Halo 4 Review Coming Soon

My Halo 4 review is "in the can" as it were.

That means I have only to hit "Publish" and the review will be live. It's not a glowing review. In fact, the tone is quite negative all-round.

As is my habit after writing a review, I peruse the Metacritic and Gamerankings collection of reviews, both "professional" and amateur. Not so much to confirm my own thoughts but to gauge the reaction the review might receive, when put alongside these other reviews.

While the review doesn't dig a hole for the game like the one on Quarter to Three, it sure doesn't align with the early reviews from last week, which seem to trip over each other to heap praise on the game. There are things I like about Halo 4 but as you'll see in the review on ae-infinite.com this is definitely one of those games where I wasn't feeling it.

Alan Wake's American Hair-Trigger Aiming

Alan Wake's American Nightmare was recently released for PC and playing through it again... egad, this game nails ambience and setting like nobody's business. And yes, it looks better than the 360 version.

It also has hair-trigger controls, especially in comparison to the 360 gamepad.

Even turning the mouse sensitivity all the way down, there's always the danger of overshooting the mark.

Imagine sneezing, opening your eyes, and finding that you've spun yourself 180-degrees and are looking at the floor. That's what it feels like. It feels a little strange to have to use such a steady hand. I didn't find this with Saints Row: The Third -- I made a minor adjustment and I was good. No further changes required.

This over-sensitivty comes in handy during fights with swarming enemies because aiming is so quick and accurate, but I so far I've felt like I'm walking a tightrope being quick and not knowing which direction I'm facing.

The full review should be posted on www.ae-infinite.com next week.

Alan Wake's American Nightmare: Early Impressions

So, I'm about halfway through the story of Alan Wake's American Nightmare -- from what I can tell -- and I'm really having fun with it.

It does exactly what I wanted it to do. Answer some questions, present new ones, fill in some blanks, and pay homage to the likes of that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise-D is stuck in a time loop, X-Files, LOST, among many other sources. And even though it does all that, it still doesn't actually answer very much or at least doesn't spoon feed the players the answers to what's actually happening. Instead it allows the player to draw some of their own conclusions; write their own fiction as to why things are happening the way they are. Has Alan has actually escaped the cabin under the lake back to the real world years after the events of the first game and he's just gone batshit insane? Are the TVs and radios conduits to the real world? Is his nemesis, Mr. Scratch, living in Alan's head or is Alan living in Mr. Scratch's head? Am I just over-thinking the whole thing? Probably. But that's part of the appeal of Alan Wake, at least for me.