Review: Alan Wake

Alan Wake is an action-adventure game for the Xbox 360. It was developed by Remedy Entertainment.

Alan Wake exploring an abandoned gas station. The red semi circle is his health; the yellow circle indicates what direction to head; and a completely white flashlight mean it's at full power.

Frustrated bestselling author Alan Wake has travelled to the small Washington town of Bright Falls to cure his writers block. While checking out the lakeside cabin they are staying at, Alan’s wife Alice is dragged into the lake by an unseen force, and Alan dives in after her. A week later, Alan wakes up in car with no memory of what happened, a manuscript detailing events that are going to happen to him, and a bunch of possessed townsfolk trying to kill him. Alan has to find out where his wife went, how he got his hands on the manuscript, what happened during the lost week.

The main gimmick of Alan Wake is that the game takes place at night and all the enemies are townsfolk possessed by shadows that can only be hurt by light. Alan has to use his flashlight to weaken enemies first and then shoot them when they are weak enough. Until then he has to dodge the townsfolk’s attacks, either running up and hitting him with farm equipment, or throwing knives from a distance. The shadow’s defense is represented by a reticule that shrinks the longer Alan shines a flashlight on it, until the shadow briefly flashes and staggers. Just pointing the flashlight in an enemies’ direction weakens them a little, but to make a noticeable dent in Alan has to focus the flashlight, which drains its batteries quickly.

Alan only has a couple of ways to defend himself. Stunning enemies with the flashlight and shooting them before they can reach Alan is the primary way, but the player can also make Alan dodge to the left or right by pressing a shoulder button and pushing the control stick in one direction quickly. It is useful, but sometimes Alan does not move far enough out of the way, or the camera angle makes it hard to figure out which direction to dodge.

Alan normally starts a level with no equipment but usually finds a flashlight and pistol quickly. Later on Alan will find a rifle or shotgun, which are stronger but take longer to reload and have less ammo. Alan can also find flares which scare enemies, and flashbang grenades, which destroy them instantly.

Combat is not that difficult on normal difficulty. It is easy to keep a few enemies at bay, especially with the number of batteries and, grenades, and flares lying around. It gets harder in the last couple of levels when Alan is attacked by several larger townsfolk at once, but thanks to Alan’s regenerating health it is still not difficult, though it challenging enough to be fun.

A bigger problem is that there is not a lot of variety in the enemies. There are the townsfolk who make up most of the challenge, the occasional huge guy with a big weapon that is harder to take down. And then there are possessed items, large objects that start flying around and throwing themselves at the Alan and can only be destroyed with the flashlight.

The game is six levels long. Each levels starts in the daytime, where Alan talks to people and moves the plot along. Then through some contrived manner Alan gets stuck wherever he is until it is dark out, and is stuck travelling through the woods surrounding Bright Falls to some other destination.

The first three levels have a pretty boring design. Most of them take place in the fog-filled woods around Bright Falls. The level designers obviously did not just copy and paste the same area over and over; it is just that forest is not that interesting. Running into the few decaying cabins and other building scattered about always feels like a godsend, because something might feel different in the fights. It gets better in the last three levels when Alan goes through more civilized areas.

There is a ton of crap for Alan to collect to make running through the levels more interesting. There are thermoses of coffee to collect and stacked tin cans to shoot, but neither of those do anything interesting; there are stashes of weapons found off the main trail that can be found by spotting hidden spray painted markers; there are radios and TVs Alan can turn on, the radios play a radio show that gives commentary on what is going from the perspective of the townsfolk, and the TV shows a show like The Twilight Show program; and lastly there are pages of the manuscript that details what is going on and what is about to happen.

The graphics and design are a mixed bag. On one hand the character models look terrible, lip-synching is off, and faces look ghoulish. But the levels themselves look nice, forest look real thick and varied, and Bright Falls looks like an actual town and not a bunch of similar looking buildings. It is particularly impressive to climb up a mountain in one level, and look back and see all the landmarks Alan has passed through on the way there.

The story is probably the most interesting part of the game. It deals a lot with stories coming to life and characters aware that they are in a story and acting accordingly. It also one of those “ancient formless evil that messes with people” stories that HP Lovecraft and Stephen King are fond of. Alan Wake is an unlikable jerk, explained as frustrated from writer’s block but does not make him any more enjoyable to listen to. He gets less annoying when things start to get really weird and he has no time to act like a jerk.

Alan Wake is a fun game though with a few problems that would make one want to only play it sparingly once you know the story. The gameplay is solid, though simple at times, and the setting is oaky; definitely good for a rental or buying used.