red mushrooms, brown mushrooms, purple mushrooms, and oranges are everywhere.  Playing through on normal I had over a dozen oranges, a few mangoes, four red mushrooms, a brown mushroom, and two cans of food by the time I hit the second "boss" fight, enough to refill my entire health bar about five times.

Oranges 1, Bugs- *dramatic music*

Other characters are introduced either in cutscenes or via journal entries found around the island, though these characters are even less developed than the leads.  Additionally the cutscenes are voiced over, but cut off and tell the rest of the story in text, accompanied by the same 7-second loop used for the in-game menu, for no apparent reason other than to keep the game under budget and/or on schedule for release.

Oh yeah, this was released on Wii launch day in Japan.  How would you have liked this to be your introduction to the system?

Dynamic entry!

The funny thing is, this game has multiple endings.  All involve Ray escaping the island, but I just find it funny that someone thought this game would be worthy of multiple playthroughs to find everything.  This game is Resident Evil-like in terms of unlockable extras; unlimited ammo for weapons, a "samurai" weapon (a sword, not the Samurai Edge), and even game endings are grades up to A and S-rank like in most survival-horror games.  Heaven forbid they try something different.

This could very well be one of the worst games on the Wii I've played so far...

HOWEVER

I'd say that Escape From Bug Island is still better than Calling.  The only reason I say that is because things happen on a more consistent basis. That and the game in general has a tendency to be hilariously bad as opposed to Calling's "watching competitive fishing in real time is more exciting than this" bad.  As such this is now my favorite game to play on streams.

"What is this?!" -Blondeguygamer

Teaser - Bloody Roar Marathon

It's about that time.

No, this won't just be an Arcade Mode marathon.

Adventures with Eyes: Contacts

The following is a self-indulgent log of my attempt to wear contacts.

I never thought I'd wear them, but for the sake of convenience and being able to see when doing things like riding rollercoasters and/or cosplay, I'm giving them a shot.  This is no small feat for me as I A) Have never used eye drops, or put anything in my eye, and B) had a bad experience when I was 4 where I got a cinder stuck in my eye on a train ride, and then C) several years later got gnats stuck in my eye.  Gnats!  And you wonder why I hate bugs so much!

May or may not be a dramatization.

I'm going to try and update this as things do or don't develop.

Friday, October 21st 2:55 pm

-Visit the doctor's office and am given a walkthrough on how to put in the contacts.

-Spend about fifteen minutes trying to get one contact in, and failing.  Secretary/current contact coach tells me to put the contact down and get used to touching my eye with my finger.  Do so after "what the fuck" feeling passes.

-Spend another ten minutes trying to get one contact in, eventually succeeding.  Now my vision is all kinds of screwed up with one eye that can see and another that's still legally blind.

-Try getting the other contact in for about twenty minutes, then discover I was supposed to use my dominant hand (left) to put them in.  Great!

-Secretary leaves the office saying to come out if I get the contact in.  Fifteen minutes later, I still don't have it in.

-Five minutes after she comes back I finally get the other one in.  Now I have to take a contact out and put it back in.  this takes another ten minutes to get it out and five minutes to get it back in.

-Total time in contact training: 1 hour 15 minutes.

Could be worse I guess... 

-Drive home without wearing glasses for the first time.  Put my finger between my eyes to try and adjust the glasses I'm not wearing twice on the way home.

-Make that four times by that evening.

-Need to take out contacts after 5 hours as my eyes aren't used to wearing them yet.  7 the next day, 9 the next, and so on.

-Successfully take out contacts after about eight minutes of trying.  That didn't take as long as I thought it would.

Saturday October 22nd

-Get one contact in after about six tries, but it's folded on my eye and off-center.  Holy shit that hurt.  Eventually get the lens nudged into position and unfolded.

-Attempt to put in other contact and realize it's not on my finger anymore.  Fear for a moment that it dropped down the sink, only to find it sticking to the mirror.  The hell?

No, after you!

-Get the other lens in after a bit.  Total time getting lenses in: about... 15 minutes?  20?  I forgot to check the clock before trying it. Either way I need to keep them in a bit longer than yesterday while my eyes adjust to them.
-Take out both contacts later in the day in under ten minutes.  Only problem is I put both contacts in the same storage thing and don't know which one is the left lens and which is the right.  Considering my eyes are different not just in prescription but in shape and the lenses reflect that, this could end badly.

Sunday October 23

-Call the doctor's office and confirm that putting the lenses in the wrong eyes won't do anything worse than potentially blur long-distance vision a bit.  Hey, I like to be absolutely sure, okay?

Monday October 24

-Don't put the contacts in at all.  Didn't wake up soon enough to put them in and didn't remember to do it after (eventually) getting home.

I'm here to sell you Oops Insurance!

Tuesday October 25

-Forget to time how long it takes to get the contacts in, but get them out in a little over five minutes.  Most of getting them in was me dropping the left contact and trying to find it.  For some reason it takes longer with the left eye than the right.  Cosidering I'm left-handed, that means I'm struggling with what should be the easier eye.

Wednesday October 26

-Decide to wear contacts to classes.  Only takes about five minutes to get them in and, again, the left eye takes longer.  Debating calling mom and asking if it was the left eye I got a cinder stuck in when I was a kid.  The thing is, the contacts don't hurt to put in at all, they just feel a little odd at first.  But when I try to put one in my left eye, it keeps closing almost every time the contact makes... well, contact with it.

Wednesday November 2

Have been wearing contacts on and off lately.  Mostly off.  I can't look at things close up in detail like I can by taking my glasses off.  Considering the amount of cosplay work I've been doing, that discourages wearing contacts.

Thursday November 3

I head to Youmacon today.  Put in my contacts before heading to class/work.  I admit that a big reason I got contacts is so I wouldn't be blind when in cosplay.  I have no shame.

Could be worse, I guess.

It only takes a few minutes to get the contacts in now, and again, the left eye is harder than the right despite my using my left hand to put them in.  How work does?!

Friday November 4 through Sunday November 6

Successfully got contacts in and out the entire time in under five minutes in spite of sleep deprivation.  Now the only bad news is, I have no idea where my regular glasses went.

  Oops.

My Show at NerdPow! 2011

-Wow, I have the stage presence of a sheet of cardboard.
-I screwed up a lot.
-I'm amazed there was any audience at all.
-Can say that I was the only act to perform a jazz song that entire weekend.
-Quote of the Night: "Your puddi scared me."

Unrelated to the video above, apparently someone got one of my CDs and played it for some of the other artists.  As a result, I wound up giving out all but about five of them, amazing considering I brought about fifteen "just in case."

Overall, not a bad weekend.  No idea if I'll do this again, though.

SC On Alan Wake (360)

And that's when the chuds came after me...

You ever have one of those games that you intentionally avoid for a long time so you aren't influenced by what the media and their parrot-like followers say about it when you finally play it?  Welcome to Alan Wake!

The game centers on famous writer Alan Wake, who is suffering from a two-year long case of writer's block.  His wife Alice takes him on vacation to Bright Falls, Maine to try and get him past it only for a strange dark presence to kidnap her when he steps out of the cabin they stay in.  Alan's first attempts to rescue her lead to confusion about where he is and what's going on as the locals don't know what he's talking about.  He also discovers several pages lying around of a manuscript he doesn't remember writing which details events that have happened or will happen as the game progresses, as well as the thoughts and motives of the people around him, indicating that his story is coming to life as he tries to find a way to get himself and his wife out of it.

So to recap, the game is about a writer (red flag) who travels to a small town in Maine (red flag!) and is met with a long-dormant supernatural force (RED FLAG!) that has been ingrained into the town to the point where the locals largely don't realize it's there or write it off as an old wives' tale (RED FLAG!!!) which kidnaps his wife. (RED FUCKING FLAG!!!)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Stephen King: The Video Game!

The only things missing are a cemetery for pets and Tim Curry.

 The bulk of the game is spent running around Bright Falls, usually through the woods, in the dark.  Thankfully there are enough stops either in town or at construction sites/farms/gas stations/other places to break up the potential monotony.  During this time various townspeople warped and possessed by the darkness called Taken attack Alan in ways similar to, but more threatening than the villagers from Resident Evil 4, because even though they have similar weapons like axes, sickles, sledgehammers and chainsaws:

1. Taken exercise group tactics more effectively.  Attacking a couple Taken in front of Alan only to get blindsided by another one is fairly common.
2. Taken are much, much faster.  If Alan tries to run away, not only will he get tired before getting away from them, they can chase him down at a full sprint anyway.  Some of the smaller ones can even turn into Predator-like blurs and dart around the screen almost at random.

 WOOHOO!

 
These enemies are complimented by several poltergeist items, which hover and fling themselves at Alan and range in size from trash cans to bulldozers, to several reoccurring murders of crows (Hitchcock much?).  When all of this is combined with the swirling darkness that occasionally envelopes the town at night, making it difficult to do anything but hear approaching Taken, it can be a little unnerving at times to play.

There is however one thing far more frightening than the enemies Alan faces in the game:

His wife's smile.

Why didn't Alan write a story about his wife's creepy smile?

I have to think that this was some kind of accident, or different people directed the art for every scene she was in, because Alice smiles way too goddamn much.  In fact, it was only in searching for the image above that I was able to remember a time I didn't see her smile.

But there's another level of creepy on top of that thanks to the facial animations.  Simply put, they are sporadically Muppet-like and will go out of sync at random.  That and when people smile while talking in this game, 95% of the time their upper lip doesn't move.  This becomes unintentionally creepy to watch, and unintentionally funny when Alan is screaming something as I hear him yell "ALIIIIIICE" but it looks like he's saying "HAW HAAAAAW!"

This is the picture I got when searching "Alan Wake HAW HAW."  I won't question it.

The idea is to run from light source to light source (usually generator-powered lamps) during the night, fighting through areas blanketed in darkness to recover Alan's manuscript and find a way to end the story so that he and his wife escape.  Despite the usually wooded environment, I almost never got lost because of the "radar" in the upper left.  Taken and other enemies are defeated by being doused in light to penetrate the shadows around them, then taking them out with one of a limited amount of guns: a revolver, shotgun, hunting rifle or flare gun, as well as flares and flash bangs.

Hey, I'm not complaining about the weapon variety.  Rocket launchers are pulse rifles wouldn't exactly fit.

Besides, the light ends up being more important most of the time.  Alan gets several different flashlights from standard store-bought ones to heavy-duty lanterns, all of which can have their light focused on Taken to not only drain their shadows faster but also stun and/or slow them down, allowing him to bolt for the next checkpoint/light source and save ammo.  This drains the battery pretty fast, but there are batteries (at least on Normal) laying everywhere from the cafe at the beginning of the game to the blatant product placement down the road.  As a result there's not much of a challenge unless you go to the highest difficulty.

Verizon: We never stop working for you, even when your town is being consumed by evil.

 Combat is generally fast-paced and requires the player to be able to dodge attacks and constantly be aware of the surrounding area, as Taken will climb down from rooftops or appear from the shadows. This, however, is usually preceded by an orchestra sting and a slow-motion shot of the enemy approaching Alan, usually giving just enough time to spin around, hit it with the light and put it down.

Good thing they do this, too, otherwise I'd get really tired of being ninja'd every two minutes.

Control-wise there isn't much to complain about, even in the driving sequences almost entirely on dirt roads.  Like most of the Silent Hill games the idea was to have an average person thrust into this largely-dark world and largely that feel is there.  Alan is not very athletic as he can't sprint very long and his dodging, while effective, is also clumsy-looking.  There's no crosshair or laser sight for aiming (unless you use the flashlight with it.  Holy crap, a game that finally does that!) so his shots aren't always on-target.

Nor does it seem to matter, as I didn't notice headshots or limb shots doing any more/less/specific damage.  Whatever, I don't expect beings composed of darkness  to function by the same logic as a typical FPS.

And no, aiming down the sights wouldn't help this game.

You know who you are.

For a game about a writer getting lost in one of his stories, though, the dialogue is unusually poorly written at times, to the point where I thought it might fit better in the original Resident Evil.  See, one of the oldest (and most frequently broken rules) in writing is the old "Show, Don't Tell" rule.  Breaking this rule in a video game cutscene basically means you're explaining things that we just saw happen.  It's ham-fisted, unnecessary, and to a degree insulting to the player.

Alan does this all the goddamn time.  And God help you if there's a movie reference in a cutscene, because it tends to go like this:

(actual example from the game)

*Taken with an axe attacks a door Alan just went through.  Camera angle is almost exactly like the one scene in The Shining*

Me: Oh hey, that's just like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Alan: blah blah blah Jack Nicholson in The Shining blah blah escape.

Me: STOP DOING THAT!

In fact, let's pretend for a moment that every obvious allusion to something is one punch to the face.

Alan's name can be abbreviated A. Wake.  Best attempt at subtlety since Other M. *punch*

This game themed around light -vs- darkness takes place in a town called Bright Falls. *punch*
Alan's wife, who is taken by the darkness which she has a crippling fear of, is named Alice.  Wonderland aside, they're both named A. Wake! *punch*
One of the antagonists is an FBI agent named Robert Nightingale.  Sorry, let me retype that:  Robert Nightingale. *punch*
Several times Alan needs to turn on generators or restore power to places to get the lights on.  Did I mention one of the other protagonists is the town's sheriff, Sarah Breaker? *punch*

For the sake of brevity I'll stop there, but it can become grating rather quickly.  Or maybe it's because I'm an English major?

TKO!

Aside from those mentioned earlier, the game also references things like H.P. Lovecraft (directly by name), The Twilight Zone (a TV show and easter egg game called Night Springs), Twin Peaks (see: everything), and perhaps unintentionally, other survival-horror games such as Deadly Premonition (similar characters, some enemies reminiscent of the Raincoat Killer), Silent Hill (can't say without spoiling parts of the game), and Resident Evil.  I mean, what else am I supposed to think when it turns out one of the supporting characters, Alan's agent, is a protective guy in a red jacket who helps Alan in various ways named Barry?

WHAT?!  What is this?

In terms of replay value, the game tries to add elements that can only be found either through obsessive exploration or multiple playthroughs.  There are collectibles like coffee thermoses scattered all over town, as well as radio broadcasts to listen to, the aforementioned TV show to watch, boxes of flares and other supplies to find, and beer can pyramids to knock over (seriously).

And yes you whores, there are achievements tied to all of these.

There are also some manuscript pages that can only be found by playing on Nightmare mode, so a second play is necessary to see everything in the game.  In addition there are a couple DLC chapters, but my problem with them is that, just like the game's ending (which I won't spoil), it seems blatantly set up as sequel bait.  Say what you want about Stephen King shelling out books at the rate he does/did, at least he knows when a story should end!

 I'm not good with this thing called subtlety.

In fairness though, the developers have said in interviews that the game's story was "bigger than one game" and there would be a follow-up to Alan Wake, beyond the aforementioned DLC.  Given the open-ended conclusion, this surprises me very little.

Still, I'd be lying if I said I didn't like this game.  It's by no means bad, it's just lacking in some areas that, given the subject matter and the main character, seem like they should be better than they are.  If they ever do create a follow-up that isn't only on X-Box Live Arcade (I don't have X-Box Live) I'll most likely check it out.

Eventually.