TheGamerist:

Mako SOLDIER:

TheGamerist:
I played a demo of the game, and from that I didn't want to buy it. Good to see that I didn't waste my money

Nice try troll. There is no demo. Jeez, do your research before you start sharting from your mouth :D

I played the demo at a gaming expo actually, so before you start trying to put people down, maybe you should ask how I did it instead of making your own assumptions

Ok, which one and when? Since Remedy have always maintained there will be no playable demo and they even mock up gameplay segments for demo videos, I would be very interested in the details.

MrDead:

What difficulty did you play it on? I didn't find it scary at all really on normal, but it becomes practically a different game on Nightmare. It's still balanced and fair, but the Taken actually become threatening and it not only heightens the tension but transforms the combat system into something much more strategic. I wouldn't say I'm more sensitive to it, SH2 is one of my favourite games of all time, so I ought to be desensitised to it rather than the other way around :D I found that when the enemies were a threat I spent a lot of time with precious little ammo, which made exploring dilapidated building etc much more of a threatening prospect.

I played it on normal. I play everything on normal then again on hard. See.. that idea doesn't really gel with me so well. I played Fatal Frame on normal and it was tense as all hell (not to mention terrifying). If the game is scary, or has tension, it simply has it. Silent Hill simply has tension. Difficulty has nothing to do with it.

Normally I would completely agree. I usually find harder difficulty modes to be contrived and unbalanced. In fact this is the only game where I've found the hardest difficulty to genuinely add to the experience. Sure, Silent Hill and Fatal Frame do tension without any real contributing gameplay factors, but that's because they are horror and the setting and story itself are pretty nasty. Heck, the Wii Ju-On game is scary as hell, just through jump-out shocks, despite consistently score around 50% etc due to having no real gameplay other than 'try not to jump when a shock moment comes up'. Alan Wake isn't really a horror, so the tension really tends to be proportional to the percieved threat imo.

Sorry if I was a bit bullish earlier, I've been championing this game since release and genuinely believe it does something pretty darned special, enough to be my Game of the Year so far, even over Mass Effect 2. Sadly it's not doing anywhere near as well as the fans would like sales-wise and there are already people spreading actual misinformation about it over at Gamefaqs and 4chan, which people are actually believing. Sadly, some people take Yahtzee's opinion far too seriously and I just really don't want to see this game fail when it easily deserves way more success than a heck of a lot of games that get sequel after sequel. So, yeah, I flew off into fanboy rage, which really isn't like me. Lol, THAT's how much I love this game :D

Is the video not working for anyone else? Every time I try to play the video it says

"200 Stream not found"

And 3 more lines of something I don't understand ):

why won't it work for me? it says something about not being able to stream in a black box

is it just me or is the video broken :(

Mako SOLDIER:
Sorry if I was a bit bullish earlier, I've been championing this game since release and genuinely believe it does something pretty darned special, enough to be my Game of the Year so far, even over Mass Effect 2. Sadly it's not doing anywhere near as well as the fans would like sales-wise and there are already people spreading actual misinformation about it over at Gamefaqs and 4chan, which people are actually believing. Sadly, some people take Yahtzee's opinion far too seriously and I just really don't want to see this game fail when it easily deserves way more success than a heck of a lot of games that get sequel after sequel. So, yeah, I flew off into fanboy rage, which really isn't like me. Lol, THAT's how much I love this game :D

I have to say without giving anything away the last bit you play through right before the final FMV had me go, ok, THIS is REALLY neat. But for me that was 2 minutes vs however long I played the rest of the game.

Edit: Oh and frequently turning around and seeing the sun or moon through the trees and hills.. as an outdoors simulator it REALLY excels.. no sarcasm intended.

Episode Ein? Episode Funf? That isn't proper German, Yahtzee.

But I do agree with the point about how the game seems to constantly find ways to get you into the woods somehow. Even though the forests are done better than any other environment, you spend so much time in them that by the end they just seemed like the blandest and most tedious parts of the game.

One thing I'll add is that the voice acting is very good. Every character I remember from the game had a great and suitable actor, even for the more annoying characters with the more annoying voices (Barry).

hilarious. loved the resident evil 4 reference; "madre de dios!"

Using botox on her face tumors..

Best thing ever. LOL.

It was OK. That's all I have to say, it wasn't horrible but not a stand out either.

Best video in a while, good job Yahtzee

zelda2fanboy:
I knew I didn't need this game when I read some critic on the internet complaining that games with groundbreaking story telling like Alan Wake were probably not going to sell. Gee mister, I didn't know shooting people followed by pre rendered cut scenes had never been done before. What a work of uncommon genius.

Here's yet another game that causes me to reconsider buying RE4 again for the Wii. That was a good game, wasn't it? Pretty much nailed this formula the first time.

Pretty much. That's why RE4 is better than RE5. You can't make that style of game any better than they already did. Every improvement feels like a step back.

I see Heavy Rain, Alan Wake, and the Robert Zemeckis Animated movies get a lot of criticism on their uncanny valley moments and creepy faces. But I don't think it's fair criticism considering they're all playing up horror. I think they're supposed to be creepy.

I actually had alot of fun with this game. I'm not gonna say that Yatzee didn't have some good points. I do think that alerting the player every time the enemies spawn was a bad idea and it would have been nice if you could play in more varied locations. However i liked how Alan narated the story as it happend and the setting and story was at least different.

Now lets be clear, i really liked Max Payne and this game is made by the same people and has a very similar feel to it (hell Max payne's voice actor plays the voice of one of the characters).

so i don't think it's quite as bad Yatzee makes it out, that being said i did enjoy his review.

There is something a bit off with Yahtzee's eye on 2:28

One word, said in a high pitched voice: Hilarious!

For the record, Stephen King is fucking incredible.

a Good review. I will say the ending metaphor is probably the best i've herd this whole year

I think if I owned a 360, I'd buy this...

Thankyou so much for hitting that guy with the car.

Hate games that take your camera and show you where the bad guy is.

That takes away the edge of the whole combat with monsters, zombies etc.

So I originally thought that Alan Wake was going to be an interesting game. You know, creepy atmosphere, maybe good writing, HEAVILY BASED ON STEPHEN KING, but then that is half the game. I kinda over looked that it wanted to be a Psychological Action Game. So while the first aspect was hopefully done somewhat well, I decided to look into the combat. I found it awful. Like it was trying to be scary, but not a challenge (which DOESN'T work.) Then I realized something about the combat. It surprisingly resembles, get this guys, Luigi's Mansion. Yea... think about it, shine the light, absorb the ghost. Same deal, but with bullets. Accept, it isn't as fun! The fights in Luigi's Mansion were MUCH harder than any in Alan Wake. So good job developers, you successfully failed at making Luigi's Mansion.

God's damn it, I was considering buying this, still am if I see it going for about £5.

Please someone tell me the Steven King theme isn't as prevalent as Yahtzee claims as I cannot stand his books.

When stuck in Germany with no source of entertainment save for German medical journals and one of the Dark tower books, I chose Deutsche medizinische Bücher within 2 chapters.

I dunno... seems like minor irritations are being amplified for comedic purpose to badmouth what is essentially a really good game.

Carnagath:

MrDead:

Carnagath:

Zudarkness:

Here's hoping he does a review for Red Dead Remdemption.

http://twitter.com/YahtzeeCroshaw

Red Dead Redemption bugged out and now I can't play any further. Hooray! Next game, please.

Inb4 shitstorm.

Aw. I rebooted and it bugged back in again.
12:09 AM May 28th via Twitterrific

Bugged...in means it got fixed? Damn my southern European ancestry, need to refresh my English.

Not your fault: he was making an unusual play on words there.

Yahtzee Croshaw:
Alan Wake

This week, Zero Punctuation reviews Alan Wake.

Be sure to join the Zero Punctuation Facebook Fan Page.

Watch Video

All in all I found this review to be pretty funny and it did hit some of the sticking points I had but you forgot they mentioned HP Lovecraft more than Stephen King who by the way has been basically telling his storied just shy of saying Kthulu. But for someone who loved Silent Hill 2's atmosphere and story enough to overlook some of its glaring flaws Im surprised you didnt give more of a nod to it in this game, perhaps I should just shut my mouth tell your extra punctuation but too late for that :)

RandomAcronym:
Before you plan to not get this game, know that Escapist gave it 10/10.

I use to think that he just doesn't like most games,but now I'm convinced he doesn't care if the game is good or not and always hates on any game.

Sparrow:

Blue-State:
But if the plot and pacing is half as bad as he says it is then I won't bother.

If you use Yahtzee's reviews as a source of reviewing, you must haven nearly no games at all. That's because HE'S NOT MEANT TO LIKE ANY GAMES, IT'S WHAT HE'S PAYED FOR.

Here is a sample list of games that Yahtzee likes:

Prototype, Infamous, Resident Evil 4, Thief 2, Fallout 3, Psychonauts, Saint's Row 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Orange Box (Portal especially), Half-Life 2, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Silent Hill 2, Left for Dead, LEGO Indiana Jones, Painkiller, No More Heroes, Killer 7, Condemned, Gears of War 2, Monkey Island, God of War, Bioshock, Assassin's Creed 2, Guitar Hero franchise (to a point), Spiderman 2, Grim Fandango, Manhunt.

You might take issue with one or two of those getting that classification, but I think a list of two dozen-odd games makes it pretty clear that Yahtzee does not, in fact, just hate everything. It's just that he is never 100% positive (or even 95% positive) about anything. There is a substantial difference between those two things.

This game is really good, and its more HP Lovecraft than Stephen King. Because if it was just like Stephen King novel we would have to play through half of the game before anything abnormal happens lol. If you liked some of the Silent Hill games than you will probably love this

Ace of Trades:
So I originally thought that Alan Wake was going to be an interesting game. You know, creepy atmosphere, maybe good writing, HEAVILY BASED ON STEPHEN KING, but then that is half the game. I kinda over looked that it wanted to be a Psychological Action Game. So while the first aspect was hopefully done somewhat well, I decided to look into the combat. I found it awful. Like it was trying to be scary, but not a challenge (which DOESN'T work.) Then I realized something about the combat. It surprisingly resembles, get this guys, Luigi's Mansion. Yea... think about it, shine the light, absorb the ghost. Same deal, but with bullets. Accept, it isn't as fun! The fights in Luigi's Mansion were MUCH harder than any in Alan Wake. So good job developers, you successfully failed at making Luigi's Mansion.

have you tried the higher difficulty settings? like hard or nightmare mode could make all the difference in being challenged lol

sketch_zeppelin:
I actually had alot of fun with this game. I'm not gonna say that Yatzee didn't have some good points. I do think that alerting the player every time the enemies spawn was a bad idea and it would have been nice if you could play in more varied locations. However i liked how Alan narated the story as it happend and the setting and story was at least different.

Now lets be clear, i really liked Max Payne and this game is made by the same people and has a very similar feel to it (hell Max payne's voice actor plays the voice of one of the characters).

so i don't think it's quite as bad Yatzee makes it out, that being said i did enjoy his review.

when your in the past at his apartment, did you notice that when he read the manuscript for ihs other novel it was from max payne 2, and some of the books were "alex casey" and "Fall of Casey" and next to it were gold replicas of Paynes twin barrettas lol

I liked the game. I liked the writing, and the atmosphere. Character design needed work. I agree with most of the complaints. One thing they should have changed is the health of the enemies, and work more on scaring the shit out of the player. If enemies had vastly varying amounts of health, even within the 3 or 4 classes of enemies they had, it would make it a lot more hectic.

A little harsh a times. I actually liked Alan Wake... then again Yahtzee wouldn't be as entertaining if he didn't stick to his schtick. But at least he picked a worthy game to review this week. It's still fun to watch Yahtzee bash the good games I like, rather than watching a game that looked horrible before, during, and after its release, like Monster Hunter Tri or Dead To Rights Retribution, bashing games like those is like kicking someone in the balls after 40 reviewers already did the same.

As much as I loved your review Yatzee, I can't help but notice some hypocrisy here. We all know that Silent Hill 2 is one of your favorite games because of its atmosphere and story, even though the gameplay is average at best. It seems to me that Alan Wake is very similar to SH2, yet you bashed it into bits today.

I haven't played the game yet, but I can't understand - how can you love a game like Silent Hill 2 and not appreciate a game like Alan Wake? In Silent Hill 2 you also just fight the same 4 enemies over and over with the same weapons, as if there's an assembly line churning them out repeatedly. Yet, you loved SH2 didn't you? I also loved SH2 btw. Alan Wake sounds like a similar situtation - Average Gameplay, but a Killer Story - so that's fine with me. I understand your criticisms, but I'm still getting the game because I love survival horror and I mainly play for the story anyway. At least your review was really funny ;-)

...I think this is the most retarded comment section I have ever read.