Fighting the Darkness and Battling the Zerg

This week my nineteenth birthday came and went, I finished Alan Wake and I started Starcraft II. I’m posting my blog a little earlier than usual this week as tomorrow I leave with some family members to spend a short holiday in Wales and for the first time in a long while I won’t have access to the internet. Among other things that means no Giant Bomb and no online gaming which even by themselves feel like a bit of a restriction but I’ll cope and hopefully I’ll be able to start Red Dead Redemption over the holiday.

I won’t go into too much depth describing Alan Wake as I plan to do a review but I found it a compelling game and I loved the story, characters and atmosphere of the game. Some of the later narrative content was really exciting and I thoroughly enjoyed some of the plot twists. I felt a little disappointed by the ending as while it can be theorised what happened at the end, Remedy deliberately created an ambiguous ending for the game and seem to be planning to conclude the story of Alan Wake through DLC. I’m thinking of playing the game through on hard difficulty to experience it again and pick up more of the collectables although I don’t think it’ll be quite as thrilling knowing all the twists and turns of the plot. Still, I’d advise anyone interested to give Alan Wake a try, the first run through was brilliant.

Shortly after I posted my last blog I began Starcraft II and have been working my way through the campaign since. While I’ve not been as blown away by Starcraft II as most people have I’ve had a good time playing it and despite the traditional, almost hardcore style of gameplay that the game carries I have found the game surprisingly accessible. With the length and variety of the campaign missions and the vague feeling of familiarity I feel from the game (probably as the result of playing so much Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War in the past) it feels very easy to just jump in and out of. I have to admit I’m not very good at the game and I am running it on low settings but I’m sure I’ll get a lot more enjoyment out of it in the future.

Before I end my short blog entry for this week I’d like to congratulate Lemon on becoming the new Giant Bomb intern and I have to say that I’m stoked for Whiskey Media’s Big Live Live Show Live. Thank you for reading and be you playing crazy psychological thriller shooters or hardcore sci-fi RTS games, enjoy your gaming.

-Gamer_152