Archive for June, 2010
Survey Results
Jun 23rd
Astute readers might remember that we asked for your input a while ago in the form of a general readership survey. We think we’re pretty good at establishing our strengths and faults (particularly the latter), but we wanted to get some insight from you guys to see where you’d like to see us go from here.
Thirteen of our readers sounded off, and so I wanted to take some time to share what those responses were (don’t worry — all the data we got was anonymous) and how we’re interpreting them to make this blog even better.
Read on for the results.
Review: Alan Wake (Xbox 360)
Jun 22nd
Don’t let Alan Wake’s fancy genre nomenclature fool you. This “psychological action thriller” is dyed-in-the-wool survival horror, and it’s damned good.
Alan Wake, the name of the game as well as its protagonist, is the story of a novelist whose world becomes literally enveloped by darkness as he writes and lives his newest story. Spooky. The game follows Alan Wake as he confronts his writer’s block only to find that his creativity is, in point of fact, his worst enemy. Set in a sleepy town in the Pacific Northwest called Bright Falls, the story borrows heavily from psychological genre-bending television programs like The Twilight Zone. So great is the homage that television sets can be found throughout the game that present mock episodes of a fictional show called “Night Springs.” These Easter eggs provide much needed comic relief from the dark narrative, a strategy employed once before in Remedy’s previous franchise, Max Payne.
The Backlog: Welcome to Bright Falls, Sponsored by Energizer Batteries edition
Jun 6th
What’s scarier: Fending off legions of possessed townsfolk while armed only with a flashlight? Or witnessing a Pacific Northwest polluted with countless billboards promoting batteries and a cell phone carrier?
In my experience, neither one is too frightening, but you’ll probably be sick of both of them by the end of Alan Wake.
Our gaming exploits have taken us from the soccer pitches of Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 and the wilds of the turn-of-the-century American West to the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and the, uh, Mario-shaped planetoid-turned-spaceship that Mario used to travel the universe to make Bowser regurgitate the power stars he’d eaten (!?). In other words, it’s been a long week.
Guest Review: Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (PS3)
Jun 1st
by Matt Damiano
Editor’s note: We at Silicon Sasquatch have a problem. We don’t get to play every game that comes out simply because we aren’t sent review copies by publishers. However, we have friends who, like us, buy their own games, and these same friends also happen to be competent writers. Mr. Matt Damiano is one of those people, and we’d like to congratulate him on being our first guest reviewer. Let him know what you think of his review in the comments!
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is the follow-up to the 2008 series reboot, Prince of Persia, which didn’t make much of an initial commercial impression despite its generally positive reviews (and my personal favor). Consequently, Ubisoft Montreal opted to return to the original mythos of the Sands of Time games and explore the seven-year gap between Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Given the studio’s lengthy track record with the Prince, how does Forgotten Sands hold up?