Killzone 2 review

Finished a couple of games in the last few days. I'll start by talking about Killzone 2. I only played the single player so I can only talk about that. I will make frequent references to Half-Life 2, because in many ways that game to me was both the last of the old first person shooters, and the first of the new (a topic for another time?).

First of all, let me discuss the original Killzone. It has been many years since I played it, so all I have left are vague impressions. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, because those impressions are obviously of the things that stood out to me.

Lets start with the weapons: I remember there being two variations on most weapons; the ISA version and the Helgast version. For example, you start with an ISA assault rifle but will probably end up grabbing a Helgast assault rifle before long. I don't remember them being significantly different, I think the ISA version had a grenade launcher but the Helgast rifle had a larger magazine. That meant there were a lot of weapons that played very similar, but it did flesh out the world. There was a reasonable variety, especially with the character-specific weapons. Personally I thought the weapons looked like actual weapons would in the real world while being significantly different than anything I was familiar with, so overall I give it good marks here.

The game had a rather strange health system, where your health bar was split into segments. If you were injured then you stayed out of the field of fire for a moment, you would regenerate the current segment of your health bar. That meant that if you took enough damage to deplete one segment and drop down to the next, you would not recover that lost segment without a health pack. A compromise between the old health systems and the modern Wolverine healing factor, it encouraged careful shooting from cover (take a couple of hits and duck down to recover before you lose a bar) but still for the most part acted like an old fashioned health bar. While a little strange, I think it worked.

I'm afraid that I don't remember very much about the level design in the old game, I remember fighting in ruins, across mountain paths, in fortified buildings, on a dock at one point, in a forest or at least a wooded area, and on a spaceship at the end. There wasn't much variety in the enemies, there were guys with guns, guys with grenade launchers, and that's it as far as I can remember. I suppose that's not unusual, I didn't think it was a big deal at the time, but compared to even very old games like Half-Life it's quite poor.

My favorite thing about the original was the characters. Over the course of the game you played as a group of four different characters - each mission you played as one, sometimes you could chose which (your choice could affect the path you took through that level, but not the plot). Each character played differently. I vaguely remember one guy having some very heavy weaponry, and a girl who had an interesting gun and who could access areas others couldn't (she could climb or crawl or something).

But it wasn't just the variety in gameplay between the characters that I enjoyed, it was the interaction, their differing personalities and histories, the banter and arguments. At the time this was not common in first person shooters (or at least I rarely saw it done well), it fleshed out the story and really gave me a feeling of purpose and direction when playing.


So what about Killzone 2? Let me start by saying that at no point in the entire game did I actually enjoy myself (well, OK, perhaps I derived some degree of pleasure from the sheer overpowered-ness of the lighting gun for the brief period that I had it). As far as I could tell the only improvements from the original were in the technology used in the engine. There's no doubt that it has a very powerful graphical engine, it's a real shame then that it was only used to render grey walls, grey floors, grey roofs, grey skies, grey smoke, and grey people wearing grey clothes and carrying grey weapons.

In fact it's my understanding that a lot of effort went in to making the game so grey - I recall reading about how they applied post-processing filters on the completed, rendered scene to further reduce the colours. Well congratulations, you succeeded most admirably in making the game completely boring.

The game uses the exact same enemies, same weapons, and even the same environments. Well, a few of the same environments; there's only three different types of scenery in the whole game (dark grey ruined buildings, light grey spaceship interiors, brownish grey rocks). I get that it was a continuation of the original, but come on.

So what was actually new? Let's see... there's a pretty good cover mechanic, I suppose that's an improvement, although personally I wasn't too fond of it - but that might have been caused by the controls, or might be a matter of taste. There's some absolutely rubbish bits where you have to physically rotate the controller to turn valves and the like; frustrating the first couple of times as you get used to it, after which it becomes merely tedious and pointless. It's worth mentioning that this game was (or at least was supposed to be) an early PS3 exclusive - it's the first PS3 FPS I had heard of, I believe it was the first PS3 exclusive FPS at any rate. As such it was expected to serve as a showcase of the system's abilities, and Sony was still trying to push their completely rubbish look-we-have-motion-controls-too sixaxis controller. Personally I have never seen a good use of the motion controls on the damned thing. Which reminds me, physically tilting the controller during the loading scenes slightly tilts the view. Ooooooh. In practice it just means that the loading scene jitters annoyingly when you take the opportunity to adjust your seating position or something.

And... that's about it. I can't actually seem to think of much else that's new. There's a couple of flying drones and a heavily armored trooper you fight two or three times, for what little that adds to the game. You do pilot an exo-suit. Once. For about 10 minutes. I suppose the different perspective and level of power in the exo-suit weapons adds a little variety, but really the game is still 99 percent shooting the same guys over and over and over. Even the last boss battle mainly involves gunning down waves and waves of the same enemies you've been fighting for the whole game.

So how does it play? Not very well in my opinion. When I first bought the game the controls were absolutely atrocious. I tried adjusting the sensitivity every which way, I even tried playing it with a PS3 mouse, it was just awful. It's just shocking that the game could actually be released with such obscene controls. How could an entire development company AND publisher allow it to be published like that? There was a patch that fixed the controls (I didn't know about it at first because my PS3 wasn't connected to the net - there was nothing I needed online), that fixed the controls so they were decent. Personally, however, they still felt a little off to me - I still had trouble lining up my shots, it still felt a little like aiming started slowly then picked up speed. I'm going to allow that it might just be that it was my first FPS in several months, though I'm not convinced. Perhaps the apparent absence of any sort of aiming assist is part of the problem?

Controls aren't the only gameplay issue. Killzone 2 replaces the damage system of the original game with the recharging health system that's so in vogue today. And, like every other game that uses it, it replaces the traditional health bar with an on-screen visual indicator, namely you see blood-splatters on the sides of the screen as the view goes red then darkens. Personally I have come to hate this system (at least when it's used so heavy-handedly); anything that interferes with your view annoys me, and the fact that you lose the ability to differentiate the grey enemies from the grey background they are hiding behind exactly when you need to see them so you avoid dying is quite frustrating. And to make matters worse, for some reason when you're manning a fixed gun or turret, your health indicator changes so it's not obvious if you're getting shot or what - a few times a died because I didn't even realise I was getting shot, at first I thought I was being electrocuted or poisoned or something because the screen was going dark but there were no blood splatters (and I think the joypad wasn't rumbling either).

The game also uses directional damage indicators. The first game I can remember that told you which direction you were taking damage from was Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 came out in 2004, that's before the first Killzone. Since then virtually every shooter, first and even third person, has used some variation on the damage indicator. And with good reason; it just makes the game better. Now, in Killzone 2 the damage indicator is a subtle blood-splatter on the side of your screen. And as I just mentioned, the indication that your health is low is blood splatters on all sides of your screen. Can you see the problem with this? As soon as you get hit by more than one single bullet (which is pretty much always the case since your enemies use automatic weapons), your damage direction indicator is hidden by your health indicator.

One aspect of the game that I really hated was the fact that nearly everything, from mission objectives to plot elements, would at times be "explained" by dialogue spoken WHILE PEOPLE WERE SHOOTING AT ME. I'm sorry, but when people are shooting at me, I'm not listening to radio chatter, I'm scrambling for cover as I try to pinpoint the enemies' locations (which can very difficult when they're behind cover that's the same colour as them and my screen is red and I can't see the damage indicators) while checking my ammo and slapping in a reload. As a result, not only did I often not know (or care) what I was supposed to be doing, I really started to hate my "friends".

Now lets talk weapons. First of all you can carry a long gun and a hand gun. Good, that makes sense; I never liked being told that I could carry either a pistol or a rocket launcher - surely the pistol is tucked into a holster or my belt while the rocket launcher is slung across my back? Your default handgun is a very nice looking revolver with infinite ammo. Now I like revolvers, and I won't complain about infinite ammo, but I do have an issue. The revolver felt under-powered. It had a very slow rate of fire, took a significant amount of time to regain accuracy when shooting off the hip (that is, the reticule that shows the bullet spread expands to encompass half the screen after each shot and takes a moment to tighten in again), and was rather weak. It took at least three shots to kill a normal enemy, and since you would normally be firing it as fast as possible at close range (where you don't use the sights) you'll most likely miss at least one shot even if you're aiming right at him, so it will usually take four or five shots to put down an enemy at close range. While this isn't a problem against a single enemy because the impact staggers them enough that they can't fire back, it means you don't have enough ammo to kill another enemy without reloading - a big problem when your faced with multiple enemies. Compare this to the Half-Life 2 revolver, which kills most enemies with a single shot and can be fired in quick succession (although firing too fast is still inaccurate, to my recollection it regained accuracy faster than in Killzone).

There's at least two assault rifles and a submachine gun which all feel the same. There's a shotgun which is quite easily the worst shotgun I have ever used in a FPS - it's both weak, slow, and unsatisfying. There's a couple of machine guns which are actually significantly different: one works very well when firing normally (and is very accurate when the sights are used), the other is God-awful when fired normally but works very well from cover (for some reason it's unbelievably inaccurate normally, but very accurate when fired from cover). There is a sniper rifle, but it's quite useless. When zoomed in scope fills well under a quarter of the screen and is filled with glare, combined with the slow rate of fire, poor controls, lack of aiming assist, and the fact that your view jumps around like crazy whenever you get hit makes it very, very difficult to hit anyone with it. The only enemies I managed to kill with the sniper rifle were guys with rocket launchers (they take a while to line up their shots, and even after they shoot you have time to finish aiming, kill them, then dodge the rocket) and perhaps a few enemies who where looking the wrong way - and that was with great difficulty and I could probably have done almost as well with the standard revolver. There's also a flame thrower that I didn't like very much, a Helgast pistol that I never actually used, a standard rocket launcher that's only available when you need to take out tanks, and then there's the lightning gun.

The lightning gun is so over-powered it completely changes the whole game. It deals a lot of damage and it seems to seek out the enemies on it's own; you simply needed to wave it in their general direction and they keeled over dead en-masse. Plus, it had infinite ammo! When you had that weapon the whole game suddenly dropped a half-dozen notches in difficulty as you casually sprinted forwards and mowed whole armies down. It was only available in one level, but in that level several weapon racks carried it, which begged the question: why the hell didn't more Helgast use it? They would have won the bloody war ages ago.

All in all I wasn't impressed with the weapons, they were lacking in variety compared to other sci-fi shooters and lacking in impact compared to modern-day shooters. In fact, most sci-fi shooter weapons have more impact and many modern-day shooters have more variety.

I mentioned before that the original Killzone's characters and story were my favorite part of the game. Perhaps ironically that was what I hated most about this game. Let's start with the plot. What is the plot? The Helgast are spouting nationalist rhetoric - not in itself and evil act - and the ISA (or "we", if you wish) invade them. Wait, why are we invading? I'm not fond of invading other people's homelands. Can we give diplomacy another try? Right from the start I have an issue; I don't know why we're invading, and I'm not convinced it's justified. In most games you're on the defensive, at least at first, so you have a good reason to fight, the reminders of their evil is all around you in the form of abandoned homes and ruined buildings. In killzone, the homes are abandoned and the buildings ruined because of you. In the later stages of the game, Helgast soldiers even yell things like 'Repel the invaders' and 'Protect our home!', or things to that effect. I don't want to be there, killing them, and if I don't want to be there what's my motivation for playing the game? Perhaps it would make more sense if I remembered exactly what happened at the end of the first, or if I had played the PSP Killzone? Either way they should have set it up better in the beginning. Actually, it reminds me of Gears of War - you start the game, it's a war, shoot things, pick up the plot as you go along - what there is of it. The difference is in that game we were clearly defending against an alien threat, you didn't really need to know much else to be invested in the game.

Like the original, Killzone 2 follows a band of 4 soldiers. Sort of. This time you always play as the same character; Sev. Not only is the variety in gameplay lost, Sev himself has no personality. He barely ever talks. The other characters are not constant; sometimes you'll be carrying out a mission with one, sometimes with another, occasionally four of you will hang out for a bit. The group doesn't feel cohesive, they don't feel like friends or even a unit. In fact they all sound the same and even look the same. The only thing differentiating them to me was how much they swear, ranging from often to non-stop. Compared to the original four, I didn't give a damn about any of these guys, not even Sev.

Speaking of the original four, I'm not sure why they decided to ditch them. Two of the original characters are still in the game, though I didn't recognise them - I only started to suspect it was them near the end, when a character who we had barely seen died and one of my 'mates' seemed to be feeling a little too much grief. After checking Wikipedia I figured out that they were two of the original cast. And the one who dies is Jan Templar, arguable the main character of the original four (based on the fact that you start as him). And his death is lame, he doesn't even put up a fight.

In fact the only guy who doesn't die, other than Sev, is the one character I liked least. His dialog was nothing but endless swearing. I guess some people still believe that the key to a good video game plot is to make the cast annoying jerks who swear as if their lives depended on it. Story not good enough yet? Add more f-bombs.

I also think it's worth mentioning that the "token female" (yes, every game has one) in the original Killzone was a smart, tough, intelligent soldier who was very capable in battle and in making decisions, but also had her unique personality and flaws (a balance that I so rarely see anywhere, especially in games). In Killzone 2, the "token female" (yes, quite literally the only female in the whole game) has a total of 3 scenes and maybe 5 lines of dialog. During this brief appearance she displays no more personality than a stone, but does manage to get kidnapped, rescued, then killed. I was not impressed.

So let's talk about Sev. Most of the time he says absolutely nothing, people (by which I mean everyone) yells orders at him and he says nothing in return, you're just expected to do what you've been told. This may sound much like a blank "everyman" character like Gordon Freeman, albeit more annoying (MUCH more annoying at times), except that they don't stick to it. You see, initially he says little, and most of the story points are from the first person perspective, but near the end of the game (by which point you've gotten used to the idea of him being a blank avatar), we start to see his face and he starts to talk more. So he doesn't have the personality of most game characters (such as those of the first game), but at the same time he's not a fully immersive avatar who we always occupy. It just doesn't work.

The bad guys are also boring. It seems there's two of them, one who's notable only in that he doesn't wear a helmet and talks a lot, but he's not actually very menacing. The other is somewhat more menacing, but looks almost exactly like every other helgast in the game.

And while we're on it, the end is stupid as well. I believe I've talked about the fact that games these days seem strangely reluctant to have a happy ending. In this case it seems to be the desire for a narrative hook for the next game in the series. The thing is, it's not really a cliffhanger. Rather, it seems to be saying that you haven't actually achieved anything - congrats, all those hours of work you put in were for nothing. It doesn't even promise more; the game just ends on a low note.


Poor writing is something that doesn't normally surprise me in video games, but Killzone was one of the games that awoke me to the fact that a game can have a really good plot and storytelling and interesting characters. So for the sequel to be so terribly written is not only extremely disappointing, it's quite perplexing. What's even more confusing is how the developers could have made so many amateurish mistakes: character and environment design so boring that it defies belief, controls so awful you'd think they'd never played a console shooter before, an invisible damage indicator, inconsistent health feedback, no aiming assist, weapons that aren't fun to shoot... have these guys ever made a game before?

And all this despite the fact that the game is so technically accomplished - the game uses rendering techniques that I believe were never done before on the PS3. In fact, it's rather bizarre - the game looks amazing when you see it running. It's only when you play it that you realise that it's not actually any fun. Perhaps the graphics are the problem? Long before the game came out a video claiming to be in-game footage was shown to the public. It was later revealed that it was not in-game, and there was a great deal of anger and disappointment. Perhaps they spent so much time and effort trying to match the quality of that initial video that they neglected other elements? As in, all other elements?

I don't know. I've heard people say they liked Killzone 2. I find that surprising. Perhaps the elements that I listed that bother me don't bother them? But what exactly did they like about it? Perhaps I'm getting too hung up on a few gameplay elements that are to taste? I don't know. I suppose it's all subjective in the end, ten years ago I probably would have thought this game was amazing, thought that might have been just because of the graphics.


Overall I give it a 4 out of 10 - a pretty skin hides a game that's mediocre in every aspect.

The Ultramarines Omnibus review

I considered posting this on my main blog, but I decided to keep the reviews and rants in one place. Warning, lots of spoilers.

I recently finished the Ultramarines omnibus. This is a Black Library collection of 3 novels and a short story about the Ultramarines chapter written by Graham McNeill. Black Library omnibuses probably have the best value of anything in a Games Workshop. But I suppose that's subjective at the end of the day. But I digress. The book follows Uriel Ventris, captain of the fourth company of the Ultramarines. I shall review each story individually.


The initial short story,'Chains of Command', essentially introduces us to Uriel Ventris, telling us something of his character and how he became captain. I liked this story, it dealt with a relatively small yet important conflict (if it was not important then it is unlikely that any Adeptus Astartes would have been involved at all) allowing it to focus on the characters themselves. The themes it dealt with, rigid adherence to established methods and dogma versus free thinking is a central theme in Warhammer 40K that is a driving force behind many of the different factions and indeed the history of the 40K universe.

But perhaps more significantly in this case, it is actually a real issue for the Ultramarines themselves. Not so much in the fictional universe, but rather in the perception of hobbyists towards the Ultramarines chapter. Ultramarines are seen as the 'default' 40K Space Marines. The Space Marine codex always refers to them first, even featuring them on the cover. Most of the non faction-specific Space Marine miniature figures used by Games Workshop for advertising purposes are painted as Ultramarines. Many of the miniatures actually have Ultramarine iconography molded in.

All of this, coupled with their simple but appealing colour scheme, makes them in effect the 'starters' Space Marine army. The hobby of miniature painting and modeling (if perhaps not the actual wargaming aspect) draws a lot of people with a creative nature. They want to experiment, create armies that appeal to their own tastes and are as unique as possible. Therefore the idea of a 'standard' army or colour scheme is naturally of-putting to them. This makes the Ultramarines unpopular amongst long-term hobbyists, they are seen as boring and unimaginative.

So the idea of an Ultramarine who doesn't always follow the rules, doesn't always do things by the book, is important. In essence he's breaking the Ultramarines stereotype. This makes him interesting, which is significant because it helps make the Ultramarines interesting again. They're no longer the faceless standard. For those who can see past the gimmicky Space Wolves and Blood Angels, the Ultramarines have hidden depths. At least that is the idea that I believe the Author wanted to convey, and which he has spoken about in interviews (see, I'm not just making this stuff up).

To sum it all up, a good story that does a good job of establishing the protagonist and is especially significant to the Ultramarines themselves.


The second story in the book, Nightbringer, is in fact the first full-length Space Marines novel. This a good story, and it complements the first in that it picks up soon after and continues the evolution of Uriel himself. However, it has some significant flaws.

Surprisingly, it seems spend more time following characters other than the Ultramarines themselves. This is not really a mistake if you consider that the novel was initially published on it's own, at which time it may not have been planned as the first of a trilogy, in fact it's title doesn't relate to the Ultramarines in any way, but it does make it feel a little out of place here. The story does a good job of describing a planet suffering from rapidly escalating internal strife, split by internal politics. Unfortunately in this scenario Space Marines are of little help, and in the first half of the book they are somewhat peripheral to the story. It's only when things come to a head and all-out war erupts that that Ultramarines start to have a real influence on proceedings, and even then the book continues to follow a number of non-Marine characters as well.

And while there's a variety of 'villain' characters, most of them are not very intimidating an, to be honest, don't really seem very intelligent. This ties in to my other real complaint about this story; there's far too many missing pieces. We never really understand how the villains learned of the Nightbringer, it's location and how to wake it, or how they came up with their plan, why they thought they could control it, or even how they met or why they didn't turn on each other near the end when they didn't need each other anymore (especially since the main factions had revealed to the reader their desire to eliminate the other when feasible). It never even explained what could possibly have possessed them to believe that the Nightbringer would give them the power they sought.

I was also somewhat let down by the end, it didn't feel like a victory when the ancient being of incredible power and evil that was so terrifying that it had entered the hereditary memory of all the races in the galaxy, essentially being the stuff that our nightmares are, quite literally, made of, was awoken and freed to roam the universe. So why was everyone acting as if they had achieved some kind of victory and everything was fine now? In fact, Uriel had an opportunity to trap the Nightbringer once more, possibly even kill it (by my logic, destroying part of the mechanism that it used to sleep through the millennia and trapping it some ten miles underground, since it's no longer in hibernation and in a weakened state, may be enough to kill it or cause it to die from starvation). All he had to do was sacrifice himself and his brothers, but he chose not to. The jerk.

Overall a good read, but it feels out of place in a book titled 'The Ultramarines'.


The third story, 'Warriors of Ultramar', was easily my favorite. I believe Tyranids are a difficult race to write. You can't talk about their motivations because they only have one: eat everything. You can't write about their history, because we don't know it. You can't show them discussing plans and arguing amongst themselves, because they are all telepathically controlled by a single hive-mind.

Graham McNeill, however, manages it very successfully. He makes them interesting by describing how they operate as a biological weapon, and by giving them a surprising degree of intelligence. Perhaps most importantly, he does a good job of making them a terrible enemy, and writing about how the heroes triumph against the odds.

This time the Ultramarines are pivotal to the story from start to finish. Uriel himself continues to grow and change, and proves to be somewhat more effective this time around, relying on both his intelligence and strength. That's not to say that we don't see anyone else; there are a number of memorable supporting characters who's presence enriches the story. In fact this is something that I feel was done particularly well; we are introduced to many characters early on, and we continue to catch glimpses over the course of the book. Some of them prove to be important to the big picture, others are tangential but provide flavor and dimension to the story.

Overall a great book, especially considering the rather difficult subject matter.


Unfortunately I did not enjoy the last novel; 'Dead Sky, Black Sun'. It seemed quite random and I found it hard to follow. I find it somewhat unlikely that a Space Marine captain would be excommunicated for making a battlefield decision to trust his men on their own and personally spearhead a dangerous yet vital mission.

But it seems that is Uriel's fate, and he is given an unlikely mission: destroy some random things that Chief Librarian Tigurius had a dream about. It's worth mentioning that Tigurius is a named codex character - the equivalent of a 40K celebrity, it would have been fitting to at least have a bit of time spent fleshing him out. But we don't get that, instead he gets a brief mention and two minimal lines of plot-driving dialogue. Anyway, in a nearly unbelievable display of lazy storytelling, Uriel is given a vague mission based on a dream. Rather than the Imperium getting hints of something happening, lives lost to bring vital information to Ultramar or some sort of actual story, some guy has a dream. We don't even get to see him have the dream. We don't even see him tell Uriel about the dream, we get Uriel reminiscing about him mentioning about the dream.

Still, the idea has potential for an epic tale. Vague hints of a growing evil on an unknown planet; they could have written whole books about the adventures he had searching for this place. Instead a Daemon (with the highly imaginative name 'Slaughterman') just pops onto their ship mid-transport, picks them up, and drops them off on right planet. I find it to be lazy and just downright bizarre (as well as raising a number of questions about how it was possible, how come daemons don't wreck Imperial transports on a regular basis if it's so easy, how the daemon knew what they were after, why this obviously powerful daemon couldn't find a more reliable group to carry out his bidding than two random space marines, etc). The story eventually explains the daemon's actions, but to be honest I failed to follow the explanation and was left somewhat lost.

Personally I found the imagery described in the book to be quite disturbing. I realise that the 40K universe is very dark and the disturbing imagery serves a purpose, but this was too much for me. And again, I found the end unsatisfying. At the words of a tortured Traitor Marine, the two former Ultramarines remove the sacred objects binding a daemon with the unlikely name of the Heart of Blood, thinking that this will kill it. Instead this frees the immensely powerful daemon (for some reason this surprises them?). After it manages to kill the Slaughterman, it is left unconscious on the floor from the effort. Now, when daemons are defeated they generally evaporate. So seeing it lying around is a pretty strong indication that it is probably still alive. It seemed logical to me that a Space Marine would want to take advantage of it's weakness to kill it, probably using the same sacred hook things used to chain it before. But Uriel just walks away. Consequently, the owner of the castle in which the Heart of Blood was imprisoned and tortured walks over, kicks it, introduces himself as the lord of this castle, and orders it to kill his enemies. Rather than ripping him apart for the agony he subjected it to, it actually does as he orders. Apart from the absurdity of that, the fact that it successfully kills an entire army of Chaos Space Marines, who were already on a war footing and had been building up sorcerous powers for weeks in preparation for an assault on the castle, begs the question: just how the hell did they imprison it in the first place?

While some may enjoy the setting of this story and the Chaos theme, I found the lazy writing and disturbing imagery, along with a number of plot devices that didn't make sense to me, left a bad taste in my mouth.

Trying to put my finger on it...

I've actually written a couple of reviews that I considered posting, but didn't get around to and now it feels a little pointless. I might still get around to putting them up, but I have so little time these days and so much I want to do. So instead here's a few thoughts about stupidity in movies.


Yesterday someone happened to mention "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow". I immediately said that I didn't want to talk about that movie. Thinking back, the reason why I said that was because it was the kind of movie that I hate, but have a hard time explaining why. I find it to be stupid; yet there's plenty of stupid movies that I enjoy, both movies that aren't taking themselves seriously (mainly comedies) and ones that are. So what exactly is this particular brand of 'stupid' that I cannot stomach?

Well, I don't have a word for it, but I can try to describe the kind of scenario where it occurs. Picture this: The villian's doomsday device is primed and ready to fire, his finger hovering over the big red button that will distroy the Earth. He stands for a few seconds, staring out of the viewport at the the precious blue-green planet, savouring the moment. Suddenly the hero bursts in, levels his firearm at the villian, and proceeds to tell him to surrender.

What the hell? Ok, wait, let's finish playing out the scene before we go off. The villian gives his rant, the hero says something unintelligent about it being over, then the villian goes ahead and presses the button (or possibly presses some other button hidden behind his back, or something else distracts the hero). Now the hero does not shoot the villian, but runs forward and examines the console to try to disable the weapon. Of course the villian does not simply stand back and allow it to happen, but attempts to interfere. The hero loses his weapon, the two tussle in an unrealistic and unintelligent fashion as we see the cannon charging up / hear the countdown (ooooooohh, drama!). Perhaps the hero manages to save the day on his own or perhaps a third party intervenes - the willful former damsel-in-distress is always a popular choice, she can't stand around making witty comments to prove how tough she is for ever, after all.

Now I didn't just make that up on the spot, I actually saw it on an old episode of one of crappier Star Trek spin-offs. I don't remember all the details and I did throw in a few variations on the theme - all of which I've seen multiple times - but basically it's how it went down.

So what's my complaint? When the guy is about to destroy an inhabited planet - hell, even if it's not inhabited - you don't stand around debating! You bloody shoot the guy! I'm sorry, his life is not worth risking the lives of billions. That he is currently trying to kill. Hell, if there's any justice in whatever justice system the hero subscribes to the villian will be executed anyway.

Yes, if you need a second to line up the shot to be sure you get him, pretending you want to talk is a valid way of trying to distracting from pressing the button in the one or at most two seconds it takes to be sure of the shot. So it's 'Baddius Guyyus! Surrend -' POW!

But the hero did not, he allowed the villian time to improvise or just call his bluff and trigger the big world-ending plot-device. Now you shoot him so he doesn't cause any more trouble, take one second to make sure he's out of commission (preferrable shooting him another couple of time - two to the body one to the head right?), then try to clean up your mess and shut down the whatever device. Right?

No, apparently you assume he won't actually try to stop you from stopping him. Very smart. Clearly the hero min-maxed for good looks, since he takes far longer to punch out the weedy scientist bad guy in his 60's than your average "yeah-I've-been-in-a-couple-of-drunken-brawls-in-my-time" bloke off the street, never mind a trained military officer.


What it all comes down to is manufacturing drama through, well, stupidity. It's just bad writing. If you can't write a situation that is dramatic enough on it's own merits, trying to amp it up using incredibly contrived plot devices, especially ones that are based on the main characters being retarded to the point of occasionally forgetting to breathe, well, it won't make a good scene. At least not for me.

You may talk of suspension of disbelief. I have no problem with suspension of disbelief when it serves a purpose, like allowing a great action scene - some of my all-time favourite movies have only a passing aquaintance with the laws of physics. But when it's used to cover for bad writing, I cannot stand it.

Perhaps it has something to do with how I relate to characters. I'll come back to that later, because that is another thing that matters to me and that I have very little tolerance for when done poorly. I'm tempted right now to give lots of examples of 'manufactured stupidity' in movies, but I'll stop here for now.

Tron Legacy review

Happy new year! To mark the occasion I'm finally getting around to writing a quick Tron review. I plan to make this a short review for two reasons: first, because my last review was far too long without saying very much. Second, because I liked Tron Legacy so I have very little to complain about, and I'm not so long winded when I compliment something.

So to start off, I have not seen the original Tron, therefore by definition my review has no credibility. You see, I firmly believe that any movie, game or other production based on an existing... creation, if you will, should be targeted to the people who love and support that creation first an foremost. The masses who are not familiar with it can come later. Why? Because if you are going to use existing characters and worlds you are trying to get the existing fans to walk through the door, tap in to an established user base, so you have the obligation not to abuse those characters and worlds. If you don't like the source material and have different ideas or tastes, go ahead and make a movie using those ideas and tastes, just don't try to paint over it with a familiar coat just for the guaranteed sales. It's exploiting the fans, and we should not stand for it. Take for example the Transformer movies: I've heard it told that the director, Micheal Bay, thought the transformers were silly. I don't know if it's true or not, but it would explain why Optimus Prime gets whipped by Megatron (it hurts me just to think that, much less write it), who is then killed by a human.

On the other hand, a well-meaning attempt to update an old property without betraying it's core nature is a different matter. After all, the fans themselves progress and typically want the creations they love to progress and improve. Sometimes it will work, like Lord of the Rings, sometimes it won't, like Ang Lee's Hulk. It's certainly not easy, my point again is only that the production should primarily be made to cater to the original fans. Since I am not an existing fan, I cannot say how faithful Tron Legacy is to the original.

Speaking as a newcomer, the movie did seem to be solidly based on a previous set of characters and events. The explanation of what the Grid is or how it exists was very briefly covered in the first couple of minutes, which I think is a good thing. Existing fans don't need to watch half a movie of explanation. Personally, I was quite satisfied with "It's in a computer, nuff said". Perhaps had I seen the original, or had more explanation been given, certain parts of the movie would have made more sense. Or perhaps not, again I cannot judge that. I believe the trade-off was worth it, especially when you have the two DVDs sitting together on your shelf and you decide to watch them back-to-back.

The special effects were great. It was perhaps not as other-worldly as the all-encompassing bloom and otherwise lack of colour made the original, but I believe it was easier on the eyes and certainly more modern-looking. The action was usually quite good, initially the abstract environments, darkness and similar outfits may cause some trouble differentiating between characters, which can make it a little confusing, but apart from the the fight scene in the night club (I could not see a thing in that one), it's still quite entertaining. The 3D was competent, it didn't give me a headache or eyestrain the way Clash of the Titans did, though it was perhaps less pronounced than in some movies. I suspect the dark and simple visuals played a part in that. The movie was a little dark with the glasses on, this was probably just a failing of the cinema and not the movie though.

The world itself was quite cool at times. In fact, I would say that was my favorite aspect of the movie; the way it successfully takes you to a whole new world. Not many movies manage to do that anymore, and none in recent memory that manage to inspire a sense of wonder the way Tron Legacy does. For that reason alone I would say it's well worth watching.

I should probably mention that the acting was fitting and the characters decent, but to be honest that's not something I'm very good at judging. I rarely notice any acting to be particularly good or bad, just out of place or not.

My only real complaint about Tron Legacy was that, well, it didn't make any sense. At all. Not to me at least. Basically the "mechanics" of the world didn't seem to follow any kind of logic. Perhaps the first movie explained things better somehow? A machine makes people into digital data? What happens to the body? Why the hell does the portal "consume massive amounts of energy" when it isn't actually doing anything? Couldn't Kevin have designed a slightly more foolproof exit mechanism? Ctrl-alt-del maybe? Besides, technically he's inside the computer, so surely he should be able to activate it, or send an activation message or something - that's what the inside of a computer is for, doing things, right? Clu managed to get a message out, why couldn't Kevin contact someone on the outside and ask them to come over and type in a few commands? The Grid is populated by programs. What sort of programs? Anti-virus programs? What do these programs actually do? And why do they talk and walk around, very skillfully I should say, in this incredibly large and intensive physics-simulation environment? Why the hell does the Grid even simulate physics anyway? Those kinds of calculations are expensive you know. Why do "users" bleed in this digital environment when programs shatter into glass chunks of code? OK, so this is all in a computer, right? So Kevin entered the Grid in order to build a perfect new world, right? So that means he can program from within the Grid, in essence it's a development environment, right? So how does that work? Does he just think things and they happen? No, he seems to read from holographic displays and type into holographic keyboards. OK, fine, seems a bit pointless but still, he should be able to create anything he can program right? That is where programs come from, right? I don't know, we see him sitting in a house full of stuff but somehow I think if he was really in a war with Clu he would have built a little more than a luxury house and a single all terrain vehicle in the last 20 years. So his "disk" (what the hell is with these disks anyway?) holds the key to allow programs to leave the Grid. Wait, so they just appear in the real world? With flesh and blood and DNA and a fully functioning brain (an amazingly complex device who's functioning is still unknown to us) and all the stuff they don't actually have in the Gird? Just appears out of thin air? He was planning to take an entire army into the real world - how would that work? Would they just materialize inside that tiny room in the crowded arcade? Where would all the energy come from? Where was the energy coming from to power the computer anyway? Or was it in the Encom computers, I didn't really understand that part. And this key, apparently there was no analysis needed, just grab the disk and you can enter the real world? But lets get back to programming. Clu cannot create new programs, he can only re-purpose them. Wait, isn't copying programs actually very easy to do on a computer? I'm still not clear on where these programs came from to begin with. Kevin created Clu by walking through a mirror, kinda like the original Prince of Persia. Can he create a whole army? It seems not. And he can end Clu's existence at any time, but only by destroying himself as well. What? Is Clu made of antimatter? One would think so, the way they explode at the end. And I'm not even going to bother to talk about the new life forms that just spontaneously appeared in the empty desert. Instead let's talk weapons. Your disk is important or something. I guess. They store everything about you, but you don't really seem to need them, so I don't really know why they're there. Except to serve as a weapon. Other weapons include glowing sticks. No guns... except on fighter jets? So the technology exists then?

Normally I would have an issue with so much of the movie making absolutely no sense at all, but in this case I don't. Because the whole point of the movie is about being in a different world, trying to explain it lessens the wonder and detracts from the story. In Tron Legacy, the fundamental premise is already utterly absurd, so why fight it? They wisely decided to not bother trying to explain a single thing. They created their own set of rules, abstract as they may be, and stuck with them. And I'm fine with that. Admittedly it took a conscious and significant effort to sustain disbelief, but that's the trade-off for enjoying the new world this kind of movie creates. I think whether you enjoy the movie or not depends on whether you can suspend that sense of disbelief.

As a quick note, for a movie named Tron, the actual character Tron does very little. It really seems he should have had a more significant part.

Overall I give it a 9 out of 10 - an excellent movie that stands out from the pack and does what it does very well.

The Tourist review

Upon arriving at the cinema I had to decide between watching The Tourist, starring Depp and Jolie, and Faster – an action movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Billy Bob Thornton. Amongst all those big names Thornton is the only one I actually don't like. For that reason and others I decided to go for the Tourist.

The movie was quite watchable. I was happy to see Paul Bettany, who I rather like, and it was interesting to me to see him with Rufus Sewell again. Johnny Depp was convincing as an awkward schoolteacher out of his depth and Angelina Jolie played her part well. There were a couple of action scenes that, while not particularly gripping, worked. The plot was reasonably interesting and I have no complaints with the pacing.

However, the movie does have one big problem. First of all, this is not an action or comedy movie, it is described as a drama (I would say suspense, although that's probably a given). That means the pay-off for watching is really all in the ending. To put it bluntly, in this kind of movie we are expecting a twist at the end. Perhaps we shouldn't, I don't know of any rule that says a drama has to have a surprise ending, but the fact is it needs a bang at the end and that usually means a twist. This is where the movie fizzles out.

The problem is everyone saw the twist coming. I saw it coming but dismissed it as too far fetched. There's a bit of a contradiction there; if the twist ending makes perfect sense it risks being too predictable, telegraphed even. However a twist with no hints that it is coming usually has no impact because it feels divorced from the story. The real art is to write a twist ending that does tie in with the whole story, answer all the questions and shed new light on events we took for granted, without being obvious and predictable. This usually means that it cannot be straight-forwards, however if it is too convoluted it risks being contrived and unbelievable – especially since the more convoluted the writer tries to make it generally the more plot holes and logical shortcomings it ends up with.

Take the end of The Usual Suspects. The beauty of it was that there were no hints so the end was not predictable, yet it was completely intertwined with the entire movie, and it achieved this without feeling forced. The twist at the end was so integral to the whole movie that it made us question everything we had just seen – how much of it was true, how much was subtly altered, and how much was outright fabrication?

Most of the time movies and TV shows err on the side of being too predictable or too contrived. This is just conjecture, but I suspect the predictable ones were written with the final twist in mind from the start while the contrived ones are more concerned with the drama inherit in the mystery and the end is written later to try to tie things together (this I believe is more often seen in TV series that are less about the plot and more about putting the characters in to new situations every week). To be honest I cannot decide which category the Tourist falls in to. It is predictable partly because we are expecting a twist and the plot is not particularly complex so there aren't many possible outcomes, and the actual end is not so hard to imagine that it never occurs to us or so hard to believe that we dismiss it as soon as it occurs to us.

Now I've just contradicted myself, if you recall several paragraphs ago I said that I saw it coming but dismissed it as being too far fetched. Well, yes and no. It feels far-fetched during the movie if you make certain assumptions, which I did, but even so it was so obviously the “best” ending that I halfway expected them to do it anyway. Which they did. So I was not surprised. Other people did not make the same assumptions I did and were fully expecting it the entire time.

But the end wasn't just predictable, it was also disappointing. You see, the entire movie built this image of Alexander Pearce as a genius who had formulated and elaborate yet brilliant plan, that he was the puppet master and he was pulling everyone's strings. So when it turns out that that wasn't the case at all, that he had no idea what he was doing and it all worked out by luck, it's quite a let-down.

I will admit that the end makes sense (mostly) and does not, once you've thought about it a little bit, feel too contrived. It all hinges on the assumption that Alexander did not expect Elise to pick him on the train and that he didn't know how to react or adapt his plan once she did, and that he didn't expect Shaw to find them. Interpol does come across as slightly incompetent, but that is clearly established at the start of the movie anyway.

This does however mean that there was a lot of luck involved, but more importantly begs the question: just what was his original plan anyway? It's never explained. It might be that we are expected to believe that he did want her to pick him on the train and his plan was basically similar to the final result except for the presence of Shaw, but I cannot accept that as it is never explained how he knew she would pick him and his behavior makes it seem much more likely that he was caught by surprise and didn't know how to react. I'm not even going to bother discussing the decoy used to try to divert our attention from “Frank”.

To me it just comes down to poor execution of what probably sounded on paper like a cool twist, but in execution is too predictable and has too little impact on the story as a whole. The movie was watchable, but the end is so weak you'll walk out feeling disappointed. And as a personal note, I don't really see why a criminal getting away with millions of pounds is supposed to be a happy ending. He knew Shaw was a crook when he worked for him, that makes him a criminal. The fact that the money was taken from a criminal does not mean that it's OK for him to walk off with it; that money was dirty from the start and he has no more right to it than Shaw did. I guess that makes it a “Heist” movie.

Overall I give it a 6 out of 10 - not bad, but not a must-see either.

Alan Wake Post-Completion Reactions

As stated in my last post, I wanted to try to write about this game before and after finishing it to see how my opinion would change. It turns out I wasn't as close to the end as I had thought - I had assumed episode 5 was the last because the "manuscript pages" menu had room for five episodes, however as it turns out there are six and the menu simply expands after you finish the fifth. I've also had a few busy days and I lost internet access for a few more, but I suspect the real reason I'm posting so late is just that I've mostly lost interest in the game.

My original fear was that the ending would let down the rest of the game. It turns out that fear was not completely unfounded. The end certainly isn't bad, in fact I would say it mostly works quite well. However, I found it a little ambiguous - I wasn't quite sure exactly what happened.

Was the Dark Presence dead, or merely banished back to whatever dark place it always existed in, ready to emerge once again? Admittedly, while we feel that we want to know the answer to that, it's perfectly legitimate not to tell us - after all, how exactly could Alan Wake know for sure himself? Trying to explain it may very well feel forced, showing us what Alan Wake saw and leaving us to draw our own conclusions was probably the best way to do it.

However that's not the only question we are left with. Zane left a single page behind, written some thirty years ago, on which he wrote about Alan as a child. What does that mean? He picked Alan thirty years ago to finish what he started, that it's because of him Alan became a writer and ultimately came here and became the center of all this? Or perhaps he actually wrote Alan himself into existence? Again this is better left unanswered, but it does add to the questions.

Wake himself is left in the cabin under the lake to... write forever? What is he writing? If the dark presence is gone how can he still be alive under the lake, and why must he stay there? Once Alice is safe he can't write himself an escape? And the last thing we hear is Alice saying "Alan, wake up". What does that mean? Is it just a random memory running through his head? Because it seems to have been deliberately chosen to suggest that perhaps this is all a dream, in other words to keep us guessing.

Alice climbs out of the water... and that's it. After Wake leaves Barry, Sheriff Sarah and Cynthia Weaver in the "bright room", we never see them again. And hey, what ever happened to the Tor and Odin? I found a manuscript page saying they were heading back to their farm (leading a group of patients as I recall), so why didn't we see them there when Alan Wake arrives (and spends the night)? The way I read it they shouldn't have had trouble with the Taken, and yet we never hear from them again. These at least are things I would like to know - I would like to see Barry and the Sheriff find Alice, see them searching for Alan, realizing that he is gone (or is he?), see the fates of some of the other secondary characters we've encountered. It would have provided a sense of closure.

Yes, there's that word again: closure. Perhaps not everyone feels the same way, but when I invest myself in a game or movie with a strong narrative and story, I want to walk away feeling a sense of closure - I suppose you could say that I've enjoyed it and I can put it to rest now. It's not a TV show, 40 minutes and the cliffhanger gets resolved next week - if it feels incomplete I just walk away feeling annoyed.

Hang on a second... TV show... episodes? That was the plan all along wasn't it! To leave us with questions so we eagerly snap up the DLC. The main menu of Alan Wake has a "downloadable content" option, where I found two additional episodes are available for purchase. So like Borderlands, the story has been compromised to make way for DLC. You know what that means? DLC is starting to do more harm than good. What a surprise, art is being compromised for the sake of profit.

It's really not fair of me to say that; making games is very financially risky these days. When you've got over a hundred people relying on the game making a profit, if DLC helps mitigate the risks then you include DLC. I won't get into the problems games developers have turning a profit right now; that's a huge issue that I personally have mixed feelings about. The point is, I wish the end hadn't left us with so many questions. I personally don't want to download the extra episodes right now, partly BECAUSE I feel unsatisfied with the main story, BECAUSE we were not given closure. And also because I personally don't have that much time and there's a lot of other games I want to play, so I was happy for the game to end where it did.

But back to the question of whether my opinion changed: contrary to what it must sound like at this point, it did not change very much. The fact that the end disappointed me slightly means that I'm not left with a sense of how amazing the game is, satisfied yet somehow wanting more. It's a hard feeling to describe, but after finishing each of the Sands of Time trilogy and Halo 3 I was left with a lasting desire to immerse myself more in their worlds, to experience more I suppose. To an extent I felt that way during Alan wake, but not after finishing it. Never the less I still like the game, I would certainly recommend it to just about anyone, I still appreciate how good it is. Perhaps that also has something to do with the length and pacing; it never really dragged on or felt too long, so I still enjoyed the basic game-play all the way to the end. And to be honest, the fact that I spent time solidifying my thoughts when I wrote my first reaction, and then re-read it after finishing the game, is probably helping me to remember the good points.


I do have some thoughts about the game, I think the best thing to do is just put them down in no specific order. For the most part they are not meant as criticism, rather just an attempt to analyze the game.

I stand by my earlier assessment that collectibles were a bad idea. Even at the end of the last level when the game was reaching it's climax I was making sure I checked every little wooden shack inside and out, searching every little nook and cranny instead of worrying about saving my friends, wife, and possibly the world - and I still didn't find every manuscript page and thermos. They probably add replay value, if you ignore them first time you can play a second time and hunt them out. But I don't replay games, I'm just not willing to spend the time. Every time I finish a level and see that I failed to find some pages I feel as if I've missed out on something, that the experience was less complete. Of course that's a deliberate way to reward players who invest the time and effort into really exploring the game; but some pages can only be found in Nightmare mode, which you cannot play until you finish the game, so I'm really not too happy about that.

In a later level, perhaps level 4, I noticed some cans stacked as a pyramid. I realized I had seen this before, so as an experiment I decided to waste a precious bullet to knock them over. As soon as I did the auto-save icon appeared - clearly this was another "collectible" with an achievement to be earned. But of course by then it was too late; after finishing the game I checked my statistics in the extras menu. It turns out I only shot 4 out of the 12 can pyramids needed for an achievement. Dammit. I also found out that I:
killed 48 Taken with a rifle,
killed 13 Taken with a flare gun,
killed 999 birds,
used 8 batteries (proof the game is too easy),
found 76 of 100 coffee thermos,
watched 13 of 14 TV shows,

... and much more. Wow, I feel like Big Brother is watching me - everything I did was measured! A quick look at the achievement list shows I did manage a good number, but I missed out on:
killing 50 Taken with a rifle (by just two Taken - dammit!),
killing 1000 birds (by just one bird? You've got to be kidding me!),
using 100 batteries (shouldn't you get an award for using less, not more?)
watching all the TV shows (again, just 1 short), etc.

It's nice to know I got a number of achievements (including some cool ones like killing 4 Taken with one flashbang and killing 2 Taken with one shotgun blast), but I'm glad I didn't read the list before playing or I would have payed even less attention to the plot! Unfortunately this is expected in a console game these days - in fact, it's practically mandatory, so I cannot fault Alan Wake. Again I understand the appeal, I did enjoy finding out that I had "earned" an achievement for running down 20 Taken with a vehicle, or listening to every radio show. I suppose I don't really have an answer to the problem except to try to overcome my obsession with playing the game "perfectly". Perhaps it would help if they didn't award you the achievements mid-game and instead waited until the end, so that you get less distracted by the prospect?

Again, the guns are very satisfying. The revolver feels reasonable powerful and yet can be fired in quick succession when needed. The hunting rifle is the most powerful firearm in the game (obviously this excludes the flaregun and flashbangs), I would have thought it would be the shotgun, at least at close range. Not that I'm complaining, the hunting rifle's one shot kills are particularly fun. I'm glad they stuck to just a revolver rather than upgrade it to a pistol; revolvers are more atmospheric, the reload trick was cool, and the limited ammo capacity works better in this type of game - likewise for shotguns and hunting rifles rather than SMGs and assault rifles. Actually, I'd say all the weapons and tools in the game were very well implemented, even if Alan had an amazing inability to hold on the them through cut-scenes.

Luckily people leave a lot of guns and flashlights (and flashbang grenades?) just lying around the place in Bright Falls. The truth is I enjoy the whole "scrounging for ammo" element, in fact I still think they actually gave you too much - but then when you run out you are completely helpless (while that never actually happened to me, it got a little close a couple of times). This is particularly problematic with the auto-save system that saves the single last checkpoint; as convenient as it is it creates a possibility that a player can get stuck without the necessary supplies to pass a game section and have no choice but to start from the beginning of the whole level, which may have been hours ago, so the designers have to make sure that can't happen. Besides, as Alan notes himself, "it was like someone was deliberately leaving the tools I needed in my path where I would find them" (or something to that effect) - another example of how the plot allowed gameplay elements to add to the story rather than detracting from it.

There were a couple of sections where you're briefly unarmed, and once you didn't even have a flashlight. I found these to be the scariest bits of the game, and I think they should have been longer (or possibly there should have been more of them, but then they would lose their novelty, so probably making them longer is the better option). Those were about the only times after the first level when I was actually scared of the Taken.

Possessed objects were scarier than the Taken in some ways, especially when they are first introduced. Possessed vehicles are pretty cool, the Corn Thresher especially is pretty scary when it's bearing down on you.

Lights are so bright that you can't see sometimes. Normally this works very well, for example "safe havens" are hard to see out of, which helps make them feel like a different place where you actually are safe, and makes you reluctant to leave them. Flares really feel blinding. The only real problem was the lantern you can replace your flashlight with; it was so bright sometimes you couldn't see what you were looking at, mainly the yellow writing on the walls that is only visible under the flashlight was saturated to pure white so it became very hard to read. A minor quibble at best; lighting is an art-form after all.

Sometimes when you're trying to back away from a large Darkness-shrouded Taken with a chainsaw as you desperately reload, you stop moving backwards as if you had hit a wall, only to find later that it was just a small rock or a six-inch-high platform or some other minor obstacle that you feel it should have been possible to stumble around or over. Giving Alan a more aggressive navigation ability would have helped, but most likely would have made his movements somewhat "floaty" and less convincing overall - which would have done far more harm since this game thrives on immersion.

Some of the "Night Springs" episodes were interesting, I especially liked the one about the quantum suicide. You don't seem to be able to view them from the main menu though, which is a shame. Speaking of which, the ability to view the cut-scenes again and listen to the music from the main menu is a nice touch, it's the kind of thing I wish more developers would do - along with giving you the ability to fully configure all the controls and to raise the volume level of speech separately from everything else. Luckily I had no trouble here; the default control scheme was just fine and I didn't feel the need to change anything but there did seem to be some room for customization, and Alan Wake does give you the option to alter the different sound elements individually.

I quite liked some of the music. In one radio show the host comments that "Poets of the Fall" remind him of the old local band "Old Gods of Asgard" - not surprising since the Poets actually played the music for the "Old Gods". I thought that was a nice touch and I really liked their songs.

The "End of Episode" screens were too long and static. For several minutes you see nothing but the "end of episode" message while a song plays. You can of course skip, but I was never sure if I was supposed to be waiting for something or not (not, as it turns out). I feel that it would have worked better with some sort of "mini-credits" or a themed slide-show - perhaps aged sepia photographs of the characters in that episode or of Alan and Alice in various stages of their lives (which might help form a connection with the audience), or maybe snapshots from various scenes of that episode.

Alan is not a very likable character. This is initially due to the stress of writer's block and later the stress of, well, fighting for his life against terrifying horrors while trying to save his wife. And while we are given a few glimpses into his life when he's not annoyed, terrified, angry, or just being a jerk, these are too few (and perhaps not deep enough) to make me actually care about the character. Similarly I didn't really care about Alice and wasn't too bothered, personally speaking, about saving her. I suspect the slightly poor facial animation was partly to blame.

On the other hand I actually cared more about some of the secondary characters. Barry was around long enough and had enough of a personality for me to actually care about him - surprisingly I didn't find him as annoying as I initially expected to, rather I found his reactions to the circumstances to be perhaps the most human of anyone in the game (not counting Alice's screaming and all that). Sheriff Sarah impressed me with her courage, level head and quick no-nonsense acceptance of the situation, I was quite worried she would die and grateful she didn't. I felt sorry for Cynthia, living thirty years in fear of the dark. How is she going to deal with life now that it's all over? Agent Nightingale didn't do much but wantonly fire his gun and call Alan names, but there was always a suggestion that he was struggling with some huge and terrifying secret, enough to make me curious about him and how he got pulled in to all this. The point is that there's probably something wrong when I care more about the backup cast than the guy the whole game is named after. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they don't get as many close-ups in the cut-scenes so the wooden facial animation didn't alienate them from the viewer?


In conclusion, it's a great game that, like many other great games, brings something new to the table and provides plenty of enjoyment but stumbles a little when the time comes to wrap things up. It has a better story, and it does a better job of integrating it with the gameplay, than most games I've played. The few problems that it has are nowhere near troublesome enough to ruin it, and won't even necessarily matter to every player. The gameplay was better than I expected and I really enjoyed it - for many people that's all that really matters. While the story itself impressed me, there were some issues that prevented me from being drawn in too deeply, but many people don't care at all about stories in games. Finally, it wasn't particularly scary, which might disappoint if you were hoping for a proper survival-horror game. Hopefully the rumored sequel will do a better job of drawing the player in, and make it a little harder for him to fall asleep at night afterward.

Alan Wake Pre-Completion Reactions

I've been playing Alan Wake for a few days now. So far I am enjoying it, in fact I would say I am enjoying it more than I had expected to, even despite the good reviews raising my expectations. A lot of that has to do with the combat. It's quite satisfying. Unlike traditional cover-based third person shooters, it's fast and fluid, your enemies react to your shots and don't take multiple magazines worth of bullets to kill - even a single shot can stagger most of them for a moment, so your weapons really do feel powerful. Using the flashlight to aim feels natural, tapping to reload faster makes it feel more engaging somehow, and desperately ducking under a swinging axe with the dodge button is enjoyable. Enemies disintegrate in a burst of light, which makes killing them even more satisfying.

Don't get the idea that's it's easy, though. Well, actually, it is kind of easy. That's mainly because you can't select the hardest difficulty setting from the start, only the medium setting. Even so, there's tough moments, but if you explore a little you'll find enough flares and flash-bangs to fight your way through most of the toughest parts. Personally I'm extremely conservative and somewhat egotistical, I always try to stick to the regular weapons and save the strong stuff for "when I really need them" - which generally means that I play the tough parts three or four times, too stubborn to even slip new batteries in my flashlight, and then episode ends and Alan falls off a cliff or something and I lose all my lovely flare-gun rounds without using them.

Part of the reason for that is that the game is not actually all that scary. Perhaps it's the low difficulty, or the fact that single enemies are usually not hard to deal with and even the tougher ones are quite slow, or even just that the enemies are basically human. Personally, I think the third person perspective has a lot to do with it. First person games that drop you in the dark are very claustrophobic, and things like the muzzle flash lighting up the monster that's RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU really get your heart racing. In Alan Wake, not only do you have a better view of what's around you, the fact that they are attacking the guy on screen rather than coming straight at you just makes it less engaging. Also, the consequences for dying are minimal, you fall over and then the game loads up again - there's just not much impact there.

Personally I don't really mind though. It would have been better if it was scarier, but as it is I'm loving it. The story so far is very good. It's told piecemeal; scattered manuscript pages gives hints of the truth and snippets of the future, random television sets lighting up with views of Alan himself pacing and rambling, strange conversations with crazy people, brief flashbacks. While the story does start to take shape, it still keeps you guessing until the forth episode, during which enough is explained for you to finally understand what's happening. And it's a pretty cool story.

In fact, I would say that the story is brilliant because of what it allowed the creators to do: make a game that takes all the elements of a horror novel that can work in a game and use them without worrying about the bits that can't. Take for example the trigger-happy FBI agent. We don't need to worry about why he's chasing Alan; he's there because it makes a more exciting story, that's all there is to it. It also explains some of the questionable logic; why does the kidnapper keep setting up meetings at night? Because it makes a more exciting story. Why is there ammo and weapons scattered around the middle of the forest? Because in a book, the protagonist is often helped by fortunate coincidence, perhaps almost as often as he is caught by unfortunate coincidence. The use of the scattered manuscript pages works very well, in addition to foreshadowing future events, they give glimpses into the other characters that would be hard to fit into the normal narrative. And the fact that they are obtained one at a time and narrated by Wake makes them easier to read than the blocks of background text some games have hidden in their menus.

The setting works well too. A small village, isolated, surrounded by dark forests, mountains, cliffs and rivers. The scenery is quite beautiful sometimes, dark and scary others. Broken down wood buildings, winding forest paths, old abandoned mines, all lend themselves well to the horror setting. The abundance of weapons and survival equipment does not feel out of place either.

I had heard that some of the characters and dialog did not fit with the rest of the game. Personally, I didn't really experience that. That characters were lively and had character, sometimes they talked too much but it's probably better than talking too little. Sometimes people were quite quick to accept strange things, but it's not a TV show, we would get bored if we had to watch every character react in a completely realistic way. Sometimes I worried specific people would die, and I hoped they wouldn't, I guess that says it all really.

Sound plays a big part in a game like this, and Alan Wake seems to get it right. Audio cues do a good job of warning you of danger, making you feel that an enemy's protective darkness is really burning off, etc. Background music and sound sets the scene, and there's some nice audio tracks at the end of episodes.

Gameplay is divided into episodes that even have mini recaps at the start. At first it seems extraneous, but after a while it seems to make sense, dividing the action and story into arcs that keeps the game moving without making it feel drawn-out, and also makes it easier to jump in and out without feeling that the immersion is broken. It can also give you a moment to contemplate the previous chapter, which I suppose can put your mind in a better position to appreciate the next one, perhaps helping to keep the story in mind so you don't get confused or just miss anything. Plus it just fits with the whole "fiction" idea.

Graphics are good. There's a lot of light bloom that helps emphasize the importance and power of the light. Sometimes it's a little overpowering and makes it hard to see, but this is rarely out of places and usually feels natural. In contrast the Darkness twists and flows like it's alive, looking very sinister. Characters and animation look good, except for facial animation which is quite wooden. The environment looks great, with some beautiful scenic views.


So what's wrong with the game? That's just it; very little - even the driving mechanics are solid. That's another one of the things I really like, there nothing to get in the way, to break the spell. Well, very little anyway. There may be a few plot holes, I'm not sure yet, but like I said they whole nature of the story means plot holes are easy to ignore (most can probably be discounted as holes in his story, not in THE story). Alan himself acts a bit like a jerk sometimes, but that also is part of the story. The facial animation is rather poor compared to some other games, which hurts a game like this a bit, but it's not too bad.

My biggest criticism really would have to be the collectibles. I always feel a strong narrative-driven game (along with fast directed action games) should not have collectibles. I've just been told my best friend is in mortal danger, I can hear him yelling for help, calling my name, but all I can think about is that there might be a coffee flask just down that path and if I go to help him I'll miss my chance to get it. Well, he can wait, it's not like the game will kill him if I don't get there in time. And that's the problem; it breaks the immersion, lessens the impact of otherwise powerful scenes, distracts you from the story. I know that collectibles have many advantages, perhaps some people will just ignore the collectibles and focus on the story, but I just can't seem to do that. I firmly believe I would have enjoyed the game more if it weren't for the coffee flasks. The pages are slightly harder for me to rule on because they are brilliant themselves, but searching for them distracts me in the same way. Perhaps just handing them to the player would work better even if it is less immersive?

My other main issue is that my AI-controlled allies actually get on my nerves in a fight. I'll be aiming my flashlight at an enemy and suddenly my friend steps in the way of the beam - sometimes they insist on staying there, whenever I step to the side to try to aim past them they just step right back in the way. The same thing happens when I'm trying to get a shot with a gun too. Sometimes when they start to shoot at someone, I turn my attention to a different threat, and as I'm lining up for a shot, suddenly my target gets blown apart by a shotgun blast, my friends deciding to ignore the threat I trusted them to handle (and usually the enemy has run past them and is now coming at me). Basically, they make the fights much more chaotic and out of my control. But that's not too surprising, friendly AI is always difficult, and it's really a minor part of this game; you're alone far more often than not.


I guess the most important thing is that it's quite different to the standard fare. Combat is not completely unique but certainly different enough to feel new, and it is enjoyable. The story is interesting and certainly a change, again I quite like it. The episodes help control the pace, making it easier to jump in and out without it feeling disconnected. And all the "old" stuff just works. In conclusion, it's a polished game that has a good story, good gameplay, good graphics, good music, good voice acting, with very little wrong with it.