I have played a lot of video games in my day.  A few have accomplished the almost impossible task of freaking me out while playing.  Most “survival horror” games boast a factor of fear and cannot deliver.  From the first time that a zombie dog broke through the window of the mansion in Resident Evil I have longed for the same level of adrenaline-pumping-scare-my-socks-off type horror that only comes around every purple moon.  Alan Wake is the answer to my long awaited prayer.

With most games that take eons to come out though they were promised years before, I had my reservations about Alan Wake a’la Too Human.  The concept seemed interesting enough, but in our waiting process a few copy cats had arrived to try and steal Alan’s thunder.  Alone in the Dark and Deadly Premonition are games that are almost identical in theory to Alan Wake, yet failed to deliver any type of gaming enjoyment.  Not so with A. Wake.

From the very beginning you are immersed into one of Alan’s Nightmares and introduced to one of the games enemies “the Taken”.  These dark shadowy figures are human-like and desire to kill you for unknown reasons. Some of the lower level Taken may sling knives at you while others wield axes and will lunge at you to cut you into pieces.  Their laughs are maniacal and disturbing and their growling and gutteral sounds leave you feeling uneasy.  In order to do away with these enemies you must shine your flashlight onto them until the darkness is dissolved and then shoot them with your guns leaving them to dissipate into thin air once defeated.

Throughout the entire game Alan narrates everything that happens audibly as opposed to reading the thoughts on screen a’la Resident Evil and “The staircase is darkly lit and leaves you feeling disturbed”.  As the player you truly feel like you are experiencing the story with Alan.  There are moments where it feels like the game is just having you walk from one cut scene to another however each cut scene tells an important part of the story and further digs you in to it’s hole and the action can be so intense at times that it will make you forget that the last part of the game you played you didn’t do anything exciting.

Each level plays out like an episode of a TV show complete with a “previously on” made famous by Lost.  On the second to highest difficulty each episode has taken over an hour to complete.  Depending on how much exploring you choose to do to find manuscript pages or coffee mugs will significantly shorten your episode time.  I would recommend turning the lights out, turning up the surround sound and taking your sweet time to play through because no other game has provided an experience thus far like Alan Wake has for me.

With only a T rating and a slight bit of language, the only negative connotations so far is the darkness, but in a sense you are fighting it off and in a nice little allusion it takes the “light” of a flashlight to destroy the darkness.

Battlefield holds a special place in my heart.  One which I can trace all my online gaming back to, so when I play a Battlefield game I have high expectations.  Lately I have also had some relatively high disappointments as well.  Battlefield Bad Company 2 released an online mulitplayer demo recently which allows players to play 1 map and attack and defend from each side.  There are plenty of tanks, helicopters and small vehicles to drive and lots of places to hide.

The first thing you will notice about the demo is the chaos.  I don’t know if I play MW2 too much but I feel like there is so much going on on the map that I don’t know where to begin.  I feel like the backdrop to the map also camouflages the enemies to the point where you don’t see them until they are right up on you.  The second issue I take with this game is the stiffness of the controls.  I feel like my player is on rollerskates running around on the map.  I am unable to take corners very well and it takes me 2 attempts to get into a doorway.  The weapons all start out with iron sites as well with the exception of the sniper rifle and due to the lack of smooth atmosphere I feel like shooting someone is like performing surgery.

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Love Foul Language? You’ll Love This Game!

When I say adults, please know that I am specific when I say that only adults should be playing this game. Although House of the Dead Overkill is a rail-shooter with arcade aspects, the language alone is enough to take the genre to a different level. The amount of mature language in this game would make Samuel L. Jackson blush, it’s completely unnecessary and gratuitous.

Language aside, the game introduces a whole new element to the HOTD series. If you are a fan of the recent Tarantino Grind House films you will definitely see where the developers drew their inspiration from. The game does a great job evoking the sense of watching an old Grind House movie including fantastic voice over acting and narrative.

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As a sucker for scary games/movies F.E.A.R. 2 is right up my alley.  Monolith has a way of scaring the pants off me.  I am not sure if it’s just me but every time I play a game I literally loose my pants.  (probably cause I usually play in a robe) sorry for the visual.

I enjoyed the F.E.A.R 2 demo on the marketplace immensely and even the demo scared me but it was only a slight tease compared to what I experianced in the first few hours of gameplay with the final version.

F.E.A.R 2 starts off approximately 30 minutes before the ending of the first game.  You play as Michael Beckett, part of a team of special ops personnel who are dispatched to rescue Dr. Genevieve Aristide from a facility that has been breached by black ops operatives.

Instantaneously I was immersed in the atmosphere of the game.  The game is so well done in environments and graphics.  I even noticed a little AI at the very first part of the game.  As I was exploring the outside of the building we were getting ready to enter, I walked into a giant water fountain and my partner said “What you want to take a bath?” and then upon entering and our platoon leader asking what took us so long my partner said “Becket decided he wanted to take a bath in the fountain”.  It’s the little things like that-that set the game apart from the first version of F.E.A.R.

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