168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alan Wake 2 looks really cool. In our on Remedy’s follow-up to Control, my colleague Eric Switzer compared it to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil 4. And, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:if you know Eric’s taste, that’s very high praise indeed. Enjoying Control and loving RE4 has me thinking that I’ll love Alan Wake 2. But my brief experience with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the original game ha🍸s me worried that the sequel won’t be for me.
I had a two week break this summer and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:wrote ahead of time about how I planned to use the time off to play Alan Wake and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout: New Vegas. I didn't finish either. In New Vegas’ case, that was mostly because it’s a big game and I didn’t actually end up having enough time to devote to it. In Alan Wake’s case, I was put off by the game’s dream logic. Eric talks about this in his preview of the sequel, pointing out that Alan walks into the Oceanview Hotel, runs down a hallway to the opposite door, and ends up outside back where he started.
Alan Wake Hands-On Preview: I Can't Alan Wait
Alan Wake 2 is 13 years in the making a🍌nd the🐲 culmination of all of Remedy's storytelling ambition.
This Escher-style spatial geometry is the same thing that has rubbed me the wrong way in some of Bloober Team's horror games, like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Layers of Fear, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Blair Witch, and the last few hours of Observer. When I play a single-player game set in a 3D space, the thing I'm usually looking for is a sense of place. I want to explore, discover new things, and come to an understanding of the place I'm inhabiting.
Observer offers that in its first half. But in its second, your futuristic detective spends most of his time wandering through a cyber dream space where normal logic doesn't apply. This is an issue that is significantly improved in the System Redux version Bloober put out at the start of this console generation, but it remains my biggest beef with a game that starts out in a concrete cyberpunk tenement building that feels exhilarating to explore.
In the brief slice of Alan Wake I did play, it seemed to operate on the same level, blurring the line between what is real and what is not. From what I understand, that's part of the appeal. But when you take a forest setting, which already tends to be more difficult to make sense of than something set in a built space, and combine it with a world that can change at any moment, it's kryptonite for my enjoyment. This was my experience with Blair Witch, and it made for a miserable slog.
Remedy, on the whole, has a better track record than Bloober Team. But the surreal moments in their games have, historically, been my least favorite parts. The Ashtray Maze in Control was a cool set-piece, but I found exploring the Oceanview Motel more frustrating than fun. Similarly, my least favorite part of the original Max Payne were the nightmare levels. Surreal imagery and dream sequences can be a vital tool in an artist's toolkit — Mulholland Drive is one of my favorite movies — but it just doesn't work for me in a virtual setting, where making it through requires internalizing the dream logic and working it out as you persevere. It puts too much of a burden on the player, whereas in a film, the viewer can simply let the images wash over them.
Alan Wake 2 has plenty else going for it. Its shooting looks satisfying. Its noir-inspired levels seem enticing. And its story seems delightfully esoteric. But my ability to enjoy any of that depends on it using dream logic better than any game I've played before. I hope it does.