Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Without going too deep into spoilers with Alan Wake, it is safe to say that the ending might have left you a bit confused.   For those that have bantered about, trying to figure out what is going on with Alan Wake, the first DLC pack hopes to help you with those thoughts.  The Signal continues the journey started in the main game, and is a surprisingly entertaining DLC pack that packs in a ton of content for the price.

The Signal has you continuing the story of Alan Wake, where he is still trying to determine what reality is and what is a creation of his mind.  As you awake from your slumber, you are still in the cabin on the lake, and voices are telling you that you are trapped.  However, Alan is not sure exactly where he is trapped, and needs to embark on his journey to escape is prison.

The Signal, because of its setting, allows for new twists in the mechanics to the game.  Light still plays an important part of the journey through Alan Wake, but now, it is used for other mechanics, like traversing the environment, and even finding ammunition for weapons.  The way that the world works in The Signal is a nice change of pace from the first game.  It is also nice that a few familiar faces join you along the way, to help you sort out the insanity of this new world. 

While the mechanics of the world have changed, the combat has stayed the same, and this is both good and bad.  While I always enjoyed the combat in Alan Wake, the new DLC throws almost endless hordes of enemies at you during specific set pieces, and it will task you.  While I never had issues with running out of ammunition in Alan Wake, I was constantly sitting on a handful of bullets after every encounter with the Taken.  Once sequence in particular was a killer and required several retries to complete.  It is like the Taken decided to open a serious can of whoop-ass this time around for the beatings that you put on their brethren in the original release.

For those that were upset with collectibles, they are back, this time around in the form of alarm clocks; however there are only 10 to find, although I only found a handful of them in my first play through of The Signal.  Also, out there to find are cardboard cutouts of people from the first game, promoting their own books, with titles that seem to relate to some of the issues that they have in their own lives.

After defeating the delusional boss at the end of The Signal, I realized that I clocked in about a two hour chunk of gameplay, minus about 20-25 minutes for reloads due to some of the difficult combat.  At the price point of 560 MS Loonies ($7.00), I would say that this is an easy buy recommendation for anyone that owns the game.  And anyone that bought the game for free can enter a code from their package to get The Signal for free, adding to an already solid title.  Sure the combat is frustrating, and you will still be as confused as you were when you started The Signal, but it is a fulfilling experience that is well worth any gamer’s time and money.  Alan Wake: The Signal gets a 4 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.
Check out Alan Wake: The Signal and other Xbox 360  reviews at Test Freaks