Alan Wake - Bad things happen when the sun goes down sometimes...
Cast your mind back to when you were a young child. Afraid of the dark and the monsters that lay in wait. Monsters that not only seemed real, but would attack and devour you the second you close your eyes. Your parents purchased a nightlight that would keep those monsters at bay, seeing as how monsters of the dark are afraid of light and all.
Remedy’s Alan Wake is like a video game version of the above scenario. The light is your friend in this third-person shooter. You play as the titular Wake, a famous novelist suffering from insomnia and writer’s block who goes on a holiday with his wife Alice to the sleepy little backwater town of Bright Falls. And, without giving too much away, something happens to Alan’s wife. Waking up at the scene of a car crash, you are tasked with finding Alan’s wife while making sense of the surroundings, and the events that take place within. You see, after crawling out of the wreckage, Alan finds a page from a novel titled ‘Departure’. This happens to be the title he was considering using for his next novel, one that is yet to be written. As you play through the game, you start to find that the events of the manuscript are playing out for real. As you work your way through the game, you will find a number of twists and turns as you struggle to make sense of what is exactly going on in this quiet little town. While some aspects will take some thinking to come to grips with (i.e. the ending), it is one of the best video game narratives I have experienced for quite some time.
A factor that helps push this narrative forward and make it engaging is the constant reinforcement of the events that take place. Remedy has structured the game into 6 ‘episodes’, much like a television show. At the beginning of each chapter, important elements of the narrative are recapped for the player, much like a TV drama, even going so far as to use “Previously on: Alan Wake”. If you were to play through the game one episode at a time, and, for whatever reason, leave the game for an extended period of time, you can be caught up on what exactly is going on in Bright Falls. This is one of the most beneficial structural features of Alan Wake, particularly for someone like me who has a penchant for forgetting aspects of the plot as a game progresses. It also allows those with little time the opportunity to tackle the one to two hour chunks of the narrative without missing out on the game’s narrative. If this game is remembered for nothing else, then it should be remembered for this idea. It is an idea that I would love to see employed in other games, particularly those that are easy to lose your ‘place’ in.
In such a narrative-driven game, characters play an important role in the progress of the narrative. Wake himself is a relative quiet, reserved character. Much like Max Payne, Wake is a big fan of vocalising his thoughts on the situation and what needs to be done next. There are times where Wake comes across as an arrogant artist who believes to be above most others, which can make him a little unlikeable. This gives Wake an imperfection that he shares with Max, and actually makes him more likeable. Unlike in the Max Payne series, however, the supporting characters are more fleshed-out and more ‘human’. Alan’s wife Alice, while playing a small role overall, is not overly annoying, as many female ‘victims’ can be. Bright Falls’ many citizens are varied and well-developed, which assists in the construction of a believable setting in an unbelievable situation. The real stars of the show, so to speak, are Alan’s manager, Barry, and the pair of aging, Viking-worshipping, heavy metal ‘heroes’ that make up the ‘Old Gods of Asgard’, Odin and Tor Anderson. Providing some ‘light’ to an overly dark experience, these three characters are sure to find a way to put a smile on your face, even as you fight through the forces of The Darkness
In Alan Wake, you will spend most of your time at night. There are some aspects that play out while the sun is up, they do a good job of ‘breaking up’ the game. There is little ‘action’, so to speak, during these sections, instead feeling more like an adventure game than a shooter. However, these segments are brief and serve mainly as exposition, setting up what is going on or giving back-story to Wake’s predicament. The real meat-and-potatoes of Alan Wake takes place when the sun goes down and the moon comes up. And, as described above, most of the monsters like to come out at night. As you run through the towns, villages, and forests that make up the majority of Alan Wake’s environments, you will be fighting of hoards of creatures ‘infected’ with The Darkness. This makes them impervious to any damage they take, so you must find a way to shine a light on them to remove this ‘taint’. Doing so will allow you to then inflict damage and kill before you are killed. Alan is not armed to the teeth, as your armoury mostly consists of a revolver, shotgun and hunting rifle. However, the ‘monsters’ vulnerability to light can be exploited through the use of a number of different light-emitting tools, such as a flare gun, flashbangs, hand-held flares, and torches.
It is this play between light and dark, and the intriguing ways Remedy has manipulated the game around it, that make up the bulk of Alan Wake’s gameplay. It is an interesting set-up that could have grown tiresome, but as you progress, you’ll find tougher enemies and different ‘puzzles’ that challenge you to use light in different ways. This really helps pace the game well, particularly in the last 4 episodes. While the first 2 episodes set up everything within the game quite well, I found that they can be a little sluggish gameplay-wise. Things really picked up in the third episode though, and I found it easy to ride this wave of momentum all the way through to the end of the game in one sitting. It is quite easy to blow through this game in a day as you will want to see what set-piece you have to fight through or what puzzle you’ll have to solve next, while trying to expose the nature of the darkness that has engulfed Bright Falls and get to the bottom of the whereabouts of Alice.
While there are aspects of the ‘survival horror’ genre, this is nothing like Resident Evil. This is very much an action game at heart, and the game features incredibly tight controls that make it easy to engage in combat with the dark denizens of Bright Falls. When you consider that this game was made by the developers of the Max Payne series, it is really no surprise. The controls are simple, which allow you, as the player, to focus more on the challenge presented on the screen rather than the challenge you hold in your hands. Playing through the game on normal difficulty, there will be few sections that you end getting ‘stuck’ on. While this can allow you to enjoy the nature of the combat and the impressively structured narrative, this ease, combined with the relative brevity of the game, result in a game that can be polished off with 8 hours. It is tightly-structured and engaging, both from a narrative and gameplay standpoint, but I can’t help but feel that perhaps more could have been added to the experience. The planned downloadable episodes should help alleviate some of this, bridging the gap between the end of this game and the next. However, while it is possible to deride such a seemingly short game, Remedy has found a number of ways to extend the time you spend with the game. This starts with the impressive variety and number of collectibles that have been included for you to find. There are the missing pages of Wake’s new manuscript, coffee thermoses, TV and radio shows, cardboard cut-outs, alarm clocks, and hidden supply chests all waiting to be found. The fact that Remedy is able to hide this much in such an enclosed and linear environment is impressive.
Even more impressive, and fun, are the range of ways Remedy has utilised to hide these collectibles. Manuscript pages and thermoses are hidden through conventional enough means, generally off the path Wake must traverse. The TV and radio shows are found by switching on TV’s and radios around the environment. Most impressive is the way Remedy have hidden the supply chests in the environment, as the manipulation of light and dark extends to finding these chests. Yellow ‘graffiti’ is ‘painted’ on parts of the environment and can only be found by shining light on to them. Following these signs will lead to the chests. Combine ALL of this with the fact that certain collectibles can only be picked up while playing through the unlockable ‘Nightmare’ difficulty will add a considerable amount of playtime to the game for the completionist.
Remedy were seen to be on the cutting edge of technology with the release of the first Max Payne game from a presentation standpoint. A game that was in development for over 5 years, Remedy brought in a number of different graphical technologies, but the biggest one was ‘bullet-time’.‘Bullet-time’ was not only a gameplay revelation, but also a technical one. Remedy have continued this tradition with Alan Wake. Alan Wake, for the most part, is an excellently presented game. The graphics are detailed, with the character models and animation deserving special mention. While some of the lip-synching is a little off at times, everything else about the way the characters move and look is quite astounding. However, the real prize should go to the lighting. Having light play such an important role in both the gameplay and narrative structures, the lighting needed to work and look great, and it definitely does. There are not enough positive adjectives that can be used that describe the way lighting has been used in this game. Just know one thing: this is a real achievement. There are also other graphical issues, with some frame rate and screen-tearing issues cropping up from time to time. While the frame rate issues are minor and occurred rarely, the screen-tearing was more concerning. Occurring mainly indoors, when moving the camera around Wake, the image tore quite a bit. While this is a shame, it doesn’t take much away from an otherwise excellent looking game.
From an aural perspective, Alan Wake sounds great. The spookily atmospheric music that can be heard as you run through the darkened forests of Bright Falls adds another layer of ‘gloom’ and unease to the experience. The sound effects are also very good, although the sound of a locked door seems to be recycled from the Max Payne series. The voice acting is yet another aspect of the presentation that is top-notch, with every character vocalising well and sounding very natural. While on the topic of voice acting and recycling, some of you may notice the ‘reappearance’ of James McCaffery, who provided the voice of Max Payne, as the narrator of two May Payne-themed manuscript pages and the character Thomas Zane. Another returning aural element is Finland’s ‘Poets of the Fall’. The countrymen of developers Remedy, the Poets performed the song Late Goodbye during the credits of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne and have returned to not only contribute a new original song (complete with radio introduction), but also to provide two songs as the ‘Old Gods of Asgard’. This ‘recycling’ didn’t feel lazy though. They were some nice nods to Remedy’s past, and certainly put a smile on my face. It was also nice to hear from the Poets again, who can be added to the ever-growing list of awesome bands from Finland. As an added note, look for a cameo by the original Max Payne, Sam Lake, on one of the TV shows. The host’s prompt to ‘do the face’ adds a nice little layer of humour to an otherwise dark and gloomy experience.
Remedy seem to be making a name for themselves as much for the quality combat in their games as they are for developing games that appear stuck in limbo. Alan Wake is a game that was in development for a long period of time, and was starting to be mentioned in the same breath as other big-budget no-shows like Duke Nukem Forever. However, much like Prey, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and Remedy’s own Max Payne before it, Alan Wake has emerged from ‘hell’ to show that it was more than worth the wait. Remedy, on top of constructing an intriguing narrative around an interesting structural layout, have developed a fun combat system that makes great use of the play between light and dark and designed an engaging narrative with interesting characters. The little nods to Remedy’s past are a nice touch, and add to a very good package. These elements, shortcomings in length and aspects of presentation aside, combine to create a tense and gripping environment that makes the wait seem more than worth it. The final act plays out well, even if the ending is more than a little confusing, and hopefully the wait for the next instalment of ‘Alan Wake’s journey into darkness’ won’t be anywhere near as long.
