I just received the limited collector’s edition of this game today. I was completely captivated by it and it certainly lived up to my expectations of the game, and dare I say surpassed them?
Story/ Characters:
Alan Wake is a famous writer who is suffering from writers block. Him and his wife decide to take a vacation and try to restore Wake’s creativity. The story is set in the ‘beautiful’ Bright Falls. It turns out Wake is very popular in the town of Bright Falls, as evidenced by his arrival and appearance in the diner. You meet some pretty strange characters from the get go such as Rose who claims to be you’re biggest fan. Also you meet two old rockers and Cynthia. She appears a bit crazy flicking the light switch and warning you to stay clear of the dark. As crazy as she seems it would have been wise to take her advice.
Eventually you and you’re wife Alice arrive at the cabin. Later that evening a fight breaks out between the two of you and Alan storms off knowing his wife will not follow due to her fear of the dark. Well, someone in this game had to be afraid of the dark right? All of a sudden the lights go out and you hear Alice screaming for help, you rush back but obviously it’s to late. This sets your story and Wake’s journey to come. His journey to rescue his wife.
The plot, however, is much thicker then this and with each episodic chapter the story gets deeper and deeper gripping you and keeping you on the edge of your seat. There is much more here then meets the eye. I do not want to reveal to much since it will ruin the story for anyone who has yet to experience this amazing piece of game story telling. Expect a rocky, psychological road ahead with a few twists you will not see coming. I look forward to a sequel and to the future planned DLC to pad the story out even more.
I love that Alan Wake himself is not the sort of person you would expect to be a hero in a game. He is just a writer, that takes to his role as hero a little to readily. However the small details are explained throughout, if you notice them or not is down to you. Such as his excellent marksmanship. When you see flashbacks to Wake’s New York apartment in his office you will see a trophy with two gold guns, this with Wake saying he only ever used a gun in a range implies he has at least earned some sort of reward for his marksmanship.
The character development is good, and I often found myself wanting to know more about most of them. The acting is enjoyable and not to cheesy. I really enjoyed Wake’s agent, Barry as a character. I found him very entertaining and the engagements between Wake and Barry amusing. Barry makes some great references to material beyond the story of Alan Wake. In fact, you can tell the game is clearly inspired by authors such as Steven King, and shows such as the X-Files. Remedy do not shy away from this however and Wake is often caught describing situations as something from a Steven King story.
Design/ Graphics:
I remain disappointed that the PC version of this game was never released. I feel with its moody atmosphere and its heavy reliance on shadows a DirectX 11 version on the PC would have done wonders for the visuals due to DX11′s features specific for lighting and shadows. However this in no way means that the visuals of Alan Wake suffer. I was stunned by the detail and the environments in this game and it just proves what the current crop of consoles are capable of.
Although most of the game is set at night, with heavy fog and lots of shadows the graphics scale fantastically in the day time scenes. You can tell Remedy really put a lot of effort in to the look of this game and took great care in making it as perfect as possible. The lush, rich forests look fantastic. Foliage is a very hard thing to achieve in games and they have done a fantastic job with it. The mountain areas look great as well as the town areas such as Bright Falls itself. The lighting in Alan Wake is second to none. I find it hard to think of another game that has achieved effective use of light to a level that Remedy have in this game. It creates such a spine tingling atmosphere that keeps you nervous throughout in anticipation of the Taken coming out between the mist.
The world is very linear, clearly pointing you in the direction you need to go. In case you ever finding yourself getting lost they have added a handy navigator in the top left corner. I don’t recall ever having to use this, and never even noticed it until an hour or so in to the game. This is thanks to excellent design guiding me through the story. If you see a light ahead you want to run to it, the light literally guides you through most of the game, and light has never looked so welcoming as it needs to in Alan Wake.
Standard cutscenes are used to advance the story further, as well as phone calls. More interestingly is the hidden messages throughout the game. They come in a variety of formats. My personal favourite is the manuscripts. I enjoyed listening to Wake read the manuscripts back to me, they fill in interesting parts of the story and keep you guessing. I will be returning for another playthrough with the ambition of collecting all of these as I missed a few. Aside from that you will find TV’s and radios scattered around. Then the messages you can only see with the torch. These guide you to hidden items, and some of them may baffle you at first. All is revealed and you soon learn the purpose of these mysterious messages.
The set pieces are also fantastic. Crossing a bridge with the darkness picking up buses, boats, trucks, cars, barrels, and anything else at its disposal and throwing them at you making you evade while escaping from a collapsing bridge. Intense, cinematic and awesome. There are many set pieces like this and they always keep you on your toes.
Overall I love the art direction, the design and the amazing creation of atmosphere.
Gameplay:
The gameplay was not what I expected at all. However I should have expected it from the creators of Max Payne. The action is awesome. Every fight feels so intense and the combat system works really well. Who would have thought in a game the most vital resource would be batteries? Don’t get me wrong, guns are needed if you intend to kill the Taken, but you will not get anywhere without Wake’s trusty torch and some Energizer batteries. To take out a Taken you need to focus the light on them until the darkness that is protecting them is destroyed, then you can open up with a revolver, rifle or shotgun. Yep, you are limited to one of those three firearms. This is not a bad thing however, these weapons are what you would expect to find in a small American town such as Bright Falls. If you are expecting mini guns and RPG’s you have the wrong game.
On the note of RPG’s however Wake does have other tools at his disposal to help him dispatch the Taken. A personal favourite of mine is the flash bang. Drop one of these in the middle of the relentless taken and watch them go up in smoke. Flares are a great defensive weapon, if you find yourself surrounded by the taken pop a flare and watch them back off. This gives you a moment to reload, and take out a Taken or two. Then you have the flare gun. Shoot this into a Taken and watch him explode like being hit in the face with an RPG. The cinematic, slow motion camera in these moments makes this very enjoyable.
I did often find myself wishing I had a melee attack though just to knock back the Taken. Thankfully you have a pretty decent dodge system at your disposal. This come in handy in the first couple of chapters but as you start to get heavier duty torches (and lanterns) it becomes less and less relevant since you will be taking guys out very quickly, and if they get close a flare deals with that. By the 4th chapter I found myself rarely evading attacks.
The Taken are pretty limited in variety. You have the regular ‘grunt’ that is easy to kill and just a pest, then you have the big guys that take a bit more killing, and then you have the super speedy Taken (oh how I hate these guys). That’s about it aside from some killer birds. Yet you don’t get bored fighting them. The always keep you on your toes ambushing you, and when you hear that big guy rev his chainsaw you certainly get worried. The AI does a good job of disorientating you by spreading out around you limited how many you can take on at once.
There is no perfect combination in this game like most others. You need a clever use of all the tools provided to you to get the job done. The combat system is well balanced, well paced and fluid to use. Ammo is far from scarce for the most part, but one or two moments in the game leave you with your pants down running for the next light hoping that the bulb doesn’t pop when you get there (this happens a lot) or franticly starting a generator while the Taken close in on your. These moments can leave your heat pounding in moments of panic, but once that light turns on you will breath the biggest sigh of relief.
One of the deciding factors for a lot of people is what about replay value? Well it has no multiplayer or additional modes which may put a lot of people off. However the game has a lot of collectables, a story that doesn’t bore and multiple difficulties that may intrigue players to go back for a second visit to Bright Falls. I know I will be visiting Bright Falls again soon to find the rest of those hidden goodies. With DLC planned this July and most likely more in the future there could be plenty of content to come. If you don’t go the second hand route you will get a code that will let you redeem the first DLC for free which is always a bonus.
Overall:
This is one of those games I was never excited about coming out, I thought it just looked like another generic horror game, yet the gamer in me took the plunge and got it anyway since I feel any game always deserves a chance. Boy was I wrong. I could not put this game down. It had my heart pounding, the story had my attention throughout, the combat kept me on my toes and the characters keep me amused and intrigued. The game is beautiful to look and has fantastic audio. I’m glad I didn’t pass up on this and if you own a 360 you owe it to yourself to go out and invest in this game.
9/10