Review
Alan Wake
By Jesse Ship - June 9th, 2010
Alan Wake is Remedy’s summer blockbuster thriller title that will keep your palms sweaty in the living room, no matter how high you have the AC cranked up. It’s a tale that sinks you into the dark heart of desperation as a man evades shadowy FBI agents, and dark shadow creatures in sleepy town USA.
Videogames about novelists tend to be story heavy; Alan Wake is no exception.Explaining too much would be delving into spoiler territory, but the gist of it is that successful Mystery/Horror writer Alan Wake is in the midst of a writer’s block. To fix the situation, his wife Alice takes him on a retreat to the sleepy pacific northwestern town of Bright Falls, Washington, a town not unlike a typical town in a Stephen King novel. Like a King novel (and rightly so, as Mr. King was a creative consultant), your beautiful wife is taken from you in nightmare fashion, and you are left to your own devices to figure things out. Is Alan going insane, or is it just that everyone in town is crazy? Most of the plot is shrouded in dark existential mystery, and truthfully, seems more Twin Peaks than Stephen King. Regardless, the story unravels and by the time you reach chapter 4 (yes, the game about a writer is played out in chapters), the you will have a pretty good understanding of what is going on.
Levels tend to be formulaic, but this may be seen as intentional: begin with cinematic story elements; move to interactive exploratory non-combat section; cut to conflict; fall into mysterious blackout; wake up surrounded by shadowy creatures. Alan will fight his way through shadow creatures in the forest collecting items like pages from your manuscript, coffee thermoses or episodes of “Night Springs”, an homage to Twilight Zone. Also dispersed throughout the game are radios are set to the community station hosted by your passive ally, the curmudgeonly Pat Maine. At the conclusion of each chapter you are played out with a classic rock tune by musicians such as Tom Waits and David Bowie; cue more Stephen King influences. A nice touch to each level is the “what’s happened so far” cinematic summary, mimicking a tv serial; also adding to this serial motif, Remedy has promised further chapters in the form of downloadable content, once you finish the game.
This is the type of game that rewards players for wandering off the beaten path. Many treasures are discovered by following a trail of scrawled yellow arrows or words, which are only revealed by shining the light upon them. There is also the occasional puzzle sequence, or a generator that must be started by mashing buttons at the appropriate time. If you want to find everything there is to find, you will be investing some quality time.
Character development through interactions, cinematics and dialogue is extremely effective and sets Alan Wake in a class of its own; if you hang around a character instead of moving on to the next part of the level, you will be rewarded with clever banter. If it gets dry or, repetitive, then this is your cue to move on. The game also features playable flashbacks where you get to do exciting things at home with your wife, like make her coffee or fetch design documents for your book jacket. While the actions may sound trite, the scenes do wonders for for fleshing out the characters and makes you feel as if you are playing through an actual novel, rather than just a hack and slash adventure. It is obvious that a lot of thought was put into this; the developers did, after all, spend six long years on the title.
Alan Wake uses a simplistic approach towards weapons and inventory upgrades. The revolver gives way to the pump-action shotgun which is interchangeable with a hunting rifle. Your dinky camper flashlight upgrades to a heavy-duty one, which eventually becomes a high-powered fog lamp. Flash bangs and flare sticks may also be employed, along with the powerful flare gun. Weapons run on ammo, and flashlights run on batteries, both of which need consistent reloading/replenishing. For those among you that are extra-impatient, you can mash the reload button to make it happen faster.
The variety of enemies is also minimalist. Your most common foes are “The Taken”; men whose bodies that have been possessed by the evil shadows that have emerged from the darkly mysterious Cauldron Lake. To defeat them, you must first burn off the darkness by aiming your torch at them, which stuns them; at this point they can be slain with bullets. Other creatures include birds (hello, Hitchcock), as well as inanimate objects which are flung at you in poltergeist fashion. A typical scenario has you running through the forest pursued by shadowy axe-throwing ‘Taken”; in a mad dash, you head for the nearest protective cover: a streetlight. While fleeing these monsters, you can dodge their assaults using the bumper buttons, resulting in rewards in the form of cinematic-slow motion sequences.
Aside from a gripping story line, the realistic use of shadow and light represent a landmark in video gaming evolution. The game features liberal use of ‘real-time volumetric lighting’, which is typically faked in most high-end games. It certainly makes use of the triple-core processor in the Xbox 360. Five independent threads are employed in the engine and processed seamlessly, resulting in graphics which are nothing short of spectacular. Alan Wake also has one of the best day/night sequences seen in a video game with its dynamic lighting system. However, despite the stunning light-work, the CG-rendered faces (during voice-overs) and character actions are reduced to a jumbling of lips and fumbling arm swipes. Nothing is on track when it comes to this area, but it is easy enough to overlook when you are so fully absorbed in the story.
If psychological horror/thriller games are your bag then Alan Wake is a snug fit. Given Stephen King’s recent desire to become ‘the great American novelist’ you may instead want to experience a next gen console trip through one of his books, which is undoubtedly better.
