Presentation
Wake is the type of game that seems promising at first and keeps you entertained for a while, but fails to deliver once you got the idea behind its concept. That concept is as simple as it can get: you are on a ship that is slowly sinking and the only way to escape is by climbing all the way up to the top where the three exists are located, avoiding fire, debris and for some reason automated machine guns that will be shooting at you on your way up. Besides that, little is known about your character, what sunk the ship or why are you the only one inside it and even though the game doesn't give you any direction or indications, your purpose is pretty obvious, but on your way to the exit, you might encounter some difficulties.

As you make your way up to the top the only thing you know is that you must head upwards and to help with that you have a map of the entire ship meant to display all the chambers, notifying you of the one you are currently in and giving you a sense of direction to where you should head next depending on where the hallways from one chamber to the next one are located; however inside the actual game that isn't executed as smoothly as it sounds, as most of the doors leading to those hallways are locked and the only way to unlock them is by using one of the keys you collected to unlock the terminal which will most likely be placed at the other end of the chamber, so until you memorize the layout of those chambers, which differs each time you restart the game, but not in a definitive way, you'll have to needlessly move from one end of the chamber to the other and repeat.

There is no actual story to follow as the game takes an arcade style, focusing more on replayability, but for a game that centers around that, the radio transmitter messages that will randomly pop up as you make your way up top are a futility as they only state obvious things such as the alarming amount of water around you and there is no way to disable them either, so you will have to skip those each time you replay the game.

Gameplay
Your most useful tool, at least until you familiarize yourself with the ship is your map, as you will constantly use it to orientate yourself and find the easiest way up top, but at the same time it can become your worst nightmare as the doors or terminals aren't marked, so making your way to where the hallway of a chamber appears on the map will send you back to where you came from most of the times simply because there is a locked door between you and that hallway. Aside from that, your most useful items will be the axe which can be used to smash wooden doors, opening up new routes out of a chamber and the keys which are used to unlock terminals for electronic doors.

There are three levels of difficulty, but that isn't where the challenge is supposed to be, as even the most inexperienced player can finish the game on hard as by default if you die, instead of having to restart the game the water level will simply rise all the way to your location, but even if it does get above your level your character can swim just fine, so as long as you have the patience to find a way out, you shouldn't have any problem escaping. The real challenge comes in the form of achievements, as they will put different conditions in which you have to escape, such as avoiding water entirely or escaping without collecting any keys.

Those challenges might keep the hardcore achievement hunters around for a while longer, but even if they manage to do that, the game is still a half frustrating, half boring experience. No matter how many times you change the condition under which you have to escape, the way up there is always the same: avoiding machine guns and fire, struggling to jump from one block to another because the jump mechanic only works when it wants to and finally escaping through one of the three exits just to see the same ending. On top of that the game has a large number of technical issues, starting with the menu that takes way too much time to load, random crashes or the classic character stuck in the environment cases.

Graphics
Just like Lunnye Devitsy, Boss Baddie's other game included in The Lunar Pack, Wake also launches at a fixed resolution and apart from choosing between fullscreen, small windowed mode or large windowed mode, there is no way to change that. Once again, playing in fullscreen becomes an issue on bigger displays. The effects range from horrible to even more horrible as they often disturb the eye more than they please and apart from telling you where the fire is or in which part a machine gun is shooting they really are useless to the overall design. The ship might not be the largest map and it doesn't need to be considering its purpose, but for a ship that has over 15 different chambers, it's shocking to see that the only thing helping you differentiate one from another is the wall colour in the background.

Audio
Wake sounds just as bad as it looks, with effects for basic things such as jumping or pushing objects around sounding mediocre and in the heat of the running, feeling even absent. Machine guns shots sound just as bad, with obvious tonality issues and the water sound effects that are just not there. Even worse, this game features possibly one of the worst soundtracks in the gaming history, with the same annoying song playing in the background over and over again, and no way to turn it off, but I guess since the effects are just as useless you could just play the entire game on mute.

Extras
Getting to one of the three exits shouldn't take longer than 5-10 minutes, but considering you have to familiarize yourself with the map first, your first playthrough will probably take around 30. Once you get that over with, it really depends on how many achievements you're aiming for, since that's your only motivation to replay the game on different scenarios, but even so earning each one of them shouldn't take longer than 4-5 hours.

Verdict
Wake is an arcade game, even though it is not aware of that, trying to force obvious story bits on you, but it is a very bad arcade game, since it is boring more than challenging, and frustrating more than enjoyable, making it a bygone in your library of games once you got the idea and got bored of hunting for the remaining achievements.

Rating: 3.3

[h1][b]Wake up![/b][/h1] [h1][b]Full Review at [url=http://gamedragons.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=114]GameDragons.Net[/url][/b][/h1] [b]Presentation[/b] Wake is the type of game that seems promising at first and keeps you entertained for a while, but fails to deliver once you got the idea behind its concept. That concept is as simple as it can get: you are on a ship that is slowly sinking and the only way to escape is by climbing all the way up to the top where the three exists are located, avoiding fire, debris and for some reason automated machine guns that will be shooting at you on your way up. Besides that, little is known about your character, what sunk the ship or why are you the only one inside it and even though the game doesn't give you any direction or indications, your purpose is pretty obvious, but on your way to the exit, you might encounter some difficulties. As you make your way up to the top the only thing you know is that you must head upwards and to help with that you have a map of the entire ship meant to display all the chambers, notifying you of the one you are currently in and giving you a sense of direction to where you should head next depending on where the hallways from one chamber to the next one are located; however inside the actual game that isn't executed as smoothly as it sounds, as most of the doors leading to those hallways are locked and the only way to unlock them is by using one of the keys you collected to unlock the terminal which will most likely be placed at the other end of the chamber, so until you memorize the layout of those chambers, which differs each time you restart the game, but not in a definitive way, you'll have to needlessly move from one end of the chamber to the other and repeat. There is no actual story to follow as the game takes an arcade style, focusing more on replayability, but for a game that centers around that, the radio transmitter messages that will randomly pop up as you make your way up top are a futility as they only state obvious things such as the alarming amount of water around you and there is no way to disable them either, so you will have to skip those each time you replay the game. [b]Gameplay[/b] Your most useful tool, at least until you familiarize yourself with the ship is your map, as you will constantly use it to orientate yourself and find the easiest way up top, but at the same time it can become your worst nightmare as the doors or terminals aren't marked, so making your way to where the hallway of a chamber appears on the map will send you back to where you came from most of the times simply because there is a locked door between you and that hallway. Aside from that, your most useful items will be the axe which can be used to smash wooden doors, opening up new routes out of a chamber and the keys which are used to unlock terminals for electronic doors. There are three levels of difficulty, but that isn't where the challenge is supposed to be, as even the most inexperienced player can finish the game on hard as by default if you die, instead of having to restart the game the water level will simply rise all the way to your location, but even if it does get above your level your character can swim just fine, so as long as you have the patience to find a way out, you shouldn't have any problem escaping. The real challenge comes in the form of achievements, as they will put different conditions in which you have to escape, such as avoiding water entirely or escaping without collecting any keys. Those challenges might keep the hardcore achievement hunters around for a while longer, but even if they manage to do that, the game is still a half frustrating, half boring experience. No matter how many times you change the condition under which you have to escape, the way up there is always the same: avoiding machine guns and fire, struggling to jump from one block to another because the jump mechanic only works when it wants to and finally escaping through one of the three exits just to see the same ending. On top of that the game has a large number of technical issues, starting with the menu that takes way too much time to load, random crashes or the classic character stuck in the environment cases. [b]Graphics[/b] Just like Lunnye Devitsy, Boss Baddie's other game included in The Lunar Pack, Wake also launches at a fixed resolution and apart from choosing between fullscreen, small windowed mode or large windowed mode, there is no way to change that. Once again, playing in fullscreen becomes an issue on bigger displays. The effects range from horrible to even more horrible as they often disturb the eye more than they please and apart from telling you where the fire is or in which part a machine gun is shooting they really are useless to the overall design. The ship might not be the largest map and it doesn't need to be considering its purpose, but for a ship that has over 15 different chambers, it's shocking to see that the only thing helping you differentiate one from another is the wall colour in the background. [b]Audio[/b] Wake sounds just as bad as it looks, with effects for basic things such as jumping or pushing objects around sounding mediocre and in the heat of the running, feeling even absent. Machine guns shots sound just as bad, with obvious tonality issues and the water sound effects that are just not there. Even worse, this game features possibly one of the worst soundtracks in the gaming history, with the same annoying song playing in the background over and over again, and no way to turn it off, but I guess since the effects are just as useless you could just play the entire game on mute. [b]Extras[/b] Getting to one of the three exits shouldn't take longer than 5-10 minutes, but considering you have to familiarize yourself with the map first, your first playthrough will probably take around 30. Once you get that over with, it really depends on how many achievements you're aiming for, since that's your only motivation to replay the game on different scenarios, but even so earning each one of them shouldn't take longer than 4-5 hours. [b]Verdict[/b] Wake is an arcade game, even though it is not aware of that, trying to force obvious story bits on you, but it is a very bad arcade game, since it is boring more than challenging, and frustrating more than enjoyable, making it a bygone in your library of games once you got the idea and got bored of hunting for the remaining achievements. [u]Rating: 3.3[/u]