Sunday, August 01, 2010

Space Oddity

The last day of my week off and appropriately enough, I polished off the last chapter of Alan Wake. It's a good game, but just flawed enough to keep it from being a classic. I'd have preferred it to be less linear and repetitive - it could have done with more exploration and spacing the shocks out a little more, I think. While I'm in critical mode, it would have improved things no end to get rid of the on-screen prompts and HUD as well - Call of Cthulhu : Dark Corners of the Earth did away with extraneous clutter and it was a superbly atmospheric bit of horror. There's nothing quite like losing track of the number of shots that you have left in your revolver and hearing a click as you are facing down some squamous horror.

On the plus side, the execution of the story and the ambiguous, cliff hanger of an ending were both highly satisfying. I'm not entirely sure of the significance of the closing music, but I'm guessing it is pointing to the DLC in some form or other. We shall see.

Back to work tomorrow, so expect a reduction in games related posts.

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