Alan's awake, but this review should take care of that

He raced away at his typewriter, forced by an unknown presence to construct a dark realm to consume all that he knew. The editor, a fair-skinned elderly woman dressed as a widow, pierced his very being with her cold fingers at his shoulder. The writer worked through the night, a man possessed, cowering in the frenzy of induced mental atrophy. Suddenly, a white flash fills the room, paining his eyes but filling his soul. An escape from his mental torture, the writer realizes… what the hell is this, 1920? Why am I on a typewriter?

This paragraph fully sums my thoughts on Alan Wake. Alan Wake is a captivating title that nearly consumes you as far as the dark presence does Wake, and then throws a wrench into the mix every now and then. However this wrench doesn’t freshen things up as one would hope. This hypothetical wrench jams the gears of the game’s purpose as a compelling, dark tale of suspense and thrills. I’ll try to highlight what I mean throughout the review.

The Story

Alan Wake is my personal favourite videogame story of this generation. It does away with traditional fashion of story-telling in games by presenting itself as a TV series whilst using common mechanics to do the story telling (typically in-game sequences and cutscenes). It’s amazing how this little psychological trick works so well to tuning one into the game as I’ve personally been programmed to pay attention and allow myself to get into story oriented TV shows while always having trouble taking stories in video games too seriously. This is one place where the hypothetical wrench actually helps out. I’m not doing such a good job with this metaphor, am I?

A large part of effective story telling is a strong cast of characters. The writers of Alan Wake either knew this well or stumbled into something great by luck. The cast consists of a town of misfits who, at first glance, come off really awkward and kind of void of depth. However a rich back-story to almost each of these characters gives their off-kilter personas some reason or explanation, allowing the jagged and awkward pieces of the puzzle to come together in the bigger picture.
Another thing that makes the game more immersive is how self-referential it is. There are quite a few quotes by famous writers sprinkled throughout the experience and each hints at a lesson or idea that was implemented in Wake. One such quote that stuck out to me was “But nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear.” It’s this very idea that gives the dark presence an effective role in the narrative.

Finally there’s the ending of the game. So many games this gen have done so many things right and have just totally blown the ending in my opinion. AC2, Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain, God of War 3, Condemned: Criminal Origins – all of these titles are staples to their genres but all these experiences were spoiled with rotten endings. Fortunately Alan Wake falls on the opposite side of the spectrum and ends with ease and satisfaction. It explains and resolves much of the current arc while asking new questions and leaving natural openings to keep one excited about what is to come.

The Presentation (and some Tech)

Ah yes, the presentation… Finally a chance to elaborate on my wrench analogy. The presentation of Alan Wake is a mixed bag to say the least. The technology powering Wake has been built to showcase breath-taking vistas, warm glows from the sun, and the eerie shadows of a creaky forest. It seems it was also built to showcase just how ugly the uncanny valley can be. Let’s say the engine powering the game is a bunch of gears working in unison to turn a merry-go-round and the facial animation capture system is the wrench used to tune up the merry-go-round. Hmm… no that doesn’t work here either.

Let’s say the engine is a chocolate pudding cup and the facial animation system is a vibrating spoon (stay with me on this). Boy is that pudding tasty but with a vibrating spoon it’s kinda hard to get that pudding to your mouth without getting it everywhere else too. The work being put into getting the pudding to one’s mouth hardly seems worth it if it’s gonna end up stinging your eyes or clogging your nose. In other words, the two systems are meant to work together to draw you into the experience but one totally messes everything up.

When not flying over day-time vistas or enveloping you in a sense of urgency at night the engine shows off its blocky daytime shadows and incohesive texture work. In a sense this is pretty ironic as the game seems to show its scary looking side (to us tech heads) when there aren’t supposed to be any scares.

This is pretty much where the presentation complaints end so MS detractors should skip to Gameplay now. For those who love Alan Wake keep reading.
With all of these complaints on the presentation so far one would assume I was totally pulled out of the experience. But the exact opposite is true. As I said earlier it’s the uncanny valley at work. The truth is that I was so pulled into the experience that these problems made themselves that much more apparent. The tech works great where the main point of the experience lays; namely in the night sequences. The tech is not only gorgeous in these scenarios, but the addition of on-the-fly weather effects makes the experience that much more unsettling as the mood of the atmosphere can change on a whim.

The sound design is the real star of the presentation. The voice acting is superb, the ambient sound is hollow but all encompassing, and the sound effects of trees cracking, guns blasting, and crashing of construction equipment being thrown about like my retainer in high school all sell the on-screen action with eerie precision. The blend of music into the experience is very well done. It doesn’t take away from the intensity of wandering a foggy forest at midnight but is capable of making you feel the warmth of the sun’s rays as you cruise through the landscape. The licensed soundtrack of the game helps to sell the experience as a TV series and is put to good use within the game, but I wouldn’t say it was my taste, which is really the only negative thing I can think of saying regarding the sound.

I think most of us that have played the game can agree that the tech and style of presentation have really laid a great foundation to build upon and I personally can’t wait to see where they take it.

The Gameplay

Another sour note on an amazing experience, the gameplay uses a unique little flashlight mechanic to bleed away the darkness before any damage can be done to enemies but then pretty much stops differentiating itself from everything else out there. To make this mechanic even more tiresome, the game presents you with a lack of variety in enemies. A lumberjack, a construction-worker, a flock of birds, and some tires are the core chunk of the enemies faced in the game.

However there were a few delights to the gameplay. The “boss battles” are a highlight here as they’re quite unique in the sense that it’s pretty rare that you have to fight a construction tractor or tornado in a video game. To continue on with gameplay mechanics, the ability to dodge enemy attacks was something I used way more than I should have throughout the game just to keep it engaging. I’d wait for an enemy to attack, dodge, and then yell out “Ohhh… You got Matrix’d bitch!” to the TV during the slow motion sequence. This dodging mechanic is something that I would see as a welcome addition to the survival horror genre. Finally there are a couple of awful driving segments. In a way I’m sort of glad the game didn’t end up open world. With a driving system as poor as the one we got, exploring the world would have been a painful experience. Thankfully these sequences were pretty short lived.

The variety and uniqueness of weapons was also pretty neat. Weapons ranged from traditional revolvers and shotguns that you’d expect folks from a small town like Bright Falls to possess, to flares and flare guns that any well supplied Park Rangers should have. There’s also an odd appearance of flash bangs that is semi-explained but the punch they pack is makes up for the sense their presence kind of lacks.

The latter “episodes” and the DLC did a better job with mixing up gameplay sequences which can be mostly attributed to the dark presence. It’s these sequences that sort of redeem the gameplay aspect of Alan Wake and doesn’t make it an unbearable experience from a gameplay point of view. Overall I was satisfied with the gameplay experience of Wake, despite feeling like it was dragging on a tad too much in the middle of the experience. Once the dark presence kicked in, so did a lot of the sense in the gameplay design choices they made in regards to the dodging and light mechanics, as well as weapon choices.

Lasting Appeal

This is a very odd section to review as it really all depends on the gamer. For me personally Alan Wake was a pretty good length. There are many complaints from many individuals (including myself) as to the variety of the game being poor. With a lack of variety is it really all that bad that the game isn’t more than 12-15 hours? There are a good number of collectables to be found in the game and scraping every corner of the world to find more self-references and neat little story connections is something I take a lot of pleasure in. Because of this I played through the entire game twice and have dabbled in individual chapters every now and then to continue finding and analyzing little details that were included.

There isn’t a multiplayer mode tacked onto the game and that’s a good thing in my mind. I personally don’t get into online games much so I wouldn’t have made use of one if it had been there. I’m glad that the devs focused on making a great SP experience in this case (I’m looking at you Bioshock 2…). All in all I was satisfied with what I got for my money’s worth and I do see myself continuing to go back to it and picking apart more little details.

This next little remark isn’t so much about the lasting appeal of the game, but just the general appeal of it. Both my sister and my cousin, who tend to roll their eyes and give me “that” look when I’m gaming, sat down when they saw me playing Alan Wake. They even forced me to restart the game when I was well into Episode 2 on my first play-through so they could see it from the start. The episodic nature of the game really lends itself well to getting non-gamers involved and immersed into the story. In fact, I haven’t been able to play the second DLC yet because my cousin wants to watch me play it for the first time and she hasn’t been around lately.

Conclusion and Final Score

I had a “Reviewer’s Tilt” section where I was going to give more of my personal view on the game but my fingers are starting to get tired so I’m cutting it and getting straight to the conclusion. Although I never got the analogy to pan out I stick to my guns. Alan Wake is like a bunch of gears with wrenches thrown into the mix that do little to improve the system. It's a captivating experience with great presentation, decent gameplay, and a whole lot of quirks. It has a unique personality and a unique place in the gaming industry. It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it isn’t trying to be either. It’s dark, unassuming, charming, playful and mysterious; much like Alice’s underpants.


Story
9.5

Visual Presentation
8

Audio Presentation
9.5

Gameplay
8

Lasting Appeal
8.5

Overall
8.8