#IN SOUND MIND ALAN WAKE FULL#
#IN SOUND MIND ALAN WAKE PC#

It’s not so much a survival horror action game, as a psychological thriller detective game. Fortunately it doesn’t hurt the experience (but it is kind of funny).

There are also a few pre-rendered game-engine cinematics to help with exposition, but ironically they look slightly lower-res and muddier than the real-time in-game graphics all dolled up. During gameplay Alan narrates his thoughts to the player as you make your way to well lit areas (the only refuge from the all-consuming darkness). Each episode is delivered like a television show, complete with “Previously on Alan Wake” intros and lead outs at the end (the licensed music of which is excellent, fitting perfectly with the game’s twilight-zone-style weirdness).

#IN SOUND MIND ALAN WAKE PC#

The story is divided up into six episodes, with the two additional DLC episodes included in the PC release. After experiencing one simple little black-out, Alan wakes up to find that his wife is missing, a week has past, and the vacation home they were staying in hasn’t existed since 1970… Not good. As such, Alan and his wife plan a relaxing vacation in the small idyllic town of Bright Falls, Washington (lots of trees, mountains, fresh air, wonderful sunsets.) Anyway, things go from ‘peachy’ to ‘odd’, then ‘odd’ to ‘death-trap’ really fast upon arriving in Bright Falls.

The stress has of not writing has gotten so bad that it manifests itself in horrible nightmares.

Not just because of the third-person perspective, but because of the animations and stumbling around that both protagonists share… They even sound alike (albeit with Alan Wake sounding more dramatic than charismatic.) The game world design is also similar between the two games but locations are cosmetically different, with Alan Wake taking place in the mountainous forests of the north-western US, rather than jungles of some tropical locale.Īlan Wake (the character) was a best-selling writer who has been suffering a two-year bout of writer’s block. Speaking of controllers, the game’s control scheme feels a lot like Uncharted’s.

#IN SOUND MIND ALAN WAKE FULL#

If you have any hesitations about playing with a kb mouse (you shouldn’t as it handles quite well), the game also has full 360 controller support, so you’re not really missing anything playing on computer. The visual fidelity difference between this and the console iteration is substantial enough to clearly label the PC release as the definitive version from a graphics standpoint. On top of that LOD and draw distance were also set full tilt.ĭon’t get me wrong, it’s not be the best we’ve seen on PC, but because Alan Wake was never an ugly game, with pimped out graphics running at liquid-smooth 60fps this updated DX11 version looks great. 16x AF, 8x AA, everything else at “high” including SSAO and FXAA (which is kind of redundant with regular AA being maxed). Armed with a mid-range GTX 570, I was able to run the game at 60fps with maxed out visuals at 1080p. Since the game is already almost 2 years old (Where does the time go?), it doesn’t take too much computational horsepower to get it running masterfully on PC. … To answer your question yes, I’m intentionally being overly dramatic, but that’s because Alan Wake has a tendency to bring out that intensity in its players.īefore talking about how much I like the game (it’s the same game that got positive reviews circa 2010), let’s first focus on the benefits of the PC version. In a round-about way, it is the way it always should have been… This happened for days after launch… and days turned into weeks, which turned into months… which turned into December 2011 and the announcement that Alan Wake was coming to PC in early 2012! So my unintended delay to buy Alan Wake for 360 wasn’t in vain. However, something strange happened: Every time I saw a copy sitting on a shelf, rather than pick it up, I couldn’t help but think about what the PC version could have been. Alas, when it did finally launch on 360 I still fully intended to play it thoroughly… I’m not talking RPGs either (although I do love quite a few of them), but narrative adventures that are best told through interactivity, which is precisely what Remedy was promising with Alan Wake. Being a fan of PC gaming, I shed a tear that day… You see, I happen to be a huge fan of story-driven, single player titles it’s the reason I play videogames. Then, as it neared closer to the game’s launch, Remedy announced the decision to cancel the superior PC version (zing!), opting instead to go 360 exclusive (naturally, I blamed on Microsoft Game Studios, not Remedy). I was always under the impression that Alan Wake was touted as being an Xbox and PC title.

In sound mind alan wake