Rage3D Tech Review - Alan Wake's American Nightmare (PC)

[Ichneumon]

Today I have the pleasure of introducing Sean Ridgeley as a new member of the Rage3D crew. He comes to us with a background in journalism, gaming, and hardware. He has freelanced with a wide variety of newspapers, magazines and websites, and currently also does work for Neoseeker.

Sean will be writing a regular series of game tech reviews and tweaking guides for us. They will focus on what you can expect graphically and hardware-wise with games. How they look, what settings work well, how under-the-hood graphics settings work and the like, and that is just the beginning. I’m excited to have Sean with us and I think you’ll like what he brings to Rage3D.

Today we have a Tech Review of Alan Wake's American Nightmare (PC), where we run the PC horror game through its paces and see how it stacks up as a console port.

[caveman-jim]

Hooray!

[Lupine]

Welcome to Rage3D Sean. Great to have you aboard!

[seanR3D]

Hope you guys dig it. There'll be another up tonight and other content to come soon. Feel free to leave me any feedback and tell me what you might like to see in future coverage. Note I plan on including video footage in most future pieces.

[noko]

Look forward to playing this once I play Alan Wake which I picked up on Steam for a real good price. Good review.

[logical]

I guess good overview of settings and features? I am not sure what you guys are going for here... not really a review of the game and not really technical at all... it kind of reads more like an explanation of settings and things you would read on the back of the box if you had physically bought the game.

Not trying to sound negative all.. maybe it could be a worthwhile read if you guys tested performance with some settings on/off or something? Maybe show differences with features on and off if you didnt want to get into the performance route?

[DeathKnight]

Welcome

[seanR3D]

I guess good overview of settings and features? I am not sure what you guys are going for here... not really a review of the game and not really technical at all... it kind of reads more like an explanation of settings and things you would read on the back of the box if you had physically bought the game.

Not trying to sound negative all.. maybe it could be a worthwhile read if you guys tested performance with some settings on/off or something? Maybe show differences with features on and off if you didnt want to get into the performance route?

That is more or less what I'm going for. Unfortunately this sort of information is never on the back of the box or...anywhere really. To the discerning PC gamer, this information is pertinent. When I'm thinking about purchasing a game, it's usually a gamble as to whether or not it'll be a crappy port and/or suffer major issues; these reviews are meant to tell you what you're getting into. It's not meant to be extremely in-depth, if that's what you were expecting, just enough that you can tell whether it's worth your time or not.

Performance testing/settings/screenshot comparisons and other stuff is what I'll be doing with tweak guides. Decided not to do one for this game, though.

[minaelromany]

Welcome to R3D Sean

Awesome review indeed, I was gonna ask about Eyefinity but you already covered that in the review

Extra features

Power users can again benefit from 3D, Crossfire, SLI, and multi-monitor setups, here

Great job

[seanR3D]

Thanks for the welcomes!

[Qb2k5]

Great review.

My only suggestion would be having animated gifs showing the differences between varies settings (Low Shadows vs High Shadows).

[seanR3D]

Great review.

My only suggestion would be having animated gifs showing the differences between varies settings (Low Shadows vs High Shadows).

Thanks kindly.

I'll be doing screenshot comparisons and related things in tweak guides. The purpose of those is to help you fiddle with settings and determine the optimal tradeoff between performance and visual fidelity; reviews are more for a general rundown of features and performance.

I didn't do a tweak guide for this one because it performs identically to the original game, and also as mentioned, it doesn't seem to scale much, so there's little point in reducing settings.

[PowerK]

Cheers for the great review, Sean.
Welcome to R3D !

[Kombatant]

Great review man, and again, welcome to our site