Alan Wake | Craig's Movie Report

Here’s a list of the games I have managed to complete. I get a great sense of achievement out of completing a game, as unlike a movie it’s more about taking part, learning the controls and for the most part, facing a foe and coming away triumphant. It’s not easy either. Yet like a movie I prefer story driven games, and get a lot out of a good plot, interesting characters and situations. Yet finding a game that keeps me playing to the end is tough, so the following list I also consider to be the cream of the crop of current gaming.

PlayStation 5

The Last of Us Part 1 (remake)

+ Left Behind DLC.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Nintendo Switch

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Super Mario Odyssey

PlayStation 4

Assassin’s Creed Unity

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Dishonoured 2 (finished play-through as ‘Corvo’)

The Last Guardian

The Last Of Us Part II

Mafia: Definitive Edition

The Order 1886

Resident Evil 2 Remake

Uncharted 4: A Thieve’s End

XBOX ONE / SERIES X

Battlefield 4 (finished campaign)

Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare (finished campaign)

Dead Rising 3

Devil May Cry 5

Gears of War 4

Gears of War 5

Halo 5 Guardians

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

Life Is Strange

Metro: Exodus

Metro: Last Light Redux

A Plague Tale: Innocence

Red Dead Redemption 2 (main story finished)

Resident Evil VII: Biohazard

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Sunset Overdrive

Titanfall (finished campaign)

Titanfall 2 (finished campaign)

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

Watchdogs

Wolfenstein: The New Order

XBOX 360

Alan Wake

Alice: The Madness Returns

Bioshock

Bioshock Infinite

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 1, 2

Crysis 1, 2

Darksiders 2

Dead Space

DMC: Devil May Cry

Enslaved: Odyssey To The West

F.E.A.R. 1, 2

Gears Of War 1, 2, 3

Halo 3

Jet Set Radio

Lara Croft and the Guardian Of Light

Mafia II

Max Payne 3

Portal

Rage

Resident Evil 5

Splinter Cell Conviction

Tomb Raider Underworld

Playstation 3

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Darksiders

Dead Space 2

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Dishonored

God Of War 3

Heavy Rain

Hitman: Absolution

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

Killzone 2

The Last Of Us

Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 3

Portal 2

Tomb Raider

Uncharted 2: Among Theives

Vanquish

This was one of the big name games to be announced when the XBOX 360 first came out, and with a development time of several years, many thought that Remedy, the same guys behind the famed Max Payne series had stumbled along the way. Originally hyped as an open world survival horror / thriller following the story of a writer who travels to Bright Falls with his wife after suffering writer’s block, then finds his new book beginning to write itself as his wife disappears and possessed locals try to kill him. The final game though has done away with the open world (to a degree – it can still be traversed and explored in some places), and focused on a TV episode approach not dissimilar to the much maligned Alone In The Dark reboot.

What Remedy have achieved here is delivering a game that is partly the Silent Hill game that never was, and part Stephen King novel meets David Lynch surrealism. It’s a formula that works wonderfully, and playing it I found it both graphically stunning, very atmospheric and creepy as hell. The core mechanics of the action is shining a torch on the Taken – towns folk that are possessed by darkness – and once you have taken the darkness away, you are free to shoot them and watch them explode in stylish slow motion. As expected from the makers of Max Payne the gunplay and the various unholy encounters and cinematics are brilliantly done – and surrounding the action is a compelling story told with a mixture of cut scenes, playable flashbacks and brilliantly done NPC interaction to rival even the likes of Half-Life.

I feel I have only touched the surface of this one though, and there’s plenty more to discover – but so far, this looks to be another superb XBOX 360 exclusive.