PAX East + Alan Wake

The Penny Arcade Expo in Boston, abbreviated to PAEX East happened at the tail end of last week. It's pretty much the gamers' E3, where the atmosphere is a lot less "shut up and tell me about video games", and more, "hey guys, we love video games!"

Also I picked up Alan Wake when it was cheap on Steam a couple of weeks ago, and had more fun with it than I thought I would. Maybe that's because I got it cheap, and usually when I play a game I'm left thinking "damn I wish I held off on getting this til when it was cheap."

On an unrelated note, Giantbomb co-founder Ryan Davis just retweeted me, so basically I'm a big player in the video game journalism industry now.

PAX East
Borderlands 2

I wrote a preview for this game a few months ago, but they've come out with some new information about it this weekend. There's a new class called the 'Mechromancer', which is this female cyborg who can control this big robot called D374-TP (can you work out what that's supposed to mean?). There was also a demo that people could play where you shot things, you know, like in Borderlands.

Assassin's Creed 3

I was hoping they'd spend an extra year on this game, but it's coming out this Autumn, like it or not. Although, what Ubisoft showed off at PAX made me a lot more excited for it than I was. It seems as though the tree free running is going to be great, with Connor adapting to the tree shape rather than in previous games where there were obvious paths you had to take over buildings. 

There's a human shield mechanic, helping the up close and personal nature of the assassin against the more modern firearms, and they also showed off the "rope dart". Connor can fire this rope at an enemy, grabbing him round the neck with it, and then jump off a tree branch to hang him from it, oh sh-

Far Cry 3

The last Far Cry for me quickly went from a pretty cool game to just a beautiful fire and tree simulator. Somewhere where I could come to take a new screenshot for my desktop and occasionally set a fire in a bush and watch it spread through an enemy camp.

They were only showing off the multiplayer for the new game at PAX, but it looks kinda fun, especially the aptly named "inferno mode", where the action takes place on an island which is slowly engulfed in flames throughout the course of the match.

Alan Wake

So as I said, I bought this because I was bored and it was cheap, thinking I'd probably play a few hours of it and then get bored and never play it again (much like the vast majority of my Steam collection). 

But it turned out it was exactly what I was looking for in a horror game. I'm more into psychological thrillers than straight up, in your face, "I'm a monster and I'm going to eat your flesh" type deals, and Alan Wake is the former in abundance. 

The combat is a little fidgety, you have to shine your flashlight (which has a boost button for some reason) onto enemies to fight away "the darkness" before you can shoot them, and it works fine, just the mechanics remain the same throughout the game, so it gets a bit old after a while. 

What really keeps you going is the story, which is actually quite compelling, in a "this could never happen but is kinda interesting" kind of way. In classic horror story fashion, bad things start happening, no one believes you, then REALLY bad things start happening and everyone is like "oh, Alan, I'm sorry, what do we do??". Also Alan has never fired a gun before, but he's pretty damn good with them. He also manages to find light sources wherever he goes, which is quite handy considering the type of enemy he's facing. 

The game's use of light and shadows is fantastic though, and during the daytime, it looks effing GORGEOUS.

Anyway, it's fun, if you see it's cheap again, I recommend you getting it.

By the way, I did a video last week, but then the file got corrupted and I was too demoralised to start again.

Thanks for reading, have a good week.