Game Review: Alan Wake

Alan Wake opens with a nightmare, with the eponymous main character making his way through a forest that has been taken by darkness. Streetlights break as you approach, a dark mist stirs overhead, and a faceless man with a rather large sickle has taken it upon himself to kill you. In turn, you will kill him several times over. Your goal is to reach a lighthouse burning brightly in the distance, but the man, one of the Taken, will not make that journey easy for you.

The closer you get to the lighthouse, the more violent the darkness becomes. Vehicles are ripped from the ground and tossed violently in your direction. The bridge you have to cross collapses into the waters below. Only steps away from the lighthouse, you are nearly overtaken by a spiraling torrent of debris and howling darkness. You are safe in the light, and leaving it will instantly invite death.

This is the tutorial.

Free from the nightmare, Alan Wake finds himself back in reality with his wife, the both of them on a ferry that's slowly drifting toward the town of Bright Falls, a secluded and sleepy little place somewhere in the state of Washington. Alan Wake is a bestselling novelist, and it's been a couple years since he's been able to write anything remotely productive. Hoping a vacation in the mountains of the pacific northwest will cure his writers' block, he and his wife rent out a cabin on a lake just outside of town.

Without giving too much away, things start to go south from here. Alan Wake recovers from a blackout and has apparently just crashed his car somewhere in the woods. Not only that, but he can't remember anything from the last seven days. Not only that, but his wife is now missing, and all evidence of their stay in Bright Falls has literally been erased from history. Not only that, but the story - a horror story, as you're quick to find out - of a novel he doesn't remember writing is coming to life in the middle of Bright Falls, destroying, consuming, and killing anything that gets in its path.

In the face of very... unique circumstances, Alan must find some way to recover his memory and find his wife before his story literally takes the world by storm. The road to doing that is paved with plot twists, interesting characters, and villains who cannot be stopped by conventional means. The makings of a great horror novel.

And that's honestly what it is. Alan Wake can be seen as one big celebration of Stephen King's works, with several direct references that his fans will definitely catch. Outside of that, though, is a story that's wholly unique in its own right. The writers of the game did an excellent job here, and I can honestly say the game has some of the best, most competent writing this side of Chris Avellone. The game is a horror story, and it's also an allegory of the writing of a horror story. The amount of work that must have gone into the story to keep it straight with the player seems daunting just thinking about it, and yet it was pulled off with only the slightest of hitches.

It's a story within a story within a story.

But outside that story, there's still a game to be played, and I think this is where Alan Wake rises above a game like L.A. Noire, another story-heavy mystery game. Throughout, you'll be combating the "Dark Presence," an evil force that destroys based on Wake's writings, and represents the nothingness beyond the edge an artist's creation. The Dark Presence possesses the people of Bright Falls, turning them into perversions of the dark called "the Taken." These are who you'll be fighting primarily, using your trusty flashlight to burn away the Dark consuming them, and then your gun to send them back wherever they came from.

The combat doesn't get much more complicated than that. There are puzzles along the way and instances where you'll have to get creative with your various light sources and guns, but I don't think there'll be anyplace where you'll not know where to go. This may seem like it could get repetitive over the course of this 10 - 12 hour game, and sometimes it does, but there are several "saving graces" that make progressing through Alan Wake almost addicting.

The story is constantly prevalent, to the point where it seems that everything you do is progressing it. There is always one more plot twist, or a waypoint in the distance that promises to shed some light on the mystery surrounding Wake and his wife. The level design and world building also contribute to this. The visuals are amazing, and nearly all of the locations are unique from each other. Bright Falls feels like a true American mining town, caught in a tug of war between its colorful history and the influence of the modern world. Though you're usually making your way through the surrounding forest, it always feels like you're on your way to discovering some new facet of the area.

It's interesting! If I wasn't playing it to see what new location the game would throw at me, it was to progress the story; if it wasn't to progress the story, it was to send a few more baddies back into the Dark; if it wasn't to fight some baddies, it was to poke around to find some hidden areas. The town also has lore of its own, so you could also run around and check out signs to expand your "codex" Mass Effect-style.

To recap, let's list what's great about this game:

-The story/writing.

-The visuals.

-The soundtrack. (There are also some musical interludes between chapters that fit the mood perfectly.)

-World-building. (I live just south of Washington. This game is scary-faithful to how a western town should be.)

-Great characters.

-Only a few loading screens, and they're between chapters! (And after you die...)

Let's try to get critical here. I think I already pointed out that combat can get repetitive at certain times, and definitely during the last chapter. There were also times when I thought the combat got in the way of the story or seemed too obligatory, like the developers felt they had to throw more monsters at you - but I think that's just a testament to how good the writing is.

Also, it was a little surprising to see how much detail went into everything except the lip-syncing. It's pretty bad. The characters just can't seem to move their mouth along with the words they're speaking at times, and it can get a little distracting (especially when the drama ramps up). You get used to it, but it's just one of those things.

One last thing (though this is just wishful thinking instead of a criticism), the game just begs to be an open world/sandbox title, and I'm kinda flabbergasted that it isn't. You can drive in one direction for fifteen minutes without hitting a load screen, but you cannot leave the road (unless it's been destroyed). Along the way, you can clearly see how much work went into making Bright Falls and the surrounding forest and mountain range look unique, but there's no real way to explore any of it. Though, there are a ton of nooks and crannies to seek out, it'll feel like you're walking the railroad through New Austin in Red Dead Redemption with no way to jump off. It can be frustrating, but I suppose the pacing and the story impact might have been affected otherwise.

I guess we'll never know.

In any case, Alan Wake is definitely one of the best games I've played this year. I was in a constant state of awe and amazement at the amount of surprises the world and the story were able to throw at me without getting stale and predictable. Being genuinely frightening at times didn't hurt things either. This is just a great game, and for the price it's being sold for these days... you could definitely do worse.