Remedy

Alan Wake No Longer PC Bound, Heading To 360 In May 2010

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

This will probably be the last update of Alan Wake that I will do here or on our Twitter, as the game has fallen swiftly off my radar with the confirmation that it will no longer be coming to the PC. This disappointing news came on the heels of other announcements by Microsoft at their recent X10 media event, including the release date and details of the collector’s edition of the now 360 exclusive. A new trailer, embedded below, was was shown off and the game was announced to be hitting stores in the US on May 18 and in Europe on May 21.

Pre-ordering the game will net you the ‘Bright Falls Bonus Pack,’ which offers “avatar gear, an Xbox LIVE theme, and a ‘making of’ video.” The Collector’s Edition will include a number of bonus items:

– Game Disc in box with unique art
– Exclusive In-Game Audio Commentary and Hints by Remedy
– “The Alan Wake Files” – a 144pg book that includes a short story written by Alan Wake and compiles the FBI dossiers investigating the events in Bright Falls, WA
– Exclusive Audio Disc with Soundtrack and Score
– Game Add-on token redeemable on Xbox LIVE for the first Alan Wake add-on content pack
– Exclusive Xbox disc with special content: Alan Wake Xbox Live Theme and Alan Wake Avatar for Xbox LIVE

The ‘add-on content pack’ possibly refers to the additional DLC promised earlier this year. The book sounds intriguing, providing substantial back story and detail to the world created by Remedy. I am impressed that there will be audio commentary, a feature very rarely offered by developers and one that usually proves insightful. After the jump, the new trailer unveiled at X10. It was nice knowing you, Alan.
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Max’s Brazilian Wax

Martyn Zachary Leave a comment

Max Payne 3 so far: The main character’s identity removed. The location, look and feel changed. The gameplay mechanics altered. The original voice actor, James McCaffrey, replaced. Multiplayer added. Max Payne 3, Rockstar promises, has “…Max as we’ve never seen him before, a few years older, more world-weary and cynical than ever” 1)Rockstar Press Release, March 23, 2009

Changed, changed, changed utterly. Let us go back in time for a moment, back to the year 2003, and seek to recall the scenes that made the most sense, made the most out of its thematic elements in the second instalment, Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne: What about the part where Max escapes his sealed apartment block with the aid of some of its colourful inhabitants – or the lock-up bust, with Mona contained at the police station? Or the very beginning of the game, with Max waking up in the hospital, when you come face to face with the doctors and nurses?

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Max Payne 3

Martyn Zachary 5 Comments

Guys, I don’t know how to put this nicely. I solemnly swear, The Slowdown won’t be turning into Negative Gamer any time soon, but… do forgive us, for just one post, while I try to explain this to our advantage. When Max Payne 3 was first announced, we collectively voted, in unison, to absolutely hold our judgement – after all, we’re nothing short of massive fans of Remedy and the Payne franchise. I recently completed ‘The Fall Of’ no less than three times, in the row, during the previous xmas holidays.

Yet this is what we all thought: The new logography seemed to be a poor man’s combination of the ‘Impact’ font and grunge cross-hatches. The reimagined Max seemed as if he had been suddenly relocated, against better judgement, from film noir territory directly into the realm of Kane & Lynch. Everything that was iconic about Max Payne seemed to have been conveniently axed.

max-payne-3

Mind you, we thought we had it all wrong. I guess this is where we have to come to terms with the fact that things have really changed somewhat; VG247 happen to be showing off an unfocused photograph of a forthcoming GameInformer cover, and… boy, it does not look pretty. Kotaku, on the other side of the tracks, are hinting at a potential multiplayer feature.

I don’t know what to think. Do you?

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Alan Wakes Up

Nabeel Burney Leave a comment

It had been a long time since we last saw something of Alan Wake; two and half years ago we saw a tech demonstration at an Intel conference, and at the end of last year we saw a brief cinematic trailer. But over the four years that we’ve known about the game, there had been scant information as to what exactly it is. Finnish developer Remedy called it a ‘psychological action thriller’, which told us nothing about the kind of gameplay it entailed. What little else we could tell from the screenshots was that it was set in a picturesque, mountainous settlement and that it had a hefty graphical engine powering it.

However, this morning at Microsoft’s eventful E3 ’09 conference, Remedy finally brought us up to speed on the game and conveyed the essence of the gameplay all in one fell swoop. And it was the highlight of the jam-packed show. Stage demo footage embedded after the jump.

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