Alan Wake

Writer’s block. A small town. A peaceful vacation. Strange happenings. A malevolent presence. Darkness.

Alan Wake takes place in a small rural town in the Pacific Northwest. While a hugely successful writer, Alan Wake has been struggling these last few years to put any words to paper, and so this small town seems like the perfect place to vacation with your wife and just get away from in all for a while. Except that isn’t what happens. You see, after taking your wife to the cabin on the lake you were to stay at, something goes terribly, terribly wrong. When you come to a week later, everything has gone to hell, with your wife missing and presumed dead, shadowy figures attempting to kill you, and law enforcement hunting you down as the man responsible for the murder or disappearance of several in the community.

On the gameplay side of things, Alan Wake is pretty simple. Enemies are either darkness possessed people or items, such as flying rocks or tractors. To defeat these you must first use a light source, almost always your flashlight, to either outright kill possessed objects, or remove a shield from enemies so you can damage them with a firearm. Some objects, like bosses, require you to focus your flashlight to drain the shield, which is denoted by a lenses flare like ring emanating from your enemy. You can focus your flashlight at any time to drain the shield faster, as well as temporarily blind some of the human enemies, but doing so drains your flashlight batteries. The batteries do recharge over time, but during that period shields will regenerate. To combat this you can reload your flashlight with new batteries you’ve found, which really equates to nothing more than excessive Energizer product placement.

Video games aside, Combines and other tractors are extremely deadly. Google "Combine Harvester Deaths" if you don't believe me, but it is a rather serious scenario that I don't appreciate the developers making light of. Air port massacres in Call of Duty are fine, but do not mess with farm equipment.

When fighting human enemies, after you get that pesky shadow shield down, your next step is to take them out with a few well place shots. Alan Wake is not a shooter, and certainly does not control like one. You don’t need to be very accurate, and any hit with a weapon counts towards the set number each type of enemy needs to die. I counted it once, but it was something like 2 shots for base enemies, 3 for the next, and six for some really big ones. There are a number of different weapons in the game, such as a hunting rifle, shotgun, and pump shotgun. Each one can be looked at in terms of pistol round equivalents, so maybe you’ll want to switch to the hunting rifle to take out the enemy that requires 3 pistol shots with only 1 rifle round. It’s this weird kind of mental calculus to be efficient that isn’t really needed, because, frankly, the whole combat portion of the game is kind of bland and not at all focused on skill. In fact, the only really difficulty here will arise from getting swamped by too many enemies that constantly pop out of the shadows or from behind trees.

Thankfully there are a few items that will help you with all of that, which all play off the whole “the darkness hates the light” thing the game’s got going on. You’ll pretty quickly come across flares, which can either be held above your head or dropped on the ground. Either way, a flare provides a temporary safe zone of light that enemies will actively back out of, which makes flares a great life saving device. Some items can even become weapons, like flashbangs, which produce such a violently powerful light that they can kill nearby enemies, basically becoming a veritable flash grenade (see what I was trying to do there?). The last item in the things-that-aren’t-weapons-but-can-kill would have to be the flare gun, which is basically this game’s version of a rocket launcher. It is excellent for groups of enemies or for big guys.

Add to the flare gun the slow mo trail camera and the explosion of enemies at the end, and it's probably my favorite item in the game.

If you get the feeling that combat in Alan Wake isn’t too exciting, that’s because that is exactly how I felt when playing the game. Sure, giant lumberjacks with chain saws or farmer types with sickles all shielded by a shadowy darkness that makes them immune to you can be pretty intimidating, but all you’ll need is to drain that shield, fire off a few rounds without hitting any area in particular, and you’re good to go. If enemies do close in on you, you can actively dodge attacks, in nice slow motion cinematic fashion.

Actually, the whole cinematic slow mo is something that Alan Wake does very well. There are a couple reasons for this, and while the results seem cool while playing the game, once you figure things about and, in essence, find the man behind the curtain, they are less so. You see, in addition to the cinematic dodges, you’ll also be treated to a sudden change in music and a slow mo zoom out/pan that will reveal the group of enemies emerging from behind some trees who are about to slice your face off. This certainly gives the game a bit more of a dramatic edge. However, there was once I was fighting an enemy and somehow knocked him off a ledge. He could no longer get to me, and once he was blocked from line of sight the combat music disappeared and the regular creepy ambient noise returned. That is, until I panned the camera to the right, bringing the enemy back on screen, and the dramatic pause and music resumed. I was able to recreate this every time I looked back at the enemy, which is when I realized that it’s nothing more than a cheap jump scare tactic, since the game seems to constantly spawn enemies behind trees, rocks, etc., and then let them charge around the corner to meet you.

This can be a bit upsetting the first time you are running through a warbly area of a forest and enemies keep spawning.

Alright, so Alan Wake doesn’t have much to offer from the gameplay side of things. Its episodic nature constantly strips you of gear you’ve acquired, such as extra ammo or a heavy duty flashlight, just because it can. A regenerating health mechanic removes a portion of the difficulty, especially since to use it you must stand in the light, which enemies hate anyways. There are certainly more interesting aspects of the game, such as when you come across things like generators you can start to quickly flood an area with light, or cars that can be used as weapons as well. The combat side of things is actually so easy, I managed to make it through the whole game without ever reloading my flashlight, which is kind of a key mechanic of the game. That pretty much leaves the story as the only hope of saving this game.

Thankfully, that story is actually pretty interesting, though there were plenty of times I couldn’t help but feel it borrowed heavily from renowned authors, such as Stephen King’s Dark Tower series or H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos. Basically, this little town of Bright Falls is cursed. There is a darkness that resides in the old caldera lake, one which takes the products of creative minds and turns them into reality. Writers or musicians are corrupted by this darkness, as it bends their minds to its will, longing to be set free of the lake. And now there is a new writer in town, one Alan Wake.

Any location with a light and cheery name has got to be a source of evil, right?

The game revolves around trying to find out what happened to Alan Wake’s wife, why Alan is missing a week from his memory, and why are these shadowy lumber jacks out to get him. The story is generally told during the day, when you explore a police station or camp ground, meeting new characters such as Barry, the comical agent that just wants Al to write a new book, to the lovely Rose that simply fawns over Alan’s work, to the somewhat creepy old woman that is paranoid about the dark. When darkness falls you’ll find yourself deeply involved in combat, through even those portions of the game aren’t devoid of story. You’ll either be exposed to Alan’s narration, commenting on things like following the strange individual that might have your wife, or pointing out that they only way to move beyond the darkness possessed gates is to turn on and aim the conveniently placed nearby spot light, you know, since most people can’t figure that thing out apparently, or experience the evolving story through discovered manuscript pages.

There are plenty of collectibles in Alan wake, ranging from hidden Bright Falls video games, secret stashes of some of the more powerful items, or manuscript pages. While most secrets are used either as a way to keep you a bit busier than you might otherwise be, or perhaps reward you for your thoroughness or give you bragging rights when discussing the game with friends, manuscripts actually start to tell Alan Wake’s story. Some pages grant insight about other characters’ thoughts or fears. Other pages cover parts of the story you don’t get to experience directly, such as law enforcement’s pursuit of you, or how a character gets converted by the darkness. Still others simply talk about upcoming events, such as describing what Alan is feeling as he rounds a corner only to be confronted by a lumber jack with a chain saw, which is something you’ll find about 5 minutes before it actually happens. The manuscript pages actually play a key part in the game, since they are the result of a creative process, and then everything written down becomes true. In other words, they are a convenient story telling device that draws you as a player a bit deeper into the story the developers are telling.

One of the more amusing pages you'll find.

The story is the best part about Alan Wake, and while I feel that it is a bit too similar to others I have experienced, I very much enjoyed the way it’s told. The gameplay really isn’t anything to write home about, and should even become trivial if you bother to actually make full use of all your items, like batteries, particularly giving the episodic nature of the game that strips you of you items about every hour and a half or two hours. Strangely, there is an achievement for using 100 batteries, but no achievement for using 0. The base game is 6 episodes, but two special episodes are also included, and those I enjoyed sustainably more, partly due to the greater break with reality, as they happen during Alan Wake’s insanity driven nightmare, and partly because it heavily relies on a words as power mechanic where you must shine your light on a floating word for something to happen, such as building a bridge, creating supplies, or triggering a blast furnace. There is even a part where you must navigate an area without triggering any words with your flashlight, because they all spawn enemies.

Other criticisms of the game include things like it being the most heavy handed product placement I've ever seen in a game, with the game making you very aware of things like Verizon, Mircosoft's Sync, Ford, and of course, Energizer batteries, which actually make up the battery model during the base game, though they must have not renewed their contract for the two special episodes. Another issue concerns the manuscript pages, which, while I loved as a story telling device that would dip into your immediate future, cannot all be found on the levels of difficulty available to you when you start the game. In stead you must beat the game, unlock Nightmare mode, and then beat the game again (there are some launch commands or somesuch that I've heard you can use to get around this). I just really hate the idea of being force to replay the game in order to have the full experieince, especially when I'm not privy to anything else, like exploring a different branch of a storyline (The Witcher), or making different choices that will impact how I can play a game (Adam in Bioshock).

See that? No batteries. And yes, I do want a gold star or something.

It took me about 16 hours to make it through all 8 episodes, or two hours per, which makes for a nice bit of gaming time before retiring for an evening. While I do ultimately recommend Alan Wake as a game worth purchasing, it isn’t so fantastic that you must immediately purchase it and whatever the current price point is. I would highly recommend waiting for a sale, and even then getting the franchise pack, since I’m pretty sure the last time I saw it on sale you could get the collector’s edition of this game as well as the follow up, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, for a total of $5. I wouldn’t recommend paying more than that for this individual game, because in the end it’s only an above average experience – 6 out of 10.

So, the breakdown:

Score: 6/10

Suggested Price: $5 for the franchise

*****

For more Alan Wake, check out this collection of screenshots unused in the rest of the review. Click on one to enlarge it.