Alan Wake, while having a couple of notable setbacks, presents a new way of interactive storytelling in a third-person environment that keeps you motivated all the way through. It’s setting is artful and provoking even though the game is six years old. If you like mystery and crime esque TV shows, Alan Wake is a must for you.
Remedy's third-person shooter has an interesting protagonist that feels unique in terms of video game heroes. The hero, Alan Wake, is a writer who was inspired by the works of real-life writer Stephen King. This means that he writes horror, crime, or mystery novels. Throughout the game, there are a few prologue sections that showcase Alan in his home in New York and you can see what other books he’s written and so on. To take a break from writing, Alan and his wife, Alice, go to the town of Bright Falls. All goes wrong however when Alan leaves Alice in the cabin they’re staying at in the dark. Alice gets taken by this mysterious creature who eventually becomes the antagonist. Once Alan jumps into the ocean, he misses over a week in time and wakes up confused and groggy from a car crash. From here, Alan embarks on a long journey to figure out how to stop this darkness and how to save his wife from the darkness. Overall, the narrative and story was very interesting for me throughout the entire game.
In the game, there are many other aspects that support and drive the game’s narrative in a positive way. These include the manuscript pages, radio segments, and TV shows. Very shortly after Alan wakes up from the car crash, he finds a page floating off in this distance. He picks it up and see’s that it’s titled “Departure” by Alan Wake. Alan has no memory of ever writing this page. This page and the one’s you find in the future as collectables basically foreshadow upcoming events in the game. In a way, I like this idea but at the same time I don’t; it spoils some major plot points later on in the game that the developers should’ve kept as a surprise. Overall, you’re better off waiting to read the pages until you collected all of them (and you should because the writing is pretty intriguing and it makes you feel like you’re actually reading a book). Other than the manuscripts, there are radio segments and TV episodes that also act as collectables. The radio segments give you a brief insight of what’s going on in Bright Falls during the events of the story while the episodic TV show intrigues the player with a murder mystery esque kinda feel to it. I was genuinely surprised of how interested I was to find these and listen to them; it further proves that the production value of these things made them feel real. The game’s collectables are very well done.
While the game’s narrative drives the game positively, the gameplay isn’t complex as you would think in a 3rd person shooter. Wake’s arsenal isn’t big but each can get the job done. Wake’s main weapon to fight the darkness is the flashlight. The flashlight is essential and you have it in also every part of the game. Although there are limits to the flashlight like number of batteries and energy available when fighting the darkness, they didn’t really seem to exist that much. If you choose to use the flashlight carefully, it’s great. Once Wake uses his flashlight to drain the darkness from enemies, he has a limited and low variety of weapons. From my playthrough, I used a revolver, hunting rifle, double barrel and automatic shotgun, flare gun, flash grenades, and actual flares. While this seems like a good amount for a third person shooter, you only have four weapons slots and two for grenades and flares. You do however find most of these weapons throughout the game easily. If you would like to experience these weapons more, you can. In the game, there are multiple secret areas that can be revealed by your flashlight. Here, there’s a box that contains ammo and one of the unique weapons. Although the weapons and variety aren't bad, the character movement definitely is. Most of the time, I was trying to run from a firefight that I could not finish and my character would run out of breath from sprinting very quickly. I either died or got damaged pretty badly as I desperately tried to run to the safety of the lamp, a radius of light that heals and gives you time to recover. Overall, the weapons are okay but character movement could definitely use some work and improvement.
While the game is 6 years old, the game’s graphics and visuals are pretty good for being originally designed for the Xbox 360. Sadly, the game runs at a 960x540 resolution, which hinders some of the game’s beautiful visuals. If your PC is capable enough to run the game (it should be), play the game on there if you want to get the best visual experience possible. Throughout my playthrough, I thought the game visually shines when you’re in the dark forest fighting toward your objective. When you're in the forest, there are creepy sounds, shadows, and a whole lot of other things that advance the fear of the enemy. Every time the air has small clouds of darkness above you, this signifies that a firefight and maybe even a jump scare is about to occur. This foggy and unclear environment also makes you wonder what will occur next. For the rest of the game (the daytime parts), it still looks great when looking off into the distance at the snowy mountains or the reflecting water. Remedy’s game looks visually great for being a six-year-old game.
With the game’s shoddy movement and low weapon variety, Alan Wake has much bigger problems that, for me, truly halted my enjoyment for the game. One of them was the pointless driving that the game forces to use in order to get from point a to point b. Just like the character movement, the driving controls terribly. It’s hard to maneuver and easy to destroy. I found myself crashing into walls lightly a few times with my car and having it stop working on me fairly quickly. Not only that, but it’s clear and evident that the driving could be easily replaced with a long cutscene. They actually do this once, however, the rest is pointless driving. Another thing that bothered me and made me sick to my stomach was the overload of product placement of real products in the game. These are the Energizer Batteries, Verizon phones, and fake products with the Microsoft logo painted on them. I also noticed a Xbox 360 in the game as well. While product placement is common these days, the handling of it in the game is poor. An example: there is a TV at one point that plays a fake car commercial and a Verizon ad. Even though you have to activate the TV to play it, you have to watch it if you want to get one of the game’s achievements, if your that type of person who goes for achievements. I feel like they could’ve easily of placed these ads in cutscenes early on in the game. This not only would make it less forceful but also seem more natural. While product placement isn’t terrible, seeing it used in a video game is disgraceful. This and the unnecessary driving were really the only true problems I had with the game.
While some things block the enjoyment of the game, Alan Wake overall is an excellent video game. The game drives off an interesting and luring narrative that’s supported with many of the game’s optional collectables. For being a third person shooter, the gameplay is decent with the small amount of fun and easy to use weapons. Even though the game suffers from the insanely low resolution, the game visually looks excellent and is perfectly created around it’s targeted genre. Alan Wake is a unique video game, bringing something new to the table that we’ve never seen in a video game before.