Aside: Alan Wake Worth The Wait?

Sunday, May 16th, 2010 at 7:42 pm in Asides · Comments

I don’t mean to jump the gun here, especially as I only booted Alan Wake up this evening, but I’m pretty certain it has been worth the wait. In case you didn’t know, Alan Wake has been milling around the Xboxsphere since the launch in 2005, victim to many delays and a significant lack of updates.

Games that are in development for a long time are, in my opinion, typically underwhelming. Prey, which was in development for 11 years, was rubbish (IMO). It certainly lacked the quality you’d expect from a game that had been at the centre of such TLC for a long time, and it failed to grab my attention enough to even finish the game. Too Human, while I never played it, was released to a mixed bag of reviews after a decade in development.

It seems that games that have been in development for lengthy periods of time are naturally met with high expectations, but rarely live up to these expectations. I think Alan Wake is different.

Tags: Alan Wake, Aside, Asides, Prey, Too Human

4 Responses to “Aside: Alan Wake Worth The Wait?”

Tom SInclair

# May 17th, 2010 at 10:17 am

I’ve heard it’s good, but not as good as Heavy Rain which is really disappointing!

I’ve been looking forward to Alan Wake for years and to see/hear anything but perfection is disappointing but I suppose that’s what happens with 5 years of hype!

Christoffer Radsby

# May 17th, 2010 at 3:09 pm

My friend says it’s really good, prey was okay when it came out. Had some pretty interesting ideas though, but it’s not that engaging to be honest. I try to keep my “hyping” to a minimum it usually ends up ruining games for me if I do that.

Arnold Sideways

# May 22nd, 2010 at 2:01 am

I too have been looking forward to Alan Wake for many years now, and I was worried it wouldn’t live up to expectations. It’s a huge relief to find that it is actually very good indeed. I assume most of their development time was making their own engine, which seems to have paid off because visually it’s an amazing game. Had they been using the Unreal Engine or something similar I wouldn’t expect it to take more than a couple of years to make, but now they have their own engine, future games shouldn’t take anywhere near as long.

Alan Wake, Is It Worth The Wait? | Rockers Delight

# June 9th, 2010 at 12:36 pm

[...] up… Wasn’t Alan Wake announced in 2005? Yuh-huh. I wrote a little about the effect of the many delays Alan Wake has seen, and how, having only played Alan Wake for one evening, my apprehension had quickly dissolved into [...]

Rockers Delight