Reviews from the Crypt 2014 Part 3 – Alan Wake Review

Today we turn down the gore and focus on a more Psychological Horror/Thriller game, Remedy’s Alan Wake. It’s arguable that the game should be listed as a survival horror as the game is about as scary as a good TV Show, like say Twin Peaks or The Walking Dead, creepy but never actually scary. That being said, we’ve reviewed other games in this segment that wasn’t scary at all, but fit the Halloween theme.

The game follows the fictional writer, Alan Wake, who after a series of best-selling detective books, kills off his main character in hopes of starting something new. Writers block soon steps in and Alan goes on a self-destructive path. Alan’s wife brings Alan on a vacation to Bright Falls, a quite forest town that is implied to be in Washington, to get away so that he could focus.

It’s shortly after arriving that things take a turn for the worst, Alan’s wife Alice goes missing, Alan at a scene of a car crash, and a Dark Presence has started taking possessing people and inanimate objects. On top of all this, Alan is finding pages for a manuscript called “Departure” with his name on it, that seems to be telling the future and controlling what is happening to the town and to himself.

The story is presented in Episodes, beginning with a “Previously on Alan Wake…” introduction for each level, and ending with a cliffhanger that makes you want to push forward in the story. This style of storytelling is perfect for the game since it pulls inspiration from TV shows such as Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks. Told through 6 episodes that roughly take an hour and a half to complete.

The gameplay is heavily focused on combat and exploration. As players will have a lot of items to look for including Manuscript pages which gives more insight on what is happening in the world around Alan and the people the Dark Presence is affecting.

Combat focuses on taking on The Taken, enemies who are protected by the Dark Presence who have become an empty shell. There are several types of these enemies but the way to defeat them are similar, players will focus a flashlight on The Taken long enough to lower the Dark Presence guard and then be able to pop a few rounds into the attacker with various firearms to defeat them. Players can also hold back the Taken using Flares, or eliminate a group of them by using Flashbang grenades and Flareguns.

While the gameplay is great there is several problems that occur, Batteries drain insanely fast, ammo is hardly scarce and there never seem to be a fight or flight moment that is not painfully obvious which removes it from any horror element. Meanwhile driving sections on the game are clunky and boring.

Graphically Alan Wake does some things good, the environment and animations are great for the game, but it’s the character models that look horrible. Alice for example looks like the news reporter in 1989 Tim Burton’s Batman who just inhaled Joker Gas. On top of this, the game has a serious problem with product placement, with Verizon and Energizer. There is some cool little features though, with TV shows playing live action videos which include a video of Alan writing Departure and a Twilight Zone style show called Night Springs which is more entertaining then one would imagine. The game also has some of the best uses of licensed music outside a music game, using songs that fit perfectly with the events of the episode.

Alan Wake is possibly one of the best games on the Xbox 360. The game’s pacing and story telling is done so well that it is easy to overlook the minor flaws.