OMGJeremy

Game Review: Alan Wake

As a child, I was a big fan of Ghostbusters. I had the movies, the toys, the proton pack that sadly no longer comes even close to fitting, and a pile of VHS tapes of the cartoon recorded straight off the television. So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw a Ghostbuster video-game in the store. I first purchased it for the Sega Master System, and was massively unimpressed. This was long before I would come to realize that movie tie-in games, by rule, had to suck. I still played that game over and over, tooling with all the different gadgets you could buy. I made the most out of my purchase and extended the playing time as much as I could before finally washing my hands of it. Then I purchased the NES version.

I am thankful the internet is around nowadays so I can know that I’m about to purchase an inferior copy of a game I already own.

Ghostbusters would go on to crank out more games, and they would go on to continue being sub-par at best. I had given up on the current titles that were out there, but I never really gave up hope that maybe one day a solid and fun representation of Ghostbusters would be released for my gaming pleasure. It took a little time, 20 years or so, but it finally happened. The Ghostbusters game that was released for the 360 / PS3 / and to a smaller extent the Wii was a true gaming pleasure and everything I could have asked for. After years of waiting, my hopes and faith were rewarded. My patience paid off.

That’s really the point of this article (besides the whole upcoming review). That sometimes in video-games, just like with everything in life, you have to not lose hope and maintain your faith that a game / movie / etc. will turn out and you won’t end up feeling like an ass for spending all your time waiting for it.

This review isn’t just about how good a game is at face value, but also about whether or not it was worth the long wait and development time put into it. Because really, even if a game is good, it is really hard to justify it taking years upon years to make.

Alan Wake: A Game SEVERAL Years in the Making

Remedy, the devs behind the game, unveiled this title at E3 in 2005. Yes, 2005. Do you recall 2005? You probably don’t because it was a LONG time ago,or maybe you remember it well and my memory is just going downhill as my age advances. I wasn’t planning on buying a 360 later that year or for quite some time, but I was already excited about it. I kept a very excited eye on it, gobbling up every small clip, picture, or snippet of information that was given. Then a little time passed, and the AW-related info and media stopped. The idea still existed and it was still in development, but that was becoming a little hard to believe as the years passed by. Sure, a few scraps were tossed out now in then. A rare in-game shot, or a little blurb assuring everyone that the folks working on AW were still alive and doing what they were being paid to do. But time was really passing by, and though AW never reached Duke Nukem levels of non-existent existence in the video-game world, it sure was looking like it could be the next big offender in those regards.

The game lived on through hype. There were plenty of spots on the internet where discussion of AW was the hot topic. People who were dedicated and excited fans for a product that didn’t even really exist yet. I can’t say I was one of those people. I did not sit around and try to pick apart every little picture, video, or anything else related to the game. But I was excited for it, and I was looking forward to it the whole five years. Eventually a release date was announced, and much rejoicing was had. At least it was had by most. When the game was still more myth than real, in my head I could imagine it being a ground-breaking and incredible title. Now that it was about to take a real form, I had to realize that maybe… just maybe… this thing could end up sucking the big one. My mind had officially turned against me, and I started to shoot down everything about this game that I once considered a positive. The unique use of light while fighting enemies, as that was their weakness, just brought back thoughts of Alone in the Dark when it came to its whole shitty using fire system. I started making a lot of comparisons to Alone in the Dark, and I was becoming a sad man.

But I put all of those aside and still picked it up upon release. I actually waited until a couple of weeks before it was released to pre-order, as I was trying to figure out whether or not this was worthy of a $60 purchase or not. The game that was in my head for five years certainly was worth the cash, but a shitty Alone in the Dark-esque romp was worthy of nothing more than possibly watching a Youtube walkthrough. But sometimes you’ve just got to take a chance, and you’ve got to follow your heart… even though Jeremy’s heart often leads him pacing back and forth in front of that elementary school playground he is banned from.

Get ready for atmosphere!

The Story: Or That Thing That Will Confuse You For 97% Of The Game

This is being written with strong intentions of not spoiling the story. While I don’t usually care about being spoiled or about posting spoilers, this is one of those rare games that I feel you should go into completely spoiler-free. You control, take a guess… Alan Wake. You are a famous (the extent of your fame seems to be moderate to fairly high) writer, but in the last couple of years you have had writer’s block from Hell. Your promised upcoming book “The Departure” has been sitting in development all that time, and there are doubts it will even be released. Sounds sorta familiar. You take a trip with your wife to Bright Falls, a heavily wooded and secluded country town full of beautiful scenery and the standard gawking locals.

Though you are taking this trip to spend some time with your wife and get away from the bustling city life and wild alcohol-filled parties all writers take part in, the true intentions of the trip are soon revealed. After “surprising” you with a typewriter in your cabin, you realize that your wife has pushed you into the trip in the hopes of inspiring you to write again and to hook you up with a local therapist who works exclusively with artists. You flip your shit and walk away from the cabin, and then the lights go out. Your wife screaming in the dark cabin, you quickly run back only to discover she is nowhere to be found. After seeing that she has fallen / been dragged into / is casually going for a deep swim in the lake, you dive in after her.

Having passed out from the underwater rescue effort, you wake up unaware of your surroundings or how you even got there. To make things worse, you’re missing seven days of time and one wife. You set out to find her, and along the way a lot of weird shit goes down. Strange things are afoot in Bright Falls.

You get a great feel for the game during a seemingly uneventful scene in a diner. This is your first time controlling Alan after entering Bright Falls, and you are tasked with retrieving a key to your cabin from the owner of a local restaurant. While there, you meet a young waitress who is also an obsessed fan, to the point of having a cardboard cutout of you by the door. You also meet two elderly and deranged former rock stars, one of which has a hankering for hearing that damn “Lime in the Coconut” song. You can get a feel for the humor of the game and the sort of characters you are going to encounter. You get a hint of some of the brighter spots of the game. However, when you have to head to the restroom to try and find the fellow with the key, you get the other half. Warned by an elderly woman that going into the dark is dangerous, you proceed down the dark hallway, lights flickering as you slowly make your way down. Though nothing had happened yet, my first time playing I had a very strong urge to just book it down that hall and get the hell out of there. This game isn’t much for big-time scares, but this was just a small example of how well it can put into you a sense of dread. You know something is out there in the darkness, but you have no choice but to trudge out there anyway and hope for the best.

Scattered along the journey are pages of manuscript for what is apparently your next book. These work to provide a little backstory, let you know what is going on with other characters off-screen, and warn you about upcoming dangers you will be facing. It’s pretty cool to read about something on a manuscript page early in the game, and then later on when the event described occurs that little feeling of deja-vu comes over you. It also works against you, putting you on guard a bit prematurely. When one manuscript page warned me about being attacked by a Taken wielding a chainsaw, I quickly stocked up and tried to conserve ammo like a son of a bitch. Time went on, bullets got spent, and I was in the darkness with a very limited supply of weaponry when I heard that chainsaw kick in. Flares were spammed.

The story progresses along with several twists and turns, some of which you might be able to predict and others that will catch you very much by surprise. At one point a friend of mine sent me a text telling me that they were pissed off because they didn’t like how the story was going, and then about 10 minutes later they sent a text saying “nevermind.”  This is one game where the story jumps around and things can tend to take some unexpected turns. If you are confused with it or unhappy with how the story is progressing, give it a few minutes and you’ll be hooked back in.

I found the ending to be satisfying, but many didn’t. The problem with a game that jumps around so much and tells a story on such a grand scale is that you obviously can not make everyone happy. Maybe every loose end didn’t get tied up, or you might have a question or two left… but that’s what DLC is for.

Your wife, obviously unaware that a domestic dispute is about to go down.

Controls / Combat: SHOOT THAT SHADOW DUDE IN THE FACE

Standard moving around controls apply here.

Alan is pretty agile for a guy whose job has him sitting at a typewriter for hours at a time. Your normal run is fairly decent enough, but you can crank it up with a limited sprint that might just make Alan Wake the fastest protagonist in survival horror history. This doesn’t really mean a thing in this game though. I’m used to playing games where my character can pretty much outrun and dodge anything when in full stride. In AW your full sprint is still just a touch slower than the enemies in most cases. Some might call this a poor bit of play mechanics, but it really adds to the way you take on or try to avoid enemies. In very few instances can you outrun the enemy, so unless you see a Safe Haven (an area bathed in light that quickly regenerates your health and serves as a barrier against the enemy) nearby, you’re gonna have to take a stand and engage in some combat.

Combat… in a survival horror… the thought alone is scarier than the games. That is normally the case, but this game gets it RIGHT. The much-touted use of light in this game works out perfectly. Along the way you’ll find a flashlight, which is a necessity in taking on the evil around you. Your enemies are referred to as “Taken” and are beings possessed by the dark force that is slowly overtaking Bright Falls. Each enemy has a life-bar of sorts that shows how much of the darkness still possesses them. You must deplete this bar before your weapons (the standard pistol, shotgun, hunting rifle) will even put a dent in them. This can be accomplished usually by your flashlight. While shining the beam on them in general chips away at the bar, you can boost your light to quickly deplete their energy. This comes at a price, as your flashlight runs off batteries and boosting your light drains it rather fast. It will recharge on its own slowly, or you can just pop another battery in. Don’t worry, there are plenty out there. The flashlight is just as important and even moreso than the firearm, and you have to be able to use both together in harmony to get out alive. The guy from Doom 3 wouldn’t stand a chance.

Along with your flashlight, there are several other sources of brightness you can use to take down your foes. Floodlights, vehicle headlights, and light-poles can all be used offensively as well as defensively. With your enemy weakened, you are free to pull out your piece and take advantage of the fact that Alan was apparently a military man in a past life since he has precision aim and full knowledge of how to work the weaponry put before him. This is one of those things I just let slide by default in games like this. A survival-horror game is going to have a main character who has no clue about guns but can instantly pick them up and turn into Rambo. You can’t tell one of these games not to do that. Try telling your dog to not be a dog, because it’s basically the same thing.

The cool weapons don’t even use bullets though. A flare gun is available, and in a game where light kills enemies you can already tell this thing is going to be a beast. In fact, you don’t even have to hit an enemy directly for this fella to put them down. Get a group together and this thing, just like a drunk college girl, will finish them all off. Wanting to put a little distance between yourself an the enemy? Well, time to bust out a flare. At least in my case I used these as more of a defensive measure. As I said before, you are going to have a hard time running from the enemy, but throwing down one of these is pretty much like putting up a temporary wall. You’ll buy yourself a little time at least, and in this game a few seconds can make a big difference in whether or not you reach that next Safe Haven.

Last but not least, you have the flashbang. For those who didn’t play Call of Duty 4, this is essentially a grenade that puts out a burst of light upon exploding. Yeah, this thing pretty much dominates. The flare gun does some work, but the flashbang is your officially screen-clearing weapon that every game needs. In other games it simply stuns the enemy, but in this one it sends them straight to Hell.

You're next, Shovel Cowboy!

Graphics / Sound: Fog Never Looked So Good

I’ve never said a game was perfect from a graphics standpoint, and I’m still not. What I can say though, is this game has probably the most downright beautiful outdoor areas I have seen in a game thus far. Much like real life, half the time you’ll look out there and not really notice anything, but on occasion the sun will hit the lake just right and the reflection of the trees will gently shimmer as the wind blows. It’s almost amazing enough to make you forget that your wife may or may not be floating around down there somewhere. The wooded areas in this game are excellent, and you can tell that A LOT of time (maybe around five years or so) has been put into this aspect. The woods almost seem to have a life of their own, and out in the dark you’ll maintain a sense of paranoia that something is going to jump out from that bush, or come down from that tree, or just something in general is going to show up and make you accidentally throw your last flashbang and curse yourself because a gang of Taken can be seen in the distance.

Character models, eh they’re okay. The facial animations are a little sketchy at times, but there is much worse out there. Nothing really takes away from the game, and really I’ve have to do some serious nit-picking to come up with anymore complaints in this department.

This would be relaxing if darkness wasn't trying to consume the world. Oh well.

The sound is pretty much in the same department when it comes to excellence. From the little noises in the woods, to the intimidating to hilarious (Omega 3 fatty acids are good for your heart!) battle cries of the Taken, the sound is top notch. The voice acting is solid, and any laughs are intentional and not because the voice actor is too wooden, or over-excited, or any of the other things that survival-horror is known for. There is no “master of unlocking” moment in this game.

In Conclusion

Before I played it I assumed this game was either going to be the best game ever or stink up the joint. Well, it ended up being neither. While it’s hard to justify spending so long developing a game, you can really tell that a lot of time, effort, and care was put into this project. This game wasn’t worth multiple years of waiting for, but very few games could live up to that. Alan Wake is as damn close to it as possible though. If you’re a fan of survival horror, it is a must. I put this on top of my list right after Silent Hill 2, and that is saying a lot. Oh yeah, and if you like fetch quests… then sweet Jesus this is your game. Manuscript pages, coffee thermoses, and hidden weapon crates are scattered all around for your fetching and achievement whoring pleasure.

I’ll also note that this game has the best sidekick in a long while. Your best friend and agent Barry eventually makes his way to Bright Falls, and what I assumed would be a highly irritating character soon turned into someone you genuinely will enjoy having around you and will have concern about when you are separated. Plus, he does help out a little along the way instead of the whole getting in your way thing that most companion characters enjoy.

Buy this game. Don’t rent it, because even if you play through once there is enough reason to go through this thing again. Plus, the promise of AT LEAST two bits of DLC are coming down the line. The game is fairly linear, but it won’t even really factor in to your enjoyment. This is a rare review where I have absolutely nothing too entirely bad or really bad at all to say.

I’m not going to get used to it.

Oh yeah, if you think Alan’s tweed jacket with leather elbow patches was a bad idea, let’s see how our man was dressing back in 2006…

Thank goodness hipster Alan Wake did not make the cut. I wonder if he brought his record player and 50 year old bike with him.