[360] Alan Wake - Still awake

[SedentaryJourney]

The sub-HD res is disappointing. Comparing it to MGS4, which is 1024x768, it's about 2/3 the resolution. However, what's even more disappointing is that even with the decreased resolution the game STILL tears quite noticeably. Aside from unfortunate IQ issues though the game looks pretty good.

 

[nightshade]

That's pretty low (lowest so far this gen ?) but the game looks pretty good in action. What bothers me is the stuttering/frequent loading i saw in every recent video, hope it will be cleared up in the final version.

The lowest would be Star Ocean 4 IIRC, as it has a resolution of 936x512 during battles cause it runs @60FPS. [but the game runs at 1248x702 during field/exploration]

Anyways since the HUD is 1:1 @ 720p can we say its pretty much checkmate here?

 

[ultragpu]

Now that we know the game is rendering at 540p & 4xaa, it didn't actually turn out to be all that disastrous for me. I think the blurriness somehow suited for Alan Wake's setting, it's almost unintentionally contributing to this dreamy atmosphere. Not saying I'm supporting sub HD in any means but it's somehow working for at least the night segment of the gameplay. For comparison, a game like half life 2 rendered in this res would simply be apocalyptic.

 

[nightshade]

Now that we know the game is rendering at 540p & 4xaa, it didn't actually turn out to be all that disastrous for me. I think the blurriness somehow suited for Alan Wake's setting, it's almost unintentionally contributing to this dreamy atmosphere. Not saying I'm supporting sub HD in any means but it's somehow working for at least the night segment of the gameplay. For comparison, a game like half life 2 rendered in this res would simply be apocalyptic.

While I'm not here supporting the choice of resolution...I'll say that I agree with you,as I had the exact view the blur unintentionally suits the night time atmosphere.

That said...with all the talk about graphics & resolution people seem to have forgotten about the gameplay, which to me looks quite basic so far.
Atmosphere & feel is perfect but the actual gameplay mechanics seems to be just bringing down the "shield" with a light source & shooting.

 

[messyman]

Have you guys already seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9JnT4d74TU

I think it's really cool even tho the guy who plays Alan's performance seems a little over the top.

 

[Sigfried1977]

That said...with all the talk about graphics & resolution people seem to have forgotten about the gameplay, which to me looks quite basic so far.
Atmosphere & feel is perfect but the actual gameplay mechanics seems to be just bringing down the "shield" with a light source & shooting.

I have to agree with this, and after watching the first 10 minutes of gameplay I also couldn't help but thinking if it was even possible to find a more clumsy and immersion breaking way of introducing the flashlight and the gun to the player. It seemed almost comical and sort of reminded me of a dialogue between God and Ned Flanders.

 

[Antan]

http://forum.alanwake.com/showpost.php?p=69940&postcount=885

 

[dragonelite]

I have to agree with this, and after watching the first 10 minutes of gameplay I also couldn't help but thinking if it was even possible to find a more clumsy and immersion breaking way of introducing the flashlight and the gun to the player. It seemed almost comical and sort of reminded me of a dialogue between God and Ned Flanders.

Lol the lights is god?


Those first 10 min is a gameplay tutorial.
So i think after the gameplay tutorial we will have a more logical introduction for weapons and the flashlight.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Lol the lights is god?


Those first 10 min is a gameplay tutorial.
So i think after the gameplay tutorial we will have a more logical introduction for weapons and the flashlight.

I know it's a tutorial, but there are more elegant ways of implementing them. He could have simply stumbled across both items in the hut he just left. (in gameplay or a cut-scene). I mean it's dark outside and there's obviously something out there that tries to kill him. Makes sense to pick up a flashlight and a gun. Definitely more appropriate than a disembodied voice that magically spawns both items on a tree trunk and then tells you how to use them. It's not a huge deal by any means, but when a game puts so much effort into creating a seamless and believable atmosphere, overly gamey aspects just stick out like a sore thumb. That's my opinion at least.

 

[ultragpu]

Atmosphere & feel is perfect but the actual gameplay mechanics seems to be just bringing down the "shield" with a light source & shooting.

I just totally dig the setting and the music score is adding quite a lot to the game. I'm fine with the current gameplay though it's nothing out of the norm, I just wish there will be some meaty exploration in the vicinity and a deep emotional story.

 

[Devil911]

Gamersyde Latest Preview

No more suspense, Alan Wake astonished us from its production to the atmosphere that's been created, but above and beyond all, its technical mastery. Remedy used to be known for its top-notch rendering engines, and they prove again they are worthy of their fame. To be clear, none of the existing Xbox 360 games even compares to it, and even on PS3, which have more real exclusive titles, it's hard to find an equivalent. Killzone 2, Uncharted 2, Crysis, these are the few games which can compete with it. Whether it's the real-time projected shadows produced by the essential flashlight, the total absence of aliasing, the breathtaking realistic lighting effects, the huge size of certain levels, SSAO, the atmospheric effects, the humongous size of some moving objects, the vegetation which interacts with characters and wind, or the largely satisfying framerate and many other physical and graphical effects, Alan Wake never ceases to amaze you with relative ease.

Kotaku

As for graphics, well, it's hard to say if the darkness enshrouding many of the games in the genre excused less than industry-leading graphics or if it is smaller development teams, not armed with the resources to make industry-leading graphics that turned to the horror genre. Whatever the case, it is rare to see a game in the dark-and-creepy category that could be a Best Graphics candidate, but Alan Wake, like EA's Dead Space before it, represents a pleasant exception. The Pacific Northwest is a rare and magnificent sight in video games, rendered in real and spooky detail in the episode I played. The forests were tall, dark and dense, light playing through branches. As Alan ran into a house for refuge, I noticed it was full of details, chairs and TVs and wall-hangings, meeting my newfound Uncharted 2 standard of amount of stuff I think a developer can render in a realistic indoors space. As some dark presence shook the house apart, I felt not that I was in a primitive diorama but that I was in a big-budget blockbuster. Even in the dark it felt I could see far across the valley, that this was a detailed world so well-rendered I could almost smell the sawed logs.

NO Game on 360 can touch AW graphics..This is one of the best looking this Gen...

 

[Nesh]

Gamersyde Latest Preview




Kotaku



NO Game on 360 can touch AW graphics..This is one of the best looking this Gen...

Can you provide us the link?
edit: never mind, found it. The preview sounded familiar to me. It is kind of oldish. It also supported that the game was running 4xFSAA at 720p

 

[Trejser]

Gamersyde Latest Preview




Kotaku



NO Game on 360 can touch AW graphics..This is one of the best looking this Gen...

Level 7 preview:

One of the biggest concerns and complaints about Alan Wake when the game was shown for the first time during E3 2009 was the graphic level, and the technology has undoubtedly suffered because of the long development time. Some textures and three-dimensional objects in the environment is poor detail compared to what we have experienced in recent years top games. When I got the opportunity to freely pan the camera and placed it close to Alan Wake for example hair was very stony and poor detail.
Although the graphics engine, therefore, are not as technically impressive as it had been for a couple years ago so have Remedy still managed to create a very attractive presentation with the help of lighting, graphic filters, fog that sweeps across the landscape, well-designed environments, and other design-related approach which well mask it today is not as spectacular graphics engine. You will not lose your chin over the visual of Alan Wake, but the graphics are not something that will be experienced as directly substandard.
One area, however, ended after extra time is facial animations. In recent years we have been spoiled with a lot of games with really good looking and natural facial animations and compared with those titles seems Alan Wake quite obsolete. Some characters are suffering, however, very different from this deficiency.

Opinions...

 

[nightshade]

Indeed...I would never take a reviewer's/journalist's opinion over anything that's not gameplay mechanics,be it positive or negative....as that is where personal bias comes in. The only reason I read/watch reviews is to get an idea of the gameplay & have the reviewers opinion over it..nothing else.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Level 7 preview:
You will not lose your chin over the visual of Alan Wake

*rubs chin thoughfully* Well that's a relief!

 

[ultragpu]

I still haven't got a clue about how long this game might take, I've heard there are

Spoiler

6 chapters and each roughly 1 hour long

which isn't a good sign, really hope for a meaty 15hours run through with some exploration to do.

 

[Rangers]

The sub-HD res is disappointing. Comparing it to MGS4, which is 1024x768, it's about 2/3 the resolution. However, what's even more disappointing is that even with the decreased resolution the game STILL tears quite noticeably. Aside from unfortunate IQ issues though the game looks pretty good.

They claimed the tearing is a result of video issues (something about NTSC/PAL conversion) and NOT the game.

 

[Rangers]

resolution looks like a was a good trade off because the game still look fantastic

This!

I guess this sort of proves Carmack's point back when he said all that stuff about the platform holders mandating 720P being quite silly, and that dropping the res to add other things could be a perfectly legitimate development choice. Though of course in truth it wasn't that strict a mandate as we see.

 

[dragonelite]

Can't remedy patch the game to give the game a tekken 6 like option render it at a higher res but with like less intense post processing?

 

[Rangers]

While I'm not here supporting the choice of resolution...I'll say that I agree with you,as I had the exact view the blur unintentionally suits the night time atmosphere.

That said...with all the talk about graphics & resolution people seem to have forgotten about the gameplay, which to me looks quite basic so far.
Atmosphere & feel is perfect but the actual gameplay mechanics seems to be just bringing down the "shield" with a light source & shooting.

Garnett Lee of Shacknews and Weekend Confirmed podcast is pretty big on Wake, what he said was actually that he hopes the story, etc is good because the action is really great and they nailed that aspect (of course he's played preview builds). So that's almost the opposite of what I would think. It looks like great atmosphere/story, but I worried that the action will become rather humdrum. So anyway I was glad to hear Lee's opinion.

That's pretty low (lowest so far this gen ?) but the game looks pretty good in action. What bothers me is the stuttering/frequent loading i saw in every recent video, hope it will be cleared up in the final version.

The Digital Foundry writeup informs that Siren PS3 is a previous game with the same res as Wake.

why should we care about it so much only now, I demand PC games to have the resolution option named to opaque geo blah blah from now on

And why should we care about Alan Wake so much now? The game never got half so much attention until something with which to bash it was found...now it has a spunoff 3 page thread and so on. It is the same on Neogaf, only once this news came is the game thread constantly bumped and growing at light speed.

However, most distressing to me was DF's showing that early AW footage was in fact 720P. Very disappointing because I wonder why they couldn't pull it off if they had it at one time apparently...unless it was actually PC footage or so.