RPS Feature Somebody needs to explain Dragon Balls to me
The Mac Dad will make you jump jump, for, as always, these are the ten games with the most accumulated sales on Steam over the past week. It’s an odd old chart this week: the mainstays continue to stay, but random discounts remix things quite a bit. Read the rest of this entry »
Remedy Entertainment’s third-person spooker Alan Wake [official site] will receive a 90% discount on Steam this weekend, right before it gets pulled from stores – possibly forever. The Max Payne creators says Alan Wake has to go because its music licenses are expiring. Pop songs play at the end of each chapter, see, which means that Alan Wake was killed by a conspiracy including Roy Orbison, Nick Cave (I’ve always said those mates of his are some real bad seeds!), and David Bowie. If you already own Alan Wake or buy now, you will still get to download and play after it’s pulled from sale. Read the rest of this entry »
Remedy (Max Payne, Alan Wake) have been making gorgeous, violent games about angry-sad men for years now. When they announced their latest, Quantum Break [official site], it was revealed as an Xbox One exclusive. Moments ago, they announced that the time-troubling action game will also be coming to PCs. As long as those PCs are running Windows 10. There’s a proper trailer below, along with a newly released live action thing.
Remedy followed up their spooky-ooky shooter Alan Wake with the shorter, shootier semi-sequel Alan Wake’s American Nightmare in 2012. Might a proper sequel, we wondered, follow next?
Well, no. However, Remedy had started prototyping an Alan Wake 2 soon after finishing the first game, and whipped up a fancy gameplay video to pitch to publishers. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet (and a Polygon interview), you can now watch thirteen minutes of the Wake that never was. Some of its ideas, you may notice, were later reused in American Nightmare. But is Alan Wake dead and gone? Oh, you never know, Remedy say.
Do you have between one and infinity dollars? Are you waiting for Alan Wake to be ‘bundled’ up with the expansion and extra materials, where the costs are distributed between the developers and charity? Those are some very specific conditions you have there. Gaming welcomes you, but if that’s your criteria for every game then you might want to relax it a bit. Just buy games in sales and give money to charity, okay? This week’s Humble Bundle sale presents Alan Wake, Remedy’s love letter to Stephen King novels and lovely naps. But it’s more of a nap that a baby has, where it wakes up screaming and smelling of poo, because the bundle also marks the end of Remedy’s work on an Alan Wake sequel.
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Remedy man Sam Lake has tweeted: “It’s all true. “It will happen again, in another town, a town called Ordinary.” It’s happening now.” This seems to be a tease for a new Alan Wake game, judging by the link he provided with it, which is packed with Wake references.
But will it trundle onto PC in a timely fashion this time around? Signs point to yes. And I’ll interested to see what they do to make Alan Wake 2 stand apart from both the original, and American Nightmare, when that happens. (I wonder if they would go back to that plan of an open-world design?)
RPS Feature Arizona Dreamin'
It took Alan Wake ages to find his way to PC but his second adventure arrived almost immediately after its XBLA release. At this rate, the planned full-blown sequel will arrive in 2007, long before it surfaces on the Microbox 7.20. But if American Nightmare isn’t a sequel, what is it? An arcade, action-orientated spinoff? An experimental short story? A fever dream? Expect spoilers for the first game as I tell you wot I think.
Alan Wake might not be an unqualified success as far as survival horror games about narcissistic fiction authors go, but it’s a well-intentioned affair that very much did the technical legwork for its recently uncancelled PC version. And it’s paid off for Finnish developers Remedy, who report that Alan Wake PC was profitable within 48 hours of release.
PC! Profit! Do you hear that, publishers?
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RPS Feature Mikael Kasurinen's Dark Place
A mere two years after being rather spuriously denied a PC release, the videogame called Alan has skulked, tail between his legs, back over here. Worth the wait? I fitted as many batteries as I could into my Torch Of Truth and investigated.
Perhaps the iconic image of Alan Wake: our glowering, scarf-clad hero runs from the dark wilderness that’s all around, towards an eerie light in an abandoned structure ahead of him, while the air itself seems to shimmer with otherwordly blackness… and a thermos flask glimmers improbably on a rocky outcrop in the distance. Alan Wake specialises in not entirely making sense, and the occasional, pointless coffee flasks exemplify that. You can collect them all, but… well, why? Don’t get me wrong: I of all people can empathise with any writer (for that is Alan’s trade) feeling he is utterly dependent upon the constant consumption of lukewarm caffeinated beverages to survive, but Alan doesn’t even close his eyes contentedly and make a sort of sex noise like the rest of us do when we lay our hands on sweet, sweet coffee. The thermoses are just there. They serve no purpose, there is no internal logic to explain their presence or their effects on Alan and… well, that’s Alan Wake all over.
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RPS Feature On Steam, I walk with you
Earlier this week I spoke with Oskari Häkkinen, head of franchise development at Remedy, about the PC release of Alan Wake. We talked about the importance of PC gaming to the Remedy team, drawing inspiration from popular culture and whether Alan’s further adventures will be following close behind.
Remedy’s sleepy writer sim Alan Wake is out on Steam in a day and a bit, after the lengthiest beta test we’ve ever experienced. As far as I can tell, it’s a perfectly accurate recreation of the life of a writer: just this morning, my breakfast was interrupted when I realised I had been sitting on my foot and that foot was now asleep possessed by a demon intent on enslaving the world to do its bidding. What does it want? It wants YOU to watch the launch trailer they’ve just released, or it’ll smite you with corns. I’ve embedded it below, to save your soles.
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Alan Wake on PC gets a release date. It is the oh my goodness it’s only two weeks away. The 16th Feb. And tis being sensibly priced too, for a two year old game, at $30. Developers Remedy have been putting some proper effort into the PC version. Not only has it been souped up with improved graphics, but it’ll also support multiple monitors and stereoscopic 3D.
Remedy’s supernatural thriller, Alan Wake, will be arriving in February, they explain on their forums. They also say: “Games for Windows Live will not be used; we will be fully supporting the Steam platform.” Just in case you missed that. Other issues of note include the fact that it doesn’t (yet) run perfectly on Windows XP, and it won’t have mod support.
I’ve posted the minimum specifications below. We broke the news about Alan’s appearance on PC with interview snippets here and here.
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A couple of days ago, Remedy confirmed the rumour that Alan Wake would be at last be seeing a PC version. Our man Dan Griddled-octopus managed to coax a few (rather evasive) words on that subject out of Aki Järvilehto, Executive Vice President at Remedy, but before he could escape we sent Dan back with a couple of particularly burning additional questions. Specifically: that infamous “Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen” comment and on whether there’s a risk of Games For Windows Live. Did we get answers? Um. Sort of.
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RPS Feature A man of few, few words
Our man Dan Griliopoulos was at the Alan Wake PC announcement earlier today, and immediately managed to pin down Aki Järvilehto, Executive Vice President at Remedy for a few questions. And some very, very short answers. Tackled: why now, what’ll be different on PC, whether there’ll be any new content, whether the new Wake game American Nightmare might come to PC, and whether or not Aki likes being asked questions like that. We don’t entirely believe his reply to that one.
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Yes, squinty torch-waver Alan Wake is indeed headed PC-wards. Specifically: Q1 2012, on Steam. As suspected. Clicketh yon image above for a larger version, and see below for the first details.
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Rumour 1! Said Remedy’s Aki Järvilehto to a Finnish site on the subject of Alan Wake on PC: “We have received feedback from a lot of PC gamers, and I have to admit that yes, we somehow ignored that. Let’s see if in the near future we could have some positive news to tell you about dating!” (Positive news about dating? You mean she liked me after all?) This seems something of a change of tune.
Rumour 2! Via the same nefarious database-exploring methods as turned up the apparent leak of the latest Humble Bundle contents, we have the below image of the game apparently readying for a Steam release. Rumour! Speculation! Possible Photoshopping! But what the hell – it’d be lovely to have Remedy back, even if Alan reviews were decidedly mixed.
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This broke on Friday, but worth bringing up here, I think. Remember the wide-spread eye-rolling provoked by the ludicrous piece of marketing gibberish that the atmospheric horror game basically wouldn’t work on the PC due to a lack of sofa-magic or something? Well, Remedy’s Oskari Häkkinen tells VG247 that’s more of a preference thing, and the real reason is that they’re a small 50-person company and don’t really have the staff to do both at once, at least well. They’ll sit down with Microsoft afterwards. My take? Expect to see Alan Wake PC six months to a year after the 360 release. They’ll want to maximise its console-exclusive potential then consider a port.
No. Noooo. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. No. No. No. “Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen. We ultimately realised that the most compelling way to experience “Alan Wake” was on the Xbox 360 platform, so we focused on making it an Xbox 360 exclusive. Both Microsoft and Remedy have long histories in PC game development. This decision was about matching this specific game to the right platform.” Sez nasty Mister Microsoft. Nooooooooooo. There’s a trailer beneath the cut, if you wish to mourn for what might have been.
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Can a man called Alan really be an iconic action hero? Divining rods point to yes after watching this actual-proper-footage demo of Alan Wake on stage at last night’s Microsoft presentation. The light-as-weapon really does look like an interesting system, and the general visuals seem to be an enormously high quality. Hard to really know if it’s going to have the frights we’d expect from a supernatural thriller, but you can bet Alan is regretting marrying a woman with such as spooky voice. Go watch.
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