Alan Wake vs Deadly Premonition – 12 startling similarities

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One of 2010’s best horror games has a disturbing amount in common with its best-worst

It’s hard to tell what’s stranger: Wake’s frequent narration of the objects and events that you can clearly see onscreen, or York’s near-constant “conversations” with his secondary personality, Zach, which often involve detailed musings out loud about the casts and crews of various ‘80s movies. After all, they’re both appropriate to the characters and plot: as a writer,Alan’snarrating his ownstory, and York has mental issues.

Alan Wake’s driving sequences, while relatively enjoyable, are kind of pointless; since there’s no real free roaming, you’re usually limited to driving through small, enclosed areas or down long stretches of highway that only exist to justify the existence of cars. And while the cars themselves have weight and destructibility, they also tend to disintegrate if you’re ever surrounded by a group of machete-wielding Taken.


Above: At least it's a pretty drive

Meanwhile, driving is totally necessary in Deadly Premonition, seeing as the game world is huge and open. But it’s a miserable experience, as the slightest twitch of the stick can send you careening into oncoming traffic. Not that it really matters much, because the cars can absorb a serious beating without ever showing damage, and collisions never feel like they have any weight or real impact.


Above: Rain makes cars constantly veer off the road in real life, right?

Not much of a similarity, really, but it’s strange that each one got something right about driving that the other game got wrong.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.