Alan Wake

It’s not a lake, it’s an ocean.

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I found myself at a crossroads earlier; I could either continue working on a video, or I could relax in bed and take a nap. Then I woke up, played a bit of Quantum Break and had a good time gaining achievements and progressing.

I learned tonight that the DirectX12 version of this game was never released outside of the Microsoft Store, which actually isn’t a loss considering some benchmark information I read in a few places stated that the DX11 version performed with a better framerate and fewer bugs. So far I’ve enjoyed all of the visuals, and Remedy once again impresses me with excellent storytelling. You were invited over to your friend’s business to help with an experiment involving a time machine; one thing leads to another, and now there is a fracture in time and you have time powers.  It plays like Max Payne but with more than just bullet time.

I remember as far back as Max Payne there were in game “TV shows” that you could stop and watch, and in Quantum Break you get actual full episodes of “The Quantum Break Show” which is used to show you what is happening from within Monarch (the company responsible for this time fuck up). They took an interesting approach in using live action acting instead of their 3D modeled variants. Given Remedy’s past with using real people to not only model all of their characters but to also use real people in every other aspect of their games (such as during the fake in game TV shows in Max Payne to the in game “comic panels” I don’t really find it that jarring. One thing I should note though, is the episodes are almost a half hour from what I’ve seen. If you finish an act in the game you might want to grab a snack or something. Maybe play this game on a TV for the full episodic experience.

Remedy needs to bring back Max Payne, and also make full episodes of their old in game shows. I would kill for live action Address Unknown or Lords and Ladies.

Bonus points if Sam Lake plays every single character, including all of the women. :v:

Starting a new game with old school vibes.

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I made an attempt to go through an area of my game library so that I may strike off another game from my ever expanding backlog. Starting at near the top of my library I decided Alan Wake looked interesting, it was made by the same people who worked on Max Payne 1 and 2, and it had that Remedy style to it when it came to storytelling and the overall environment you’re contained in.

The best way I could describe Alan Wake is like this: Imagine the bad dream sequences from Max Payne, make them slightly less trippy (but still trippy as balls) and make the protagonist reminiscent to Stephen King. You even start out by having a nightmare, you’re being chased by a murder from your own story and eventually you’re woken by your wife, though not too much further into the game your nightmares soon become a reality. You can also collect manuscripts of stories that you never wrote, yet they seem to be yours. Every page you collect gives you the rundown of what will happen to you as well as the others around you. There was also a couple Easter Eggs I found among the pages collected, this was one of them:

I had to listen to this and another page,, the voice reading this page was different from Alan’s and I had to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. Then I confirmed it; this was a reference to Max Payne including his voice actor. That made my evening.

I played it both on Windows and on Linux tonight (science, fuck yeah). Other than some graphical glitches while dodging and a slightly lower framerate it seems to handle just fine through Proton. I may want to do a stream of this game sometime in the future, possibly during October if I have any time to do so. This would be a perfect game to play on a cold dark night lit only by candles and the light from my displays and tower. People might be bummed if I did stream it though, if they’re wanting to watch me get scared they’re going to be bummed. I don’t quite approach horror and jump scares like more popular streamers and YouTubers. Somehow I can’t cry like a little bitch and make my voice go as high as the most popular guys who specialize in this field. :zorak: That is why I’ll never make the big bux.

I guess playing these games before bed isn’t really a good idea considering the Max Payne nightmares fucked with my head when I was much younger, but considering I had a nightmare about going bald last night I think I’ll do fine going up against some annoying axe murdering phantoms. We’ve already confirmed that I’m quite a fabulous murderer myself. :trollface: