Alan Wake

Alan Wake is an X360 exclusive which was developed by Remedy Entertainment - the same bunch of guys behind the excellent Max Payne. The game itself bears a lot of similarities to Max Payne (eg third person view, the main character is narrating etc). However, there are a couple of key differences - the main one being the style of game itself. Remedy are pitching Alan Wake as a psychological thriller. Everyone else is calling it a damn fine survival horror game!

The short version of the story was probably best explained by the Penny Arcade guys. Click here if you don't mind minor spoilers.

In Alan Wake, you play the role of Alan Wake (surprise!). Alan is a famous writer of horror stories (a la Stephen King) who is suffering from writer's block. To help overcome this, Alan and his wife travel to a remote village in the middle of nowhere so that he can recharge his batteries. This being a survival horror game, it isn't long before the fit hits the shan and you find yourself on the run from both the police and the creatures of the night which are out to take over the world!

Stuff I liked
Controls - Sorry for beating this tired old horse again but I really can't stress how important a good control scheme is. The fact is that Alan Wake uses the thumbsticks in an industry standard control scheme (left stick controls movement while right stick controls camera) and this allows me to jump straight into the gameplay without worrying about the controls.

Atmosphere - Remedy did a fantastic job with the graphics. Just like with FEAR, I only played this game at night with the lights down low and you really feel the tension when you are wandering around the woods at night with only your flashlight to show the way. This may sound cliche but I really struggled to play this game for a long period of time.

In many ways, the atmosphere is much better than in FEAR. In FEAR, there was a limit to the actual fear factor as you were generally armed to the teeth with guns and grenades. However, in Alan Wake, you generally find yourself being careful with your ammo in case you run out before the next ammo cache. This fundamental difference really changes the way the tension mounts during the game.

Episodic - Remedy also did a really good job in breaking up the game into episodes. Each episode starts off in relative safety before building up to a climactic finish for that episode. By the time you finish one episode, your nerves are shot through and its a great place to stop and take a break.

They also do a good job of selling the episodes as each episode starts with a summary of what has happened so far and effectively ends with credits (no actual credits scroll but you have a different song to end each episode).

Stuff I didn't like
Episodic - Unfortunately, Remedy didn't think through the episodic format very well. At the end of each episode, it automatically goes into the next episode without asking if you want to save and stop. Which defeats the purpose of having an episodic format to start with. If the intention was for the player to simply dive into the next episode, why bother breaking up the game with music and episode summaries?

Enemies - This is a bit of an obvious nitpick but a little bit more variety in the enemy types would have helped this game. Although I never got tired of the combat, it does reduce the fear level a bit when you know exactly what to do to defeat the enemy. In fact, it got to the stage where fighting enemies became routine and wasn't scary at all.


One last comment. This game has received a lot of criticism for the amount of real life ad placements within the game. Speaking for myself, I never considered it an issue as the ads were appropriate and didn't pull me out of the game. For example, you need batteries to power your torch so you are constantly on the lookout for more batteries. Does it really pull you out of the game if those batteries are branded?