A cult classic in the making
Alan Wake is one of the 8 games I was lucky enough to receive for Christmas. I was relieved after feeling rather guilty for being part of the reason for its not so great sales figures. I have played an completed the 6 episodes that make up the main game, and I'm here to explain why those sales figures should be significantly better.
Alan Wake is a game that focuses first and foremost on storytelling. Alan and his wife Alice, decide to holiday in the town of Bright Falls after two years of writer's block start to wear on the famous writer and the relationship with his wife. The story quickly takes a turn for the supernatural and the dark, and the remainder of the game depicts Alan's struggle to make sense of the phenomena surrounding him, while searching for his wife.
Alan Wake's most successful game-play components tie directly to the story being told. Alan is constantly pursued by a dark force and has to use light to fight off its manifestations. In game-play, this translates to the left analogue stick controlling a flashlight that illuminates objects so that they can be damaged by a weapon controlled by the right analog stick. The mechanic is a nice play on the typical dual-analog controls of modern console shooters, with the beam of the flashlight doubling as crosshairs.
He is also hunting down the pages to a manuscript he cannot remember writing, which serve as one of the game's collectibles. While the manuscript pages make sense in the context of the game and also serve to flesh out the plot, the second set of collectibles (coffee thermoses) do not and are exceptionally gamey and incongruous in Alan Wake's world.
Fleshing out the experience are light puzzle solving and exploration mechanics. Occasionally the player has to manipulate the environment to pass obstacles, and some exploration is warranted by hidden stashes of ammunition and the collectibles mentioned above.
The presentation of Alan Wake ironically shines when the world is at its darkest. The weather system is the best I've seen to date and the lighting exceptional when one considers the processing abilities of the 360. As for the detractors, rough textures appear during day-time scenes and some of the facial animations are residents of Uncanny Valley.
The ambient soundtrack is exceptional at building tension and supplemented by an eclectic mix of licensed music that ties well into the game world and would be well worth listening to in the car. I'm running out of superlatives, but the click of ammunition being loaded into a revolver and the whoosh of an axe flying past your head are all spot-on.
And now for the monster at the end of the book. Alan Wake's combat works well, but the self-imposed constraints of the light-dark mechanics do not allow for a great deal of variety in combat, and monotony kicks in by the final episodes. Once the gun-play plateaus your enjoyment of the narrative and your compulsion for the collectibles will largely determine if you see things through. Luckily I had enough of both to in droves.
Mature gamers waiting for their next fix of Bioshock or Half-Life would do well to take an excursion to the quaint town of Bright Falls. If you're a member of the high-action twitch crowd, your time would be better spent elsewhere.
