Forget Starcraft 2. Forget Rage. Heck, forget Duke Nukem Forever! The most exciting long-in-development game over the last few years has been Alan Wake. At times dubiously listed as vaporware, Finnish developer, Remedy, has finally ended speculation on the game’s fate by slapping on a release date, the image below as well as a celebratory trailer at Microsoft’s X10 event. In a gaming landscape dominated by bland, cookie-cutter military shooters, Alan Wake purports to offer something new, inventive and precocious, a ‘psychological’ game with emphasis on mood, pacing and story. This is the way games should be headed. The last decade has seen a ‘Halo’ induced, testosterone fueled arm wrestle for impressionable male teenage dollars. (A trend Remedy had a hand in with Max Payne) Now, as a discerning 20-something gamer with a taste for something more sagacious, I like forward to May 18th as a potential herald for greater things to come from game developers!
