Alan Wake Review, Episode I

Why am I collecting thermoses?

I started playing 2010's Alan Wake, developed by Remedy Entertainment, for PC on Sunday. My friends seemed generally divided about whether it's worth playing or not. Some insisted that I should play it, while others were wholly dismissive of it. Regardless, the game has always intrigued me. I enjoy thrillers and horror, and it seemed to have a concept unlike any I've experienced in a game before.

The end of a battle. Just in time, too.

The story involves the titular character, Alan, and his wife abandoning their home in New York to vacation in the fictional lakeside town, Bright Falls, Washington. Alan has been suffering from severe writer's block, and the hope is that he'll be able to clear his head. Much to his chagrin, an evil darkness begins to possess the world at night, and Alan is forced to do battle with this mysterious evil. The story, in and of itself, is unique to the video games I've played while not completely original if one were to branch out to other media. Making the primary protagonist a writer and featuring manuscript pages seems risky in that the developers invite not only criticism of their game writing but their in-game writing as well. I've only completed two chapters thus far, and while I've enjoyed my time with it, I do wonder if there will be a big revelation or twist that will impress me or if the characters will just ride out the story laid out thus far with some predictably bombastic ending. I will admit that while I appreciate the manuscript pages' purpose in the narrative, I do find Wake's writing to be a bit hammy when taken in one-page bites. (By the way, A. Wake? Come on, you guys.)

He's not kidding.

In terms of motivation, Alan Wake offers a guy like me good incentive: I want to get out of the dark. I will readily admit that I am not the best a action games; I lack l337 skills. I play most games on the easiest difficulty so that I can enjoy the story with little hindrance. A few notable exceptions were Uncharted 3, which I regrettably played on Normal, and Bayonetta, which I have only played on Normal and Hard and seriously loved every minute of it. I'm doing this one on easy, and you can mock my gamer cred henceforth if it pleases you. Returning to the game at hand, when darkness falls, people possessed by the darkness, "the Taken," come out of nowhere to wreak havoc on our city boy writer. It makes me jump, especially when the game just moves or drops objects out of no where for some cheap thrills. Exploitation aside, nothing has made me stick to the ceiling as much as the tentacles from Dead Space, but it is enough to keep my heart thumping and me looking for every pool of light to take shelter in.

Combat in Alan Wake is also original. Though armed with a pistol or shotgun during darkness segments, Wake's best weapon is his flashlight. Defeating the enemies requires focusing the flashlight on them until the requisite blanket of darkness that envelops them has disappeared. Then, shoot. On the easy difficulty, many enemies are easily felled by two bullets from the pistol, but larger hulks require a shot gun or a onesie weapon like the flare gun, which removes the darkness and kills in a single hit. I am trepidatious with shooters, typically wishing to shoot everything haphazardly and be done with it, but I honestly enjoy this extra layer. It never comes off as artificial filler, and it keeps the player engaged, managing two systems of offing the Taken instead of Rambo-ing through with beefed up weaponry. I have one problem with it, though. In order to make the darkness disappear quickly and effectively, you must focus the flashlight on the enemy using the right mouse button. When not focused, the flashlight will recharge its own battery, though not fast enough for heated encounters. My question is what flashlight in our reality does this? The story is effective so long as we understand that the Taken are part of an extraordinary circumstance in what is otherwise the real world. But they have magic flashlights. In fact, you can even do this with vehicle headlights, which is more boggling. I know I should suspend my belief, and if the flashlights behaved normally, it's a wonder how long it would take to progress, but seriously, has no one thought hard about this?

Just a small town with small town folk.

The game features an episodic structure, containing a number of chapters to fit the whole writing motif. The beginning of each chapter features a recap of what has happened thus far, and the end of each involves a title card hanging out on the screen while a song plays in the background. (You can skip this.) I find these features to be rather novel, and the end of the second chapter was capped with "Haunted" by Poe, which I adore. The narrative is obviously linear, but Alan Wake throws in some other diversions along the way. Alan can collect blue thermoses strewn about the wilds of Bright Falls, listen to radio programs, watch the game's version of The Twilight Zone on various TVs, and even shoot some can pyramids down. The collectible items serve further to suck the player out of focus, and justifying them within the narrative gives Wake a mildly schizophrenic thought process - I'm really scared and want to go home, but I see something flashing over on that hill that I must have. The radio and TV shows are dichotomous, however, both aiding the setting with their eccentricities and unnecessarily distracting the main character from getting out of Dodge by having him stand around for five minutes. The breadcrumbs left by Remedy Entertainment in this case are confusing, and it would have served the story more to give Alan some bonus within the narrative via the collectibles.

Cynicism aside, Alan Wake features applaudable visuals. I am playing the game at a 1920 x 1080 resolution on the highest graphical settings, and it features some really beautiful vistas with no slowdown or framerate issues that I have noticed. Bright Falls and its environments look great, and it's almost a shame the game takes place mostly in the dark because the daylight and sunset are handled rather beautifully. Although objects are rather sparse, the overall effect and the landscape are really what shine, and they are enhanced via a natural color palette and bloom lighting effects. I also love how enemies disappear into sparks, and the game's subtle cue that a battle is over by making the last enemy die in a larger flash. The odd transitions between the engine-rendered and the pre-rendered cutscenes reveal jarring lighting changes between the two, and it never seems to make sense why the tones need to change for such brief moments. Frankly, this is one of those games that makes me question why they have pre-rendered cutscenes at all. Still, the quality is high and easy on the eyes with both. The vocal performance is another double-edged sword, with voice acting being well executed and the lip syncing negating that execution. There is also the matter of characters who will talk to Alan while he runs around looking for thermoses without changing the directions their facing or trying to slap him into paying attention.

Well, let's be honest. Nobody was going to use it.

There will be more to come as I continue to play the game, but hopefully, this serves as an indicator of what to expect starting out. In the meantime, don't forget to stock up on Energizer batteries. The game won't let you forget!

Part II
Part III

All images taken myself via Steam's screenshot feature.