Alan Wake: "I don't hate numbers that much"/"Seriously, not even 10, even though I walked in on it in the middle of a geriatric gangbang and it scarred me for life", to the extent that one sentence has been taken out back and shot so that the following could be issued as part of a hostage bargain for the following to be posted.
I can't even get how this game can be scary to people who still need to be read bedtime stories and assured that Ronald Reagan isn't hiding under their bed, let alone anyone who would be won over by the constant Stephen King todgerlodging.
The whole thing looks like it's one Rohypnol away from 'THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL FEEL IT IS SUPER SCARY YES YOU HEY LOOK HOW UNSETTLING IT WOULD BE IF YOU HAD NO SENSE OF HOW SPECIAL-NEEDS CHILDREN ARE SPOOKED BY HAUNTED HOUSES MADE OF POPPING SOUNDS AND ODDLY-LUMBERING ELDERLY INCOMPETENTS', with that shortage only occurring because they used up all their lye trying to get the voice actors sounding as predictable as possible... with further recording as the stick and chemical burns as the carrot. There's as much subtlety as an atom bomb, but without the satisfaction of thinking that the people who died screaming in agony did so for a good cause.
I severely do not get it at all. Everything terrible occurs because the main character is a massive asshat, and why I'd play the game instead of having him die at the hands of sheer pointlessness is beyond me...
Alan Wake said:
"Ooh, look at me, I'm going to use my wife's crippling fears against her because she tried to help me as a writer facing a massive *writing block*! Whore of Babylon, Minister of Evils Darkest!
"I could have done easier things like space engineering, or biomedical combustulography, or literally just throwing toilet paper away after I've used it for its intended purpose, but instead I became a horror writer - because making nonsense up was truly my calling and only the strongest of will and character are up for that daunting task!
When the weaker of their generation hide behind such nonsense as 'laser-cooling to induce Bose-Einstein condensation' or 'solving world hunger by rewriting nature itself', I came forth to deliver us from slightly-less unnerved evenings, and OH HOW I HAVE STRUGGLED!
"And a pox on the horrible bitch who spends her life not only putting up with me but actually doing graphic design for my books, because even in the face of a massive shortage of pamphlets on how to not be an absolute twat she bravely stormed into putting things on the front of rubbish that people would have bought anyway because apparently I'm in some bizarro universe where 'being taken out back and shot' has been replaced by 'being propelled into the limelight as a brilliant horror author' by people who evidently think books should be burned on principle and need a posterchild for their movement!
"Can't she see that writer's block is such a massive obstacle that nobody from philosophy to the sciences to government could possibly understand just how complicated it is to not be able to do my one obviously-ridiculously-difficult-to-the-point-of-self-flagellating duty as a member of a supposedly sentient species, and that this is literally the worst thing to ever happen to anyone ever, and that caring about someone and trying to help them out is such a horrible crime against humanity that anyone even considering that path immediately deserves to be hung by their own entrails from a tree made of their own massive betrayal, grown from the seeds of their deepest, darkest personal torments, on the soil of desperation made flesh and turned into a monster?"
There is literally not a single aspect of this production that doesn't make me want to just have Alan Wake die as many times as possible. Even the 'I have to rescue my wife' angle is blown right out after the realization that the only difference between that asshole and the kidnapper is that the kidnapper at least has a modicum of honesty about using people's deeply-set fears to manipulate people around them for absolutely clinically fucktarded reasons. I am literally siding with a backwoods felon wearing *flannel* over the title character in a manner so genuine that my heart would have grown three sizes too large if I had the energy to possess one anymore.
I am so disappointed by this that I actually started questioning my value of things like 'atmosphere'. There was a level in the *worst* Thief game (Shalebridge Cradle, in Deadly Shadows) whose atmosphere made this game seem like asphyxiating on hopelessness itself in the least worthwhile way possible, and there was a brief moment before I remembered that storyline where I thought that maybe I have always hated gaming and just never realized it.
Mass Effect DLC, overall a ~$100 scam to throw more money at people who blew ~$80 on launch day for the non-nerfed edition of the latest game, had so much more grip on my sense of reality that I must have become some really rubbish cinematic Cylon in order to appreciate clear corporate cockgobbling more than independent innovation on such a truly remarkable scale. Everything about this game looked like a labor of love meant to explore fear itself, but all I want is to advance through the game only as quickly as absolutely necessary to see the poncy protagonist die demonic deaths in as many ways as possible. I just give up.
Jef