T w e n t y S i d e d

This late episode has been brought to you by Saint’s Row The Third and what the heck is it seven o’clock already how long have I been playing this game?!? I should probably do a post about that game. It’s sort of come and gone, news-wise, but it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in ages.

I just want to reiterate what we said in today’s episode: Alan Wake is not a horrible game, and our criticism of it is the result of a game that did a lot of things different, took a lot of chances, got a few things right, and missed on a couple of crucial points. I’m sure I’ll never play through it again, but I don’t begrudge the hours I spent with it. Well, maybe a few of them. The ones in the middle.

Swan dive!

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

The Mr. Scratch trailer I was talking about is here. And while looking up that one, I found another, much shorter one.

Also, I suppose we kind of broke our own rules with regards to political talk. On the other hand, we weren’t doing a critique of any particular viewpoint, but on the way a particular individual espoused a viewpoint while acting hypocritically against those stated values. So you can continue the conversation, but this isn’t some kind of open season pass to start sniping at various political groups.

However, while writing this post I read Schilling’s Wikipedia page, where it mentions that he campaigned for Bush. That makes it seem kind of unlikely that he’s actually a Libertarian. So, if I’ve mis-characterized or misunderstood his politics I apologize. Still…

1. They moved an entire studio to Rhode Island.
2. They did this to get their hands on a seventy five million dollar loan from the government.
3. They got this loan by promising to bring 450 jobs to the area.
4. They entered the crowded market of fantasy RPGs and their game failed to perform.
5. The studio went broke and laid everyone off.

So the people of Rhode Island are out $75 million, and they didn’t even get the jobs in return. The studio is dead. The employees picked up, moved to a new place, slaved away making a game, and were then canned as soon as the thing was done.

There’s a lot wrong there, and I don’t think there’s much of a political argument to be made over this. It was a bad idea and everyone lost. The only winners are the people who liked the game. While it’s nice to see that the game scored 80% on Metacritic, that’s not all that impressive. I mean, the $75 million loan was bigger than the budgets of a lot of games. I’ll bet a lot of games could perform better if we handed them that kind of money. (Just imagine what Vampire: Bloodlines or KOTOR 2 could have done with just a tenth of that.)

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I notice that several times I’ve mentioned, “This part was unexpectedly hard,” and had most of the rest of the cast chime in that they had trouble in the same spots. Now, you could argue that this was by design, but these spots always seem to appear in odd places. Like I said in the episode: The small battle outside the locked garage was harder than the giant “defend the helicopter” set-piece.

If you’re curious about Axe Cop, you can have your curiosity sated at this website.

This is Wayne Knight.

Also: The thing with the birds and the helicopter really did bug me. It felt wrong. I don’t know thing about non-videogame helicopters, but I just couldn’t picture how those birds could be a threat to the thing. From above they should be pulled through the blades and turned into paste. From below they should just be forced downward by the draft. This seemed stupid and nonsensical to me until I remembered: Alan Wake is a hack writer.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.