![]() ![]() If it had been a lesser game, I might have just forgotten about it and moved on to something else, relegating it to the bottom of my burgeoning Steam library in favour of something a bit less demanding. Even so, Remedy's third-person shooter was truly a beast on PC, and I still remember feeling sad and disappointed that I'd have to wait a while before I could play it properly. Of course, Alan Wake obviously came out long before ray tracing was even a twinkle in Nvidia's eye, and it doesn't sound like the new remaster will have it either (although, golly, can you imagine what those dark, torch-lit forests would look like if it did?). Much to my delight, Remedy confirmed that Control is now part of the expanded Wake-verse as well, hinting at more Alan Wake adventures to come at some point in the future. Remedy did later revise Control's recommended PC spec, thankfully, but it still takes quite a toll on the old ray tracing front for those with the latest and greatest graphics cards. Just look at Control, whose initial PC requirements were heftier than one its sentient fridges. I know now that Remedy's games are often pretty monstrous on the performance front. The PC I had at work had been able to play most of these games without trouble in the months leading up to Wake-gate (the perks of being a baby tech journalist), and I'd naively assumed Alan Wake would run just as smoothly. 2013 was the year I first played Bioshock, Metro 2033, Psychonauts, Trine 2 and Amnesia: The Dark Descent all in very quick succession (with Portal 2, World Of Goo and Superbrothers: Swords & Sworcery all preceding them in the latter stages of 2012), and I'd picked up Alan Wake in a recent Steam sale for what seemed like pocket change. At that point, I'd just built my very first gaming PC, you see, and having largely grown up playing games on Nintendo consoles and nothing else, I'd set about filling in the gaps of my gaming education. I'd been lulled into a false sense of security. Woof, it was literally like I was looking at some kind of torch-based slideshow. But as soon as Mr Wake got plopped into those tall, ominous forests. I remember just about getting through the first section easily enough, where Alan's chilling out in his mountain cabin trying to write his new crime novel but then discovers his wife's gone walkabout. While the PC version didn't come out until 2012, I first came to Alan Wake a year later in 2013, according to my Steam achievements, and man alive, my PC just wasn't up to snuff. Heck, back then I wasn't even trying to play Alan Wake at the time, either. All right folks, hands up: who's ever been excited about that hip new video game, only to find their PC's so old and decrepit that simply trying to turn the camera risks smothering your monitor screen with remnants of your leftover lunch? It's something we've probably all experienced over the years as PC games get ever more demanding, but for me, that game was Alan Wake, Remedy's spooky third-person shooter from the bygone era of 2010, and I'd do it all again to play the newly-announced Alan Wake Remastered, too.
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