Alan Wake Review
By - Richard J.
It has been a long time coming. Rumored to have been in the planning stages since as early as 2001; Alan Wake is finally here. This action, survival horror game has fought against numerous delays to finally make it's way to day light. A dark vs. light fight similar to what you will experience once you dive into Alan Wake. Despite the numerous delays, I can happily tell you that Alan Wake was everything I was hoping it would be, and maybe even more.
The basic plot of Alan Wake is that you play as a author who is taking a vacation to a small town called Bright Falls, after writing his latest novel. What appears to be a quite vacation, turns out to be quite the adventure. After Alan's wife Alice is taken by the darkness, Alan must fight back against the darkness that has taken over Bright Falls in order to save his wife. While this may seem like a predictable, text-book survival horror plot, it couldn't be farther from that. The twists and turns throughout your adventure will have you guessing what will come next, while also being confused about what you just witnessed. Alan Wake is the kind of game where you have to sit back and ponder what you just witnessed, in order to get the full effect. Remedy has done great justice to a game about an author by creating a story that would be worthy of any best-selling novel.
The way the story in Alan Wake is presented is through episodes. The game has six episodes which last between an hour and two hours. This is meant to make the game feel like the first season of a television series. They improve the sense of a television series by re-capping what happened in the previous episode before you start the next. Also, at the end of each episode you hear a new song, sort of like an outro-theme to the episode. This works well for those who want to time their playing by playing an episode per night, but the varying time of each episode kind of throws that off. It's a different approach that I think some will like, while others won't so much.
The great adventure that is Alan Wake would be nothing without the stellar characters you meet along the way. Each character you meet in the game has their own personalities which you will grow to love. They are all so easily identifiable from their personalities. The main characters that you see - or hear - throughout the entire game are Alan Wake, Alice Wake, and Barry Wheeler. Alan Wake is of course the main character of the game, and who the player controls. Alice Wake is Alan's wife; the one factor that drives Alan, and the player, to get through the game. Barry Wheeler, is Alan's odd manager who follows you through most of the game. Barry comes off as an arrogant and helpless man at the beginning, but eventually becomes quite brave and becomes an asset to Alan getting through the game.
Aside from the main characters, there are also many secondary characters. As mentioned before, these characters have a large role in your enjoyment of the game. It's rare for a game to be so driven by it's characters, but that's exactly what Alan Wake does. If the characters in Alan Wake weren't as memorable as they are, I feel that the game wouldn't be quite as great as it is. I wish more games released today were as character-driven as Alan Wake is.
The fighting in Alan Wake takes a 3D person shooter approach. When you fight your enemies - known as the "Taken" who are surrounded in darkness - you must first aim a flash-light, or any other source of light at them, until you remove the darkness. Once you get rid of the darkness, you are free to shoot at them with any of the weapons you have acquired. What Alan Wake does a bit different, is that you aim using your light, not a normal aiming reticle. This can be a bit difficult to use at first, but really adds to survival part of the game and is sure to get your adrenaline pumping.
As for weapons you can kill the Taken with, revlovers, rifles, shotguns, and hunting rifles are the main weapons you will pick-up. These will only affect the Taken once you have removed the darkness from them. You can also pick-up flares which will remove the darkness from the Taken, and in rare cases, kill them too. Apart from those, you can also pick-up flare guns, and flash-bangs which will kill the Taken instantly, without having to remove the darkness.
Other than combat, you will spend a large part of the game running. You can also sprint for short periods of time by pressing the Left Bumper. The sprinting controls are quite comfortable, so comfortable that now when I play games that don't have sprinting, I sub-consciously press the right bumper when the action gets heated. If you don't like those controls though, Alan Wake allows for fully customizable controls from the options menu.
In a move that shocked me the first time I experienced it, the game allows you to drive some of the cars in the game. The cars you can drive must have their interior lights on, and are usually set up for you to drive when you must get to far distances. What was the most surprising though, was how well the driving controlled. I had no problems while driving the cars, and it felt quite comfortable. The driving was definitely not tacked on, as it is in most other 3D person action games. The only problem I had the driving was with the camera. The camera likes to snap to either the front, left, right, or behind. So when I would try to nudge it a little bit to the left or right, it would snap all the way which was a bit annoying. The upside to this though is that you can quickly see behind you if you need to.
One thing Alan Wake does that I found to be really nice, was it's integration of cut-scenes. In most games, everything stops, then you wait for a cutscene to load. In Alan Wake, the cutscenes automatically play as soon as you walk past an area or interact with something that triggers them. For the most part, these work perfect as you will be walking, and suddenly a cutscene will take over. However, sometimes you will accidentally trigger them before you want to and the cutscene will jump your character a few feet from where you really are supposed to be.
The graphics in Alan Wake are great for the most part. The environments around Bright Falls can be breath-taking at certain points. The biggest problem with the environments are that they are quite repetitive. You spend a little too much time in what appears to be the exact same forest, littered with the same run-down shack. However, once you get to more populated parts of the town, you will see beautifully crafted houses and small buildings.
Unfortunately, the graphics aren't all great. The animations of the characters in Alan Wake are absolutely terrible. They're so stiff that it feels like you are watching robots move sometimes. The facial animations in the game aren't bad, but they do feel a bit dated. If they had spent more time on the characters, it would have added a lot to the feeling of immersion in the game.
Fortunately, the audio in Alan Wake is amazing. All of the characters have perfect voice-overs that fit their personalities. Everyone sounds the way you would imagine them sounding by looking at them. While you are playing, you will also hear many different licensed songs from various recording artists like Roy Orbison. On your adventure, you will also find many radios you can turn on which feel like you are listening to a live radio broadcast. The broadcast changes to what is happening in the game, and I never once heard the same thing twice during my play through. Along with radios, the game also has various TVs scattered around which you can turn on and watch a TV broadcast. All of this makes you feel like you are playing Alan as he explores a living, breathing world.
As for replay value, Alan Wake doesn't have very much. One playthrough will take you roughly 10 - 12 hours to complete, if you take your time. If you wanted to, you could also play again on hard or nightmare difficulty. There is no online, or multiplayer of any kind, only a single player story mode. This may turn off a lot of people who expect multiplayer experiences in their games. However, I feel that a multiplayer experience would only feel tacked-on at the last minute.
Overall, Alan Wake is an amazing single-player experience. The story, characters, combat, and overall design of the game shine and show what this generation of consoles is capable of. Unfortunately, some graphical problems and lack of replay value may deter some from buying the game at full price. Despite this, Alan Wake is a game that is not to be missed. It's a modern classic for single-player focused games, which seem to be fading fast. Despite how long it took for the game to be released, Alan Wake has not disappointed at all.
PROS
- Deep story
- Character driven
- Great combat
- Full radio and tv broadcasts
- Cars drive surprisingly well
CONS
- Terrible character animations
- Lack of replay value
- Fairly repetitive
RATING: 9.25/10
