“Playing” Alan Wake
Just finished watching a playthrough of the new horror game Alan Wake. I’ve switched from playing a lot of games that I’m just curious about to watching them played on YouTube. There are tons of people that are playing through a game and recording it as they go. You can then watch the game played from beginning to end without having to lift a finger; or spend tons of time trying to fight through puzzles/monsters/etc.
“That seems stupid”, you say. “Isn’t the point of a game to be played?” Well, I don’t have tons of time to invest in all the great games out there; and I more recently found myself never getting through a good number of games that I bought. I find this method to be a great compromise because I likely would never have bought this game. I was curious about it for sure, but knew I was not interested enough to invest the money or the ~20 hours of time to play it. Its a great way to ‘play’ a games to see what the state of the art is – but not have to spend the amount of time it takes.
I’ve now moved on to Final Fantasy XIII. That’s a monstrosity estimated at 50-60 hours of gameplay. I’ve watched the first half of a complete playthrough; and have more recently switched to a playthrough that cuts/edits out the minor battles that pop up every 30 seconds or so. Makes for a much faster viewing of the worlds and story. If they release a PC version of FF XIII, I’ll buy it for sure.