Allen Wake phantoms, plots and wierd game play

The wait after many months comes to an end with the release of Allen Wake. The highly anticipated mystery thriller game that after watching the trailers and gameplay demos captured the attention of numerous gamers. After quickly picking up the game at my neighborhood Hastings, I dove right into the game to see how it was. I expected crazy random, heart pumping action, but what I got was well lets just say my expectations were just a little to high.

Just like the demos and gameplays we are treated to wondrous graphics and a beautiful environment. Oddly though are the characters who seemed to miss out on the graphics patch that came with the rest of the game, apart from that the characters also seem to occasionally fall out of synchronicity with what they say and the movements of their mouths. Nothing to big but still it takes away from the suspense.

In the beginning it take awhile to finally get to some actual enemies, but I figure that builds for anticipation just like any good novel, and right hear I would like to point out is where this is a problem. See unlike reading a novel or watching a movie a game needs to be interactive and passive so up until you actually start fighting, the game kinda sucks and is boring.

Well getting back to the enemies once you find some they really start throwing them at you. This would be find in most shooters except you are always running out of ammo and having to run, except you character can not run more than 10 feet at a time and then walks as his persuers mercilessly barrel you down and make mincemeat out of you. Your dinky flashlight is of little help until you finally get upgrades and even then it only slows them down not really all that helpful when facing 5-10 enemies at a time.

The story in the game consists of many paragraphs that you collect to help continue on the story, not bad really except that most experienced games are kind of use to the stuff that happens in this game. To be painfully blunt ghostbusters the newly released game has both black goo, objects that fly at you, haunted areas and wickedly crazy level designs all which this game has but well not as well done.