Alan Wake

Narrative, gameplay and character.

They are trope-laden genre pieces in terms of narrative: I think Control comes the closest to doing something that breaks free from this, though the fact many don't agree just reveals my bias.

Gameplay-wise, they are 3rd-person shooters with some other mechanic bolted on top, applied to varying levels of success. I found it dull in AW, and really look forward to improved mechanics in the sequel. 

There's nothing particularly memorable about any of their characters, except for the hackneyed nominative determinism of the protagonists.

You seem to be responding to my post as though I don't like them - that's not the case at all. I'm a Remedy fan, have been since Max Payne, which is the perfect encapsulation of style over substance: a game about diving over tables firing guns in slow motion and listening to angsty hardboiled musings. I adore it.

What you say about house style is probably true but it's not constant across the games. Control had an absurdity and levity baked into it that was hugely appealing to me.

I fell in love with it when I had to fight a fridge.

Well, maybe, but it can be fun. I enjoy hearing different perspectives on divisive games / developers. 

I was replying specifically to Derblington's point about their style being "inherent to them, more so than most other games" which I disagreed with. Probably should've quoted him!

Isn't arguing opinions one of the main points of a forum, too? 

Is that with a voucher? It's showing as £39.99 for me on GMG (I'm assuming that is Green Man Gaming). Would likely also just grab it at the price, even though I'll likely finish off Spider-Man 2 before playing.

I’d argue that there are few studios/directors with a proper house style.

Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Rockstar, Bungie, etc, etc don’t really have any unique style. They have huge budgets, and timelines, and ambition. Their stuff sits within genres more than style.

But Remedy, Ryu, Kojima, and a handful of others have inherent style, and it doesn’t really matter the subject they tackle or the budget they have, you can always tell that it’s their game.

Mmm I’d still agree that their style is more obvious than a lot of other studios.

And yes. Arguing over opinions is why we’re here but good lord we don’t half end up going in circles.

Contrary to how I'm coming across - I'm still really looking forward to playing this, just may wait a while and play Dead Space on GP for my horror fix instead of getting it straight away.

Like we don't already do that every time we walk past the bathroom mirror.

Fuck you dude.

I'm not hairy.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. You look at something like Stormland which Insomniac produced outside of Sony and it's fairly different in feel with it being almost entirely about the mechanics at the expense of everything else.

Meanwhile Remedy have really centred the studio around Sam Lake's writing and that makes for some really unique games.

Distinctive is the right word. I think if you got 10 studios to make a 10 minute demo of a completely new IP and you played them blind, Remedy's demo would be one of the easiest to identify.

/Looks forward to inevitable the point in time when user Bichii calls this game shit.

 she will have completed it by today. She enjoys her games.

Some people think remedy have a distinctive style and others don’t. More on this story at ten.