Monday, May 28, 2012

I've Never Heard of Poets of the Fall Before Tonight

Tonight I finished Alan Wake's American Nightmare, and it took me just under three hours in total.  That is short, yes, but I knew that going into the game.  It's basically glorified DLC, and I'm fine with that.  I have several things that I think are worth talking about.

First, the variety of enemies.  Aside from the Splitters, the next new kind of enemy I ran across actually surprised me a bit:  Big spiders.  People who make video games seem to think every person that plays them has arachnophobia.  I certainly wouldn't like seeing a spider as big as a dog coming at me, but they don't cause me to be scared.  I found their addition to Alan Wake to be quite out of place.  So that wasn't so good.  The next new thing also surprised me, but this time in a GOOD way.  If you remember the first game, you had to deal with black birds -- they are probably crows or ravens -- that would swoop down on you in a big murder.  This happened to me tonight, and Alan's quip when they showed up was, "Oh no, not birds again!"  Well, suddenly the murder transformed into something that looked like Nosferatu.  Yeah, that one impressed me.  Well done, game.  The last type of new enemy was a HUGE thing with a buzz saw.  It's a fucking BITCH to kill, let me tell you.  Near the end of the game, I had to fight two of the big fuckers at once.  That pretty much served as the game's "Final Boss Fight".

This brings me to my next topic of discussion:  The difficulty of the game itself.  Actually, place that thought on hold for a moment.  Before I get to that, I need to discuss one other thing.

Okay, so the game is not only short, but it actually...repeats.  Part of the plot is that Alan is trying to alter reality into a certain way that will defeat his dark self.  I think he's referred to as Mr. Scratch in the game.  So here's the thing:  Alan is caught in some kind of time loop.  At one point, you get sent right back to the beginning of the game and must start all over.  Things are slightly different this time around, and bit harder, but it felt really...CRAPPY...to be doing the same things again.  After that second go through, it happened AGAIN.  This time, it was again a little bit different and quite a bit harder still.  I found the third (and final) time to be more tolerable, because it was heavily abbreviated and it was actually resolving things for a change.  I'm...torn on this method.  The obvious conclusion that one would make is that it's lazy game design to re-use the same levels over and over.  On the other hand, it used different sections of the same levels, it wasn't exactly the same, and it was actually a neat plot device.

Of course, one of the main complaints about Dragon Age 2 was how they re-used the environments.  I personally didn't have a problem with that, but every other human being on this planet thinks I'm wrong.

Alright, now on to the difficulty.  Really, three quarters of the game is ridiculously easy.  I never died and actually only got HIT maybe once or twice.  I was actually quite disappointed by that, and I'm not a person who generally likes games to be super difficult.  I want to be ENTERTAINED, not FRUSTRATED.  But...it seemed too easy even for me.  In the last quarter of the game, when the time loop started for the third time, things got real, though.  It was on like Donkey Kong.

It also took the game this long to make me jump.  In this last part, the enemies started coming from multiple locations at once, just like they did through ALL of the first game.  This leads to some of them sneaking up on you while you're focusing on something else.  There was one point where I turned around, and there was a Taken right in my face behind me.  I screamed pretty loudly at that.  It was the ONLY time playing the game that I jumped.

While we're still on the difficulty, I only died in the game about 5 times.  One of them was me trying to back up on a buzz saw monstrosity and not realizing the gate had closed behind me.  The other 4 times were all in the same spot -- on the part where I had to fight 2 buzz saw monstrosities at once, along with about a half dozen smaller Taken.  THAT was difficult.

Seguing into something else, I'd actually like to talk about the music.  The music composed for the game was done by the same person who did the first game, and naturally it's quite good.  What I found surprising, though, was the licensed music.  First of all, there was a rock song playing during the first puzzle.  (So, it played three times if you've been keeping up.)  I recognized this song not because I'd heard the song before, but because the band sounded incredibly familiar to me.  I looked it up after I'd finished the, and sure enough, it was Kasabian.  Brilliant.  It was the song Club Foot, if you're curious.  Great tune.  Probably my third favorite Kasabian song now.

Even more brilliant was the song that played during the last big fight.  (Yes, that fight with the 2 monstrosities that kicked my ass 4 times.)  Boss fight music is always interesting, because usually for me I'm too focused on the boss fighting aspect of things to really pay much attention to it.  When I notice boss fight music, you can sure it's GOOD music.  I mean, take the boss fight music in Diablo 3 as an example.  That's amazing music.

The song that played during the final fight in AWAN was amazing in a different kind of way.  Blizzard's music is epic music.  It moves you.  It makes you feel the emotions that are being played out in the boss fight.

This song in AWAN simply made you feel, "Oh, it's time to kick ass."  It put a smile on my face.  Look it up if you'd like.  The song is "The Happy Song" by Poets of the Fall.  Imagine starting a boss fight at the 45 second mark, and you'll know exactly what I mean.

I'd never heard of Poets of the Fall before tonight, either.  I've since downloaded their album that contains The Happy Song, and I'm digging it quite heavily.

Anyway, let's get back on topic now, shall we?

All in all, I found Alan Wake's American Nightmare to be a very enjoyable little piece of gaming.  As I said before, I really enjoyed that old-time science fiction feel to it layered over top of a modern game and story.  The ending was formulaic, and y'know what?  I like formulaic endings, damn it!  Bad guy loses.  Good guy wins.  The end.  Thank you very much.  Call me overly romantic or boring when it comes to story telling; I don't much care.  I like optimistic endings.

It's never about the ending, anyway.

No comments:

Hello!

Holy smokes.  The last post I wrote for this blog was on October 18, 2017.  Through the little more than  two years since, this blog has be...