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9 25 3 1 |
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 Excellent  Good  Mediocre  Poor |
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Platform: |
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Xbox 360 |
Genre: |
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Third-Person Shooter |
Developer: |
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Remedy |
ESRB: |
Teen |
Release: |
May 18, 2010 |
Publisher: |
Microsoft Game Studios |
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Critic Reviews The following reviews are used to calculate the overall reception for this game. All applicable scores are converted to our simplified rating system based on the specifics offered by each publication or the tone of each review. You can read more about how we do this here.
June 1, 2010 - Excellent - Alan Wake is special because the final evaluation can be based on opinion and personal preference instead of mechanical deficiencies. I wish every game could be discussed in such a manner, and that's why you should play Alan Wake. It's a fantastic game that also happens to demonstrate the potential for video games as a narrative medium. [Issue #5, p.38]
May 5, 2010 - Excellent - Despite its flaws we had a fantastic time playing through Remedy's gripping, nerve-wracking story. And with a host of planned post-release DLC set to follow up the game's cliff hanger ending, that six-year construction still might warrant a place on the Xbox 360 hall of fame.
May 5, 2010 - Excellent - Alan Wake was definitely worth the wait. The presentation creates a genuine survival/horror ambience that's hard to shake and the gameplay shines. Bring on the sequel! Just don't take five more years to make it.
May 4, 2010 - Excellent - Remedy's done a great job of mixing elements of written work, television, and videogames to create an experience full of scares, laughs, and thrills that's just as fun to play as it is to watch.
May 5, 2010 - Excellent - Ultimately, how much you enjoy Alan Wake's rollercoaster ride depends on how invested you become in its sophisticated yarn. And it's one hell of a story, capped off by a quiet, breathtaking denouement that makes good on the opening lines of Alan's initial descent.
May 11, 2010 - Excellent - Alan Wake is a good game. But as well as a recommendation, I'd suggest you take your time with the first play through, because it's a game you can also only really experience once properly. You will most likely play it more than once - but that first time is the real charm of the thing.
May 6, 2010 - Excellent - Remedy has created a superb video game that uses one of the best written characters in the medium all year to tie its plot, themes and gameplay together seamlessly. Thrilling, frightening and geuninely compelling, Alan Wake is a nightmare players will not soon to forget.
May 5, 2010 - Excellent - Remedy and Microsoft haven't made a perfect masterpiece, but Alan Wake may well be one of my favourite releases of 2010 - an escapade I'm going to remember for a very long time. It's a stunning action game, a superbly scripted adventure and a technical showcase for the now-ageing Xbox 360 hardware.
May 18, 2010 - Excellent - All in all, Alan Wake is a brilliant piece of storytelling and one that is going to stand out as an example of single-player gaming done right. It may not be perfect, but the experience is so visceral that overlooking any small hiccups is an easy task.
May 4, 2010 - Good - If anything, Alan Wake reminds me of the first Uncharted. It is a great, but flawed work that lays the foundation for what could be an absolutely amazing follow-up. I just hope it doesn't take another five or six years.
May 17, 2010 - Good - Alan Wake weaves a sophisticated, gripping story about love and the nature of creativity - one that incorporates conventions of film, TV, and books, yet feels like it could only be told in game form. A shame, then, that the developers didn't have enough confidence in their audience to deliver the masterpiece they had within their grasp.
May 5, 2010 - Good - This is a game that will be discussed for some time after release, and we think that the conversation is going to be a good one. It's a flawed game, but a striking one. You owe it to yourself to give it at least one play-through.
May 30, 2010 - Good - Alan Wake is an enjoyable game and the level of polish in terms of visuals, presentation and story are excellent. It may not be for everybody, as some players are likely to find the linearity of the experience frustrating, but we found the strength and pace of the story compelling.
May 14, 2010 - Good - Alan Wake is every bit as compulsive and satisfying as the fiction on which it riffs, but it also runs the risk of being equally forgettable. It's a game that delivers the requisite number of twists, turns and thrills, but the only real revelations take place on those scattered manuscript pages.
May 5, 2010 - Good - Alan Wake is an accessible, undemanding game with a neat combat mechanic and decent visuals. It's just not a very original game, it's certainly not an exceptional one, and it's a shame it wasn't ready a few years ago.
May 4, 2010 - Good - After an exceptionally long wait, Alan Wake is many things it promised to be. It's a well-written horror game that builds tension instead of cheap jump-out scares, and one that leans on today's technology to provide the genre with a lively and eerie environment.
May 5, 2010 - Good - If you don't mind periodically revisiting game design from 1999, Alan Wake is an engaging horror mystery that brings the heart of Stephen King's style of storytelling to the interactive medium. Like King's books, you won't find a better topic for water cooler discussions.
May 5, 2010 - Good - Alan Wake is a genuine achievement for Remedy. It's a gripping experience that, while five years in the distilling, a finally proved worth the wait.
May 4, 2010 - Good - It isn't perfect, but Alan Wake is a superb mystery that has plenty to offer. Gamers willing to put up with the minor inconsistencies will be rewarded with a rich narrative that's definitely worth experiencing.
June 3, 2010 - Good - It's a wholly worthwhile experience for those interested in the many ways to present a game narrative, and while this particular narrative isn't perfect, you'll find yourself drawn to the town of Bright Falls and its mysteries.
May 24, 2010 - Good - As you get deeper into the very strange story, things become more interesting, more convoluted and more intense. While the dark spooky woods environment can get a little tedious - as can the combat, the story telling is compelling enough to keep you moving forward.
May 7, 2010 - Good - The path you march down rarely offers any surprises, which makes your actions take on a by-rote feeling after a while. But the combat is so satisfying that it's largely able to overshadow this misstep. Alan Wake is a riveting adventure that will keep you glued to the screen until the very end.
May 11, 2010 - Good - Even the most rational adult feels that twinge of fear when walking through a park or wooded area at night, checking over their shoulder every so often just in case something is waiting to pounce. The psychological thriller Alan Wake adeptly plays to these age-old fears by thrusting the player into a series of situations that would creep out just about anyone.
May 5, 2010 - Good - Like slipping in and out of a nightmare, Alan Wake is a mixed experience. You'll adore the game's well-written characters and grow obsessed with the deeply intellectual story, but thanks to repetitive action and uninspired levels, reaching the end and solving the mystery can sometimes prove a bit tedious.
May 6, 2010 - Good - It approaches its subject matter with the same tongue-in-cheek brio as Max Payne did with film noir, content to exist just outside the genre rather than within it. At the same time, it relies too heavily on a single, skilfully executed gameplay mechanic for its entire length, and places too much emphasis on its elaborate story and sky-high production values to cater for all tastes.
May 5, 2010 - Good - Alan Wake paints a vivid nightmare that you won't soon forget. It's the freshest take on the horror game in a long time, and every moment feels like it was painstakingly scripted. There isn't much fluff here. That said, the game is lacking in the frills that we've come to expect from a triple-A release.
May 4, 2010 - Good - Alan Wake is on the whole a propulsive, thrilling, and downright spooky action game from start to finish, quite unlike anything else on the market in visual style and storytelling format. It might take Remedy forever and a day to get from one game to the next, but Alan Wake proves once again their toil is well worth the wait.
May 10, 2010 - Good - Alan Wake was clearly conceived as a high-minded literary project rather than as a game. All well and good, but when reasonably straightforward horror-game fayre are overlaid with an ambitious but ultimately flawed attempt to do something post-modern, it feels like a waste of potential.
May 5, 2010 - Good - Alan Wake is a strange beast - a great story, told clumsily and strewn with odd characters saying vaguely unbelievable things in an earnest way that might or might not be a joke. However, as baffling as it can be, it really does hold its own, keeping you nervous, excited and rolling your eyes indulgently so regularly that it simply won't occur to you to stop playing. It may not be a triumph, but it is a great success.
May 7, 2010 - Good - This is a marvellous tale of a writer and his wife in a tense and overbearing world, one that's dated and marred by breaks in connection, poor design choices and a desperation to be accepted. Alan's journey is at times an engaging one, but it would have fared so much better two years ago.
May 15, 2010 - Good - [Alan Wake is] definitely not a horror game, and it wasn't intended to be, it truly lives up to the thriller genre it's billed as and the role that light plays throughout the game makes it for a really unique experience worth experiencing.
May 12, 2010 - Good - Remedy have proved that they're not just a one-trick pony, creating a game that's starkly different to Max Payne but also deeply referential to it. The clever story, great voice work and presentation all work to sweeten an already sweet deal, and while it's been a long time coming in the end it's clear that Alan Wake was well worth the wait.
May 14, 2010 - Good - Inevitably, Alan Wake doesn't live up to the monumental hype that precedes it. Ultimately though, the survival-horror genre is in desperate need of a new poster boy, and Alan Wake just about fills that remit.
May 18, 2010 - Good - So was Alan Wake worth the five-year wait? Sort of. The story is spooky, and some encounters with the poltergeist are rather intense. But the combat at times seems to hold the game back.
May 6, 2010 - Mediocre - At the end of Alan Wake, the last line, the last shot, and the last characters onscreen are all solid payoffs. It's just a shame that it takes so much tedious shootering to get there.
May 5, 2010 - Mediocre - While it sometimes veers more towards Garth Marenghi than Stephen King, the bits it gets right just about outweigh the lesser, ill-judged moments, and the experience eventually pulls together into a reasonably compelling adventure. Not a bad game by any account, but an also-ran under the wider umbrella of survival-horror.
May 17, 2010 - Mediocre - By the end of the game, I'd been bombarded with so many unexplained, contradictory scenes that I didn't know up from down anymore. Alan Wake starts strong but finishes weak; neither the gameplay nor the story deliver on their potential by the time the credits roll.
May 19, 2010 - Poor - Playing Alan Wake, I kept encountering a great concept suffocated by bafflingly narrow and unimaginative design and embarrassingly derivative and rote storytelling. Alan Wake bills itself as a "psychological action thriller," but it falls short on both the psychology and the action.
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