If you have played Remedy Entertainment's psychological thriller Alan Wake, you know that it is an astonishing piece of work with amazing story telling. A genuinely "Stephen King-esque" tale with perfect plot details as well as character involvement. Now here at VGH we have the first downloadable content for the game,The Signal, which picks up where the main game left off with Alan still in Bright Falls, still stuck in the darkness, still losing his mind and following a off-the-radar mysterious GPS signal on his Verizon (this game has serious product placement, people.) phone. It's also, to kindly put it a piece of crap.
The main game, Alan Wake had it's share of battles with the Taken, but this combat was used to pump adrenaline to the players and present Alan's feelings of isolation, madness and vulnerability. The game never in my time playing turned into a "Flash and Shoot", but it didn't really have to, because the combat was only there to lend support to the mood created by the story. The Signal Downloadable Content almost completely destroys any motive at continuing Alan Wake's story, focusing instead on forcing you through a long chains and chains and chains of fight sequences (Did I say chains?). The fighting in the main game was evenly distributed by nice juicy sections of storyline, but in The Signal, you are lucky enough to get a line of dialog before you start "Flash and Shooting" again.
There are some positive things going in between battles, however. Revisiting previous locations in Bright Falls creates a feeling of odd Deja Vu, reminding you of the "Previously, on Alan Wake." you were running for your life past the Oh Deer Diner, and a new set of collectibles is a nice hint at characters from the main game. There are even bits and pieces of genuine story telling and humor, which serves as a upsetting reminder of how amazing the Alan Wake story is and how little of it exists in The Signal.
But of course, if you really found happiness in dodging and shooting the Taken in Alan Wake, then you'll have a ecstatic jolly ol'time exploding them away inThe Signal as the fights are particularly intense and brutal, in one situation involving your most important sanctuary "street lights", pretty smart. If the fighting was something you just wanted to get over with in order to get to the next bit of story line, then there's not much in The Signal that you could not get just by paying attention to the previous re-cap summary that will undoubtedly begin the next batch of DLC's for this game, especially given The Signal's extremely and when I say extremely I mean extremely short length. Even if you get hacked, stabbed, knife thrown, chainsawed, car smashed, truck smashed, deer smashed, bus smashed a lot and take time to explore the environment you'll be done with it in just two or three hours tops. That said, there is no sense in complaining because it's free if you use the code that came with the game, so you're not really losing anything by giving it a shot.
I'm happy to say the least, and contented that I played the 1st installment of Alan Wake's DLC The Signal, if only because it gave me the possibility to see the characters again as well as the environment of Alan Wake, but I can't say that I actually "enjoyed" it all that much. Hopefully the next in the series of DLC, The Writer, will deliver a more balanced package of content.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
I am so excited to play this DLC, sucks that the story is not heavily influenced as it was in the main game though but hey at least it's free. Good review!
Played through it, and I'll probably go through again for the missing alarm clocks and cutouts.
It was pretty lengthy, and the cutouts are cool to read (they aren't Alan, they're side characters like Tor, Barry, Sheriff Breaker, Cynthia Weaver, etc.).
The sales of AW were horrid. I believe it could have done so much better on PS3.
Sadly, sales of the game didn't exactly light up the charts.
Just had 20 minutes on it, utterly compelling, much darker and creepier, had to tear myself away now to go to work
Can't wait to get stuck back into this tonight, fantastic work yet again Remedy, and for free!
Man. I just finished it.
Took me just over an hour, maybe an hour and a half.
It's much harder than the normal game, much cooler and so on. I couldn't really tell if the facial movements were better because there's barely any actual scenes with people moving their mouths, lol.
I got all the cut-outs in my first run and 7 alarm clocks. The furnace and car achievements were easy too.
Gonna suck trying to beat it without dying. My god.
But yeah, I loved it. Can't wait for the conclusion. I loved the ending. Gonna play it again now, lol.
It's obsoletely exceptional. Remedy really have out done themselves once again. This has me really excited about the future of Alan Wake.
I agree with the review, just finished it, I have to say I was slightly dissapointed, it was just another level that didn't solve any of my questions and gave me no answers, whilst the nightmare feel of it was spot on and beautiful though.
I've finished right now.
BRAVO!
Nothing more to say.