Alan Wake

It's finally here. Fans of Remedy's former masterpieces and of story-driven thriller games have been waiting for a development cycle spanning into the last generation for the adventure of the eponymous writer to make his journey not just into the night but into the inner workings of his mind, coming alive before his eyes in a psychological horror/shooter crossover that is bound to make you think as much as it gets your heart racing. If you like your games with beautifully written storylines, gorgeous visuals and that spark of originality in the gameplay, then look no further - Remedy Games have quite frankly done it again.

It's hard to describe the spot that Alan Wake manages to hit so well that makes it such a thought-provoking and, as the subtitle of the game suggests, thrilling experience. Storylines in games are rarely found so well crafted in games, and it would be easier to compare Alan Wake to a TV show like LOST or Heroes. What is happening to the protagonist (or protagonists) begins seeming supernatural and inexplicable, and often worrying, until the events slowly unwind during the course of the story and reveal bit by bit the whole truth, complete with shocks and cliffhangers all the way through. This is even shared in the format of the game, with it being broken up into six 'episodes' with roughly 50 minutes of gameplay in each; and every single one filled to the brim with action, emotion, mystery, and hidden clues for the player to find that may give extra back-story to characters and happenings.

Upon beginning the single player story, you are thrown right into the deep end in one of Alan's nightmares which, little does he know, is a foreshadowing of the events to come. Having given you this hook, Alan awakens to find himself entering Bright Falls which he is visiting on a holiday with his wife to get away from his busy lifestyle as an author, and it is here that the game then treats you to one its best features: the visuals. The setting is that of a mountainous lake district assumed to be in the Columbian/Alaskan area, and it is probably the most beautiful game world I have ever seen, taking full advantage of the Xbox 360's processing power to give its many vistas a crisp, warm feeling with incredible use of HDR rendering in daylight, and at night making your friendly torch pierce through the shadows in the most realistic way you'll have ever seen. After a short beginning which involves meeting some of the locals of Bright Falls, and you will certainly notice there is something eerily wrong with many of them, you are taken to the scene which kicks off the main story - the sudden disappearance of Alan's wife into the darkness after an argument. It's hard to explain much more, partly at the risk of spoilers but also because writing out the plot simply doesn't do justice to playing it out. Expect along the way to find the same things that made the stories in the Max Payne games feel so alive: appropriate TV shows to watch, things to pick up and read, answer messages to be listened to and messages on the walls that remind you that this isn't a troubled character going through an ordinary world, this is a troubled character going through a troubled world.

As the enemies you fight are shrouded in the darkness that possesses them and gives them their power, light is your friend. As such, the combat system is based on mixing shooting and the use of light combined. Generally speaking, the method of killing an enemy is to shine light on them until their 'darkness shield' is eradicated, leaving them vulnerable to conventional bullets. However, you won't just be using a torch. While throughout the game you can slowly upgrade your normal light source to heavy-duty torches and lanterns, you also have the use of flares, flare guns and flashbang grenades, and will have to make full use of environmental sources of light, including car headlights, streetlights and ultra-powerful searchlights. This adds a new dimension to the usual survival-horror shooting system found in games like Resident Evil, as it requires to think about both the ammo in your gun and the batteries in your torch, and how you can use your surroundings to your advantage. The result of this is often a frantic and frightening fight in the dark that doesn't just vividly describe Alan's plight against darkness but also humanity's general fear about what it cannot see.

It must be noted, however, that amongst all Alan Wake's strengths, the enemies are probably one of the weak points. The combat system is great, but when it comes to it, it will be a rinse and repeat process with enemies and the only real variation is their strength and what weapon you are using. There are some 'bosses', often in the form of huge inanimate objects or vehicles like bulldozers, but really these are just big enemies and usually only require more light to defeat them. With most of the bosses I encountered I could simply throw a couple of flashbangs and finish off with a torch within twenty seconds or so and this was a little disappointing. Also, while I found most of the characters to be completely unique and well scripted, their facial movements in cutscenes rarely did them justice, particularly with Alan's wife Alice, who I found difficult to actually want to find when she looked quite so stupid in cutscenes. This sounds odd but it really is hard to be sympathetic to a damsel in distress when their mouth hardly moves during sentences. This is especially annoying when contrasted with other characters, such as Doctor Hartman, who were superbly animated. Other small nitpicks I have with the experience were the relative ease of the game, and the length being just around 8 hours with no other game mode, though I understand more content is in the works, and with the standard of the current game I expect more incredible additions for the future.

Alan Wake is, simply put, another fine work of art in the gaming industry's exhibition. It rightly joins games such as Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain in terms of masterful story telling, and Half-Life 2 for its cutting-edge graphics. Any Xbox 360 owner who isn't completely multiplayer-oriented shouldn't hesitate to pick this up and witness what Remedy do best. 9/10.

Aliens vs Predator

It's been a very long time since either Aliens or Predators made any big effect on the game market. Since Rebellions original AvP games on the Atari Jaguar and PC in the late 90s which inspired the 2004 movie, all that's been made is a long list of poorly-made and low-budget spin-offs which barely saw any attention. Has Rebellion's attempt at a comeback paid off?

On face value, the game appears to have a lot going for it. Three whole campaigns (one for each species) lie ahead and are accompanied by a variety of multiplayer modes which incorporate every species' strengths and weaknesses. As such, one might think that this is a game with a lot of play time and replay value. Unfortunately, this isn't the case.

To begin with, the campaigns each manage to completely flop in their own way. The Marine campaign is the first played and will take roughly 4 or 5 hours, the Predator campaign cutting down greatly to about 2 hours, and lastly the Alien campaign at about an hour and a half. With these being successively shorter it seems all too clear that Rebellion were rushing to finish this for a deadline and needed to make some serious cuts to the single player aspect. To add insult to injury, it's also very clear while you're playing the campaigns exactly the type of gameplay that Rebellion intended in each, and it's all riddled with mistakes. The Marine's campaign starts off in a dark room armed with nothing but a torch and a pistol, being stalked by a Xenomorph and there is little doubt that the campaign is meant to be scary. However, while this works well in the first moments of the missions and there are certainly some chills to be had, it quickly wears off as environments get bigger and lighter - some of it even outside in sunlight, which seemed the dumbest of ideas - and the weapons you have get increasingly stronger. While some of these weapons are particularly fun such as the Scoped Rifle and the Smart Gun, the fact is that the game quickly becomes more of a Sci-Fi shooter than a survival horror, and simply doesn't have the thrills to work as a shooter in its own right. The character you play as also feels slow and clumsy, and having the weight of a Gears of War character in first person does not work at all. Next is the Predator campaign, which is perhaps the best of the lot. It's generally a mix of action and stealth, staying true to the films, and it's definitely a lot of fun stalking enemies from treetops whilst camouflaged, then striking just at the right moment. These moments are perhaps the best in the game but, when this campaign gets bad, it gets really bad. The Marines you hunt are an odd mix between too stupid and too sensitive; sometimes you'll be able to stealth execute and enemy with him screaming just a few metres from his squad member without him noticing, and sometimes one of your prey will magically spot you with your camo on whilst watching him from a rooftop. There's also a big problem with the difficulty, as you start with nothing but your blades. This would be fine as they do the job for those marvellously disgusting stealth kills, but get spotted and you'll need to fight your way out, and for normal close combat the blades share the Marine's clumsiness, and you'll more likely end up flailing your arms in your enemies' faces. The difficulty then becomes hideously easy about 75% of the way through the campaign when you get your hands on the Combi Stick, which, believe it or not, is a 1-hit-kill on ANYTHING, doesn't remove your camouflage, and is in infinite supply. You can't lose. Lastly is the Alien campaign and frankly there's very little to say on it, due to there being very little of it. The basic jist of the campaign is staying in darkness, walking on ceilings and executing enemies whilst not in view. The health system is just right for this as you are very vulnerable to enemy gunfire, making stealth a necessary tactic, but while the executions are just as gloriously grisly as the Predator's, the combat is also very weak and the transitioning between floor-scuttling and wallrunning is extremely disorientating and you'll most likely never get used to it.

All three campaigns are tied around the same storyline. I would explain what said storyline is but to be honest I still don't actually know; it appears you're expected to already know what planet you're on and who Mr Weyland and what scientific experiments are going on, but I didn't and as such was utterly clueless about what it was all based upon. The other notable thing about the story is that it means all three campaigns visit the same places. And I mean the EXACT same places. I'm sure the idea is to give you a feeling of 'oh, so that's when THIS happened here', but generally it seems like an excuse to not make new environments and more often than not I was confused as to which species actually visited each area first, or if it all happened at the same time. However, apart from the storyline issues, the game manages to stay very faithful to the films, with Predator having everything you ever saw in his first two films, the Pulse rifle sounding and looking absolutely spot on and the Alien being able to 'harvest' humans with Facehuggers.

After this array of disappointments, one is drawn to the multiplayer. It's definitely impressive how many game types are available, including standard deathmatches and free for alls, and some more original modes. Infestation is similar to a 'zombie' game, starting out with a bunch of Marines against one Alien. If the Alien kills a Marine, the Marine's player becomes an Alien too. This continues till all the Marines have become Aliens and the pace picks up as numbers of survivors decrease. Predator hunt is another success, with a squad of Marines facing one Predator, who must kill as many in one life as possible. Kill the Predator and you take his place. Most overall kills wins. One mode which could have been much greater than it was would be Survival which is, unsurprisingly, another Horde mode (though it should be known that it was the old AvP games that invented it) but one that unfortunately is too slow and isn't as scary as it could have been. It's also a shame that the clumsiness of the game in general does carry over to multiplayer and it feels like it could have done with another few months in development.

Aliens vs Predator is, in short, a big disappointment. If you were a huge fan of all the films then you may get some kicks out of this, but if you play a lot of the games of today you'll know there are better places to get your scares, or your super stealthy moments or your shooting thrills. This one simply doesn't cut it. 4/10.

Just Cause 2

Just Cause 2 had a very long stretch of time in development. Long enough, hopefully, for us to erase our memories of Just Cause 1 and allow Avalanche to start anew, and to put back to the drawing board a game which had potential for kingship of the sandbox genre and blew it. Just Cause 2, however, is most certainly not a lost cause.

The two things that dominate both Just Cause games are without a doubt a huge map, and ridiculous stunts. In the previous game, the huge map was there, but the fact of the matter was that there was nothing to do, unless you genuinely enjoyed running through endless miles of empty rainforest. Thankfully, not only is the new map both absolutely huge (16 times the size of Fallout 3's map) but it's beautifully realised with the best draw distance I've seen in a game, being able to see all the forest, snowy mountaintops and desert that lie in front of you, and filled to the brim with places to see and missions to do. With the context of the game being similar to the last one - that is, cause as much anarchy within the country to stir up a full-blown revolution - every location is an opportunity to blow stuff up, steal vehicles and reap the benefits in money and upgrades. The sheer number of unique locations, races to be beaten and odds and ends to collect around the game world allows for plenty of extra hours of fun to be had outside of the story missions. This is truly a sandbox game and, despite the lack of airstrikes and a decent destruction engine, this is more fun than you'll be having in a majority of competing explore-and-blow-up games of today.

In terms of actual gameplay, Just Cause 2 has its strong points, amongst its weakest. Stunts and skydiving are vastly improved and feel a lot more polished, bolstered by the grappling hook which has been taken back to the drawing board and made absolutely awesome. Instead of just being able to hook onto moving cars and effectively parasail, you now have options to yank yourself onto any object in range in a Spiderman-like fashion or tether objects together and let physics do the work. Surprisingly, this allows for hundreds of possibilities, such as tying an enemy to a gas canister, shooting it and watching them both fly off into the sky and explode. This isn't exceptionally useful but it's definitely very original and amusing to do from time to time. Practically, however, it be valued enough. Whilst gliding in the 'chute, you can grab the ground or a tree and pull yourself forwards to keep momentum, and this with a little practice can be one of the fastest ways to get around, and get away from a fight when it gets a little too hot. Shooting is also improved from the first game and no longer is there the plain silly training-wheels auto aim. However, this is often where one of the main problems of Just Cause 2 intervenes. Enemies, in most places, will constantly spawn until you've completed your objective or completely destroyed the base, and they can absorb a lot of bullets if you're not hitting them in the head. This leads to a very heavy ammo usage, and you will run out fairly quickly, meaning either you go through the lengthy process of calling in a resupply through your irritating Texan chopper pilot, or picking up an enemy weapon which is usually fairly poor and low on ammo as it is.

Another problem is annoyingly in one of the places in which the game prides itself most - vehicles. Yes, there are a lot of them (though the variety in them isn't huge) but absolutely none of them feel just right. Cars have horrendous handing and feel far too heavy; go too fast a try to turn just a bit and you'll likely end up spinning off into a forest. Helicopters are much the same, they take too long to take off and are particularly clumsy, and while planes are perhaps the most successful of the vehicles, the fighter jets are far too sensitive and also don't go as quickly as you'd like. A 'boost' button to go at 800mph or so would have been both thrilling and a great way to get across the map quickly, though perhaps I'm too ambitious. Most of the time, you'll probably want to get the Extraction to your destination, though, like getting more ammo, it's a lengthy process that involves an irritating Texan.

Just Cause 2 has missed out various other additions that could have added to its general enjoyability like a decent soundtrack, good voice actors - as the game does feature some of the worst voices I have ever heard in a video game - and it could even have tried to scrape a storyline out of the highly unlikable protagonist Rico Rodriguez, but in all it's a much more solid experience than Just Cause 1. While Avalanche have not created the perfect sandbox game, this is a must-buy for anyone who wants a carefree single player game that can provide 20 hours plus of running, gunning, driving and flying (both in and out of planes) without having to think about strategy, story or artistic merit. 8/10.