Alan Wake Review

I thought I would take a break from my normal movie reviews and write a review for an Xbox 360 exclusive title that I recently played, Alan Wake. The game is developed by Remedy Entertainment who also developed the previous two Max Payne games and is published by Microsoft Game Studios, released in the UK on May 14th 2010. The game is a "psychological action thriller" revolving around a struggling famous writer Alan Wake. Wake is the games protagonist and after two years of writing nothing he and his wife Alice head to a small town called Bright Falls for a quiet vacation and an attempt for Wake to start writing again. Upon arriving two weeks before the towns big annual festival "Deerfest" Wake and his wife pick up the keys to a cabin that they believe to be theirs out on Cauldron Lake. After this the fun begins as Alice vanishes inside the cabin and Wake loses a week of his memory and attempts to find her. On his journey he sees things and meets people from the new book he has not written yet, a book entitled "Departure" the dark forces from Wake's new book are coming to life and begin attacking him and the town.
"It's not a lake… It's an ocean" Alan Wake.

First off I need to say that this is a very good game indeed, the story is great and it boasts a fairly original plot which nowadays is hard to find in anything. The game itself is quite short and took me around four days to finish as I played in three hour intervals each day.

Wake is quite a likeable protagonist and he meets a wealth of interesting characters along the way including two aging old rock stars from the 70s Tor and Odin who were legends in the day with their band Old Gods of Asgard. The game also boasts rather an interesting soundtrack and it's how i became aware of Finnish rock band Poets of the Fall.

The premise is simple and you must fight the townspeople who become possessed by the Dark Presence which turns them into things called Taken. The Taken are still normal humans but the darkness makes them stronger and a lot faster, they come at you thick and incredibly fast and the idea is to obviously fight them with the power of light so a torch becomes your new best friend. I often found it quite an exhilarating experience running like hell from these things and just praying that a generator of work light would be just around the corner to give me a moment to breathe and it got to a point at one stage where I myself simply dreaded the prospect of walking into the dark. The fun does not end there though, the darkness also possesses the towns crow population and several malevolent forces are called forth and begin to possess objects. So not only are you running from four Taken but also you find yourself running from and dodging a possessed fridge or later on a possessed combine harvester!

The story is split into six chapters and each chapter is made up of smaller episodes and again each episode gives you various objectives, most of which are simple and you won't get lost. I did begin rather early on to become bored of the games desire to make you go somewhere out of the way only to have you backtrack through the dark woods and then go back to where you started! That was rather annoying as it means you have to fight who knows what quite a bit and nine times out of ten the thing you were working towards only to leave and go back really is not worth the hassle. Chapter four is possibly the best one, it features a fight to stay sane in Dr. Hartman's lodge while being attacked by a malevolent presence and an amazing stand off where you and your agent Barry hold off a huge number of Taken and it all takes place on the Anderson farm (Tor and Odin) in their field where they have a massive rock stage and the battle takes place there and it's really just an awesome sight to behold.There were a lot of cut scenes and dialogue and I pretty much skipped it all as they quite simply went on forever. That's a bad thing for a game to chuck so much knowledge at you at frequent intervals only to have you sit there and press the skip button, as interesting as I found it all I just could not be bothered to sit through all of them.

The scenery of the game is quite beautiful and on the rare occasions when daylight is present you should definitely just stand and take it all in for a moment or two. Probably best done on the times in which you have to drive to a location, there are no threats during the daylight so get out of the car and have a wander. Speaking of the car, I didn't drive too much myself unless I really had to or unless it was night but the driving is a bit fiddly and poorly done. The control system is a little awkward and it took me a bit of time to adjust to it.

The game also has quite a cool combat style behind it, when you are outnumbered by Taken of other things if you manage to time it correctly you can dodge an incoming attack and time literally slows all around you allowing you to narrowly escape harm. Not an original way of doing things but it worked quite well, along with the combat system you are supposed to fight the Taken using light so you often find yourself running like a mad man trying to find a pack of lithium batteries or a street lamp referred to as a "Safe Haven". There is a limited range of weaponry available to you, you can upgrade your standard torch twice and you will also find four various firearms a revolver, a shotgun,a hunting rifle and the amazingly powerful flare gun… seriously it's awesome and you will also frequently stumble upon flares and later on flash bang grenades! Never did I think a flash bang could safe my life.




Aswell as the main story there are lots of little things to keep you busy too. There are radio's to turn on and listen to, TV''s to turn on and watch a rather interesting show called Night Springs which is of course an homage to The Twilight Zone. Also the game has 100 coffee thermoses and 100 pages of Wake's new manuscript scattered around the place and sometimes you will shine your torch on a wall or piece of scenery and hidden yellow arrows will point the way to a secret chest filled with goodies and sometimes you will see helpful hints or simply disturbing scribbles. Collecting all manuscript pages and thermoses unlock achievements as do listening to all radio broadcasts, turning on all TV's, finding and looting all hidden chests, reading various hidden signs that give an insight to the town's history and also finding randomly placed pyramids of tin cans which can be shot.

In true Xbox style the game has fifty achievements with a total score of 1000G up for grabs. Most achievements you will get by simply playing the game and most you will get without even trying but there are a few fun ones to be had. The game also features two DLC packages, the first of which will be available on July 27th and is called "The Signal".

In conclusion I found Alan Wake to be a pretty good game on the whole. The main driving story is original but as i said it gets a bit boring too fast and as you progress you just find yourself in your usual survival horror game so it's really nothing special. The Taken were good enemies, the characters fun, the soundtrack amazing, the parts where you drive a car are rather clumsy but necessary and I often found myself running into the pure darkness just to pick up a coffee thermos because I like to collect things. When you finally get to the end it is all explained, which was good for me as I skipped most of the videos so I often scratched my head and we are left with an interesting finale.

4/5