Guest Review – Alan Wake

Alan Wake has finally arrived! Five years since its announcement at e3, Finnish developers Remedy (Of Max Payne fame) have brought the long awaited action thriller to the Xbox 360. Often said to be GTA with a supernatural element, the game has been changed to a more story driven narrative to give the game a deeper game experience. It’s inspired by shows Twin Peaks and X-Files and books like Tommy Knockers and the Dark Half, Remedy jumps into another genre specific piece. Has the wait been worth it or has it just fallen flat of its expected hype.

Alan Wake is the story of a once big time writer, who lost his groove and faces an enemy greater than any other in video game history: writers block. Two years later and Alan is a smarmy ass who has little regard for others, aside from his wife.

Enter Alice Wake, the supportive wife. Let me enter into a bit of a diatribe. Most video games, if not all, always give you an end goal. Either to save humanity/earth/or that special person. The games that concentrate on that special person mostly seem to fall flat, in at least the caring about them department. A lot of games make this mistake. They introduce a person that the main character has a deep emotional attachment to, but who the player never meets or only met recently. We never develop any attachment to them and we just take it on faith that these two people love each other. It might give the game purpose but it feels hollow.

Examples are Trish from Infamous, Krato’s family from God of War and the Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3.

Moving along. You and your wife head off to Bright Falls for a vacation in a cabin in the middle of a lake. Within the first hour you realize that your wife brought you here with the secret agenda to get you back writing. Following a brief argument Alan leaves in a tizzy. As soon as Alan leaves the cabin he hears his wife’s screams. Rushing back inside we’re shown a cut scene where Alan sees Alice in the water and dives in after her. Alan awakes in a crashed car and now the action begins.

As Alan, you are armed only with a flashlight and whatever generic weapon there is at hand (i.e. pistol, shotgun, rifle) to fend off the “taken”. The taken are Crazed Hillbillies that shout things like “fishing can be a job and a hobby” while brandishing knives, axes and other edge weapons. Their main defense is that they are somehow possessed by the darkness that consumes the town during the night. Therefore you’ll need a little strategy to take them out. You must use your flashlight in its powered-up setting (that drains, but recharges slowly) to blow out their darkness shield. That leaves them vulnerable to attack. There aren’t that many enemies in the game but you gets small, medium to large baddies and late in the game they turn into the Flash and get super fast. The other type of enemies are possessed items like tires that float in the air and fling themselves at you. These enemies can only be defeated by using light. You can use the good old reliable flashlight; flash bangs that clear out areas; flares that blind enemies for a few precious seconds; and the flare gun – the BFG of Alan Wake.

If you haven’t guessed it yet there’s a lot of light vs. dark in this game, both thematically and practically. The lighting effects will leave your jaw on the floor with the level of insane* detail. At one point I was passing by a couple of parked cars and my flash light shone in one of the windows. At first, it reflected off the glass but then I actually saw real depth and variation in the shadows showing off the interior of the car. It looked fucking fantastic. At other points you have safe areas where under enemies don’t attack, like under lampposts, etc. Once entering under these all the darkness outside becomes that much darker because your eyes haven’t adjusted to the change in visibility. These little touches flesh out the game’s visual appeal.

Throughout the game you are finding pieces of a manuscript that tell your story before you play it. Some Manuscript pages will give you better insight into other characters story and reasons for the way the react to Alan. While some other pages simply paint out an enemy ambush in more colorful light. The collection of these pages can really ride on completionists, since you’ll need to do at least a second play-through to get certain pages that are only available in Nightmare mode. Nightmare mode is only unlocked after beating the game once before. The difficulty is cranked up to the extreme in Nightmare mode, with less ammo for stronger enemies.

The game story is broken into 6 episodes. It becomes reminiscent of TV’s Lost where you are given more bits of the story and then left with a cliffhanger. The pacing was done so well, really giving you that sense of progression and always leaves you wanting more. The beginning of each new episode even has recap of the previous episode. The only downside to these episode breaks is all of your items from the previous episode are taken away and you are forced to start fresh, which can get annoying for an ammo hoarder like me.

The other characters range from just okay, to downright lovable. They all have that small town charm to them and you can tell something is a wee bit off. Almost as if there sanity is just a tad bit off. My two favorites were Odin and Tor, a pair of brothers who were once huge rockers in the seventies and now live out there Asgardian fantasies. It’s entertaining to watch them banter back and forth. The voice acting in the game is top-notch (just thought it’d sound better to have one adjective instead of giving a range again) all across the board. You never hear a voice mismatched with a character.

The few detractors from the game manifest as odd voice syncing, especially with mouth movement and only noticeable for Alice Wake. An inclusion into your action repertoire is the dodge function which lets you duck under enemy attacks and projectiles. The problem is that often with all the darkness in the game you are left dodging in whichever way just to hope to get successful dodge in. Once you pull a proper dodge you are given a minor Max Payne esque slow down that lets you get the upper hand on the enemy. With a lack of reticule in the game you are forced to rely on your flashlights point to see where your bullets land, it takes a bit of getting use to. I found myself playing an older game with the way Alan handled. When stopping on ledges Alan would take a couple steps to steady himself and then take a nosedive of the cliff. You’re playing as a writer who has practically never used a gun before so you should expect perfect controls. I think the jankyness was just right to set the mood. It give the player the lack of control that you would expect of a regular trapped in such a nightmare.

Alan Wake is not the next Gears of War run and gunner but it does have the chops to be a competent shooter. While at the same time delivering some of the best narrative and story elements in a long time. For what it lacks in perfect controls it reveals in solid storytelling that gives this world of Bright Falls depth and weight. I’d love to have another foray into the darkness with any more DLC they could make for this game. Though it appears to be a straight linear story the levels feel opened up enough to allow for further exploration that DLC could provide.

A great game and well worth the wait to the successor of Max Payne. I know its early but I’m totally going to say so far this is my game of the year.

-Chris Demelo