Alan Wake Review

Another day, another blog post! Soon enough I'll run out of games to review, and I'll have to blog about original ideas instead! (Le' Gasp!)

ALAN WAKE

I feel weirdly torn about this one. Alan Wake is the much-hyped "Psychological Action Thriller" from Remedy, the Finnish developers of the Max Payne franchise. Alan Wake is an episodic thriller following the titular character, a struggling writer, searching for his wife, who has been kidnapped by a Dark Presence that is slowly taking over the idyllic town of Bright Falls. Meanwhile, events from his latest novel, which he has no memory of writing, are coming to life. Sounds hot, yeah?

Firstly, the story is excellent. Incredibly compelling, and tightly written, it draws the player in and demands their attention until the conclusion, which is admittedly a bit disappointing. Not all questions are answered once the credits roll, but with one DLC add-on coming next month, and with more already in development, it is likely that we will learn more about this
soon.

Manuscript pages from Wake's novel can be collected, and these pages give further insight to the story, or foreshadow upcoming events. They're also for the most part very well-written. There was obviously a lot of love for this project. Visuals are top notch, with sunlight filtering through the woods on the rare occasions you get to wander about in daylight, and with eerie fog rolling in around enemies wreathed in a swirling layer of shifting darkness during, well, the rest of the game. The game's art direction and set dec are top notch, with the small town of Bright Falls feeling distinctly lived-in, and each environment offering plenty to see. The town is fleshed out further by the superb voice acting and excellent dialogue of the townsfolk, as well as radio shows from the local late-night DJ, and episodes of a Twilight Zone-esque thriller called Night Springs. It does seem a little strange that Wake would take a time-out from escaping an ancient evil and finding his wife to check out what's on the boob tube, but, then again, it is a game.

The environments are vast and beautiful, when you can see them. And even when you can't, the forest still comes to life, the swaying trees and shifting shadows forming terrifying

silhouettes in the darkness and furthering the tense atmosphere. With light being your primary weapon against the darkness, it's no surprise that the lighting is excellent, with your flashlight beam and road flares in particular looking very nice.

But just as all is not well in Bright Falls, as is definitely not well in Alan Wake. While the atmosphere is masterfully foreboding and the story is chillingly gripping, the game....sucks. Seriously. I can't remember the last time I experienced TEDIUM playing a video game. Throughout the game (read; at every possible opportunity) Wake must fight off people and objects possessed by the darkness known as the Taken. He does this by shining a light at them until their +5 Armor of Darkness is burned away, and then he shoot

s them in the face. He does this the entire game, against all three enemy types, the normal enemy, the slightly bigger enemy, and the normal sized-enemy who can also move fast, but lacks the brainpower to realize that this newfound speed can be used to attack the writer. Along the way, Wake can find a whopping four guns, although it is technically three, since both shotgun variants do the same amount of damage. Wake can also use a flare gun as a rocket launcher of sorts, and toss flash grenades and pop road flares when things get a bit too hairy, which it will.

Here's the thing, though. I looked up road flares, and they can last anywhere from 10-60 minutes, which you would think would make them very useful in game. Not so. Wake's road flare's last from 3-5 seconds, since it's hard to tell with the swooping slow motion camera that kicks in anytime Wake does something more interesting than scratch his

nose.This makes them utterly useless, and since the game will continue to spawn enemies as long as you are not directly in a source of protective light, it becomes difficult to get away. Not only that, the enemies have no sense of proper decency, appearing out of nowhere directly in my line of sight (breaking the cardinal rule of game spawning) and wielding extraordinarily painful attacks that hit more than once per attack. They can also attack at the same time, and since Wake dodges like a drunken sailor attempting to tap dance, things don't usually end well.

In fact, Wake kind of sucks all around.

There is a sprint button, but after jogging for six seconds or so, after another drunken lunge to enter the sprint, Wakes becomes tired, and slows to a third of his normal walk speed. This man may be a writer, but even I can run longer than he can, and that's saying something. Also, Wake proves to be the exception to the superb voice acting I mentioned, with his constant narration coming across rather monotone and disinterested, and since he narrates everything in game as well as reads you off the manuscript pages you collect, it becomes tiring rather quickly. Oddly though, in game Wake's voice acting ranges from mediocre to good, despite it being the same actor. Obviously, narration is not this man's strong suit. To wrap up the griping, you can collect thermoses of coffee hidden in the world, but there's never an explanation for this. The manuscript pages make sense. But coffee? Wake doesn't drink it, no one ever mentions it, and it's simply out of place. Wake also has a real problem hanging onto items. At every possible opportunity, he'd lose all his weapons and his flashlight, leaving him defenseless. Perhaps he washed his hands with butter before embarking on his adventure,since he seems incapable of retaining any piece of equipment. As a caveat to the impressive visuals,

the lip-syncing is terrible, and the characters appear to have had a bit of a Botox overdose, their faces lumpy and strange. Wake's wife in particular looks terrible, and when Wake's voice-over mentioned her being a "natural beauty" I burst out laughing. The game also name-drops Stephen King like crazy, and features some rather blatant in-game advertising, from billboards to a completely out of place television advert. The fact that you get an achievable for watching said ad makes it all the worse.

The problem with Alan Wake is that it really shouldn't be a game. Several times during gameplay I wished I could just stop and pick up Alan Wake, the novel, or tune into the next episode of Alan Wake, the TV show. It becomes a chore to play through, but the tightly wound story kept me going, until suddenly I had beat it. I thoroughly enjoyed almost everything about the game, and I loved it's visuals, it's story, it's atmosphere, and it's characters, but the one thing I didn't like was it's gameplay, and that is the core of any videogame, for obvious reasons. Remedy claims this is the first title of a much bigger series, and I confess myself interested. I just hope that the next installment is more fun to play.