World famous author Alan Wake has writers’ block, so he and his nyctophobic (scared of the dark) wife decide to holiday in Bright Falls, an idyllic ex-mining town in rural America. You’d think, he being a writer a fan of Stephen King and having written episodes of Twilight Zone rip off ‘Night Springs’, he’d be wary of holidaying in a rural town surrounded by tall mountains and deep forests. After all, nearly everyone knows they’re all full of some kind of unholy-and-ancient-darkness slash portal-to-the-other-side, or at least rednecks and bears. But no, he doesn’t even google the town, but heads there cluelessly, and of course something terrible happens. His wife gets abducted by this darkness, and it’s up to Alan to save her.
Alan Wake almost succeeds at creating a classic horror game. At first, the game is very creepy. The town has that disturbing Twin Peaks charm, full odd characters that you get to revisit throughout the game and discover more about. The surrounding forest and mountains, full of old mines and logging farms have that Stephen King vibe, as if the very elements are in league with nature to confound and upset Alan and in turn, the player. On top of this, the game itself creates the feeling that nothing is ever quite right, and you’re never sure what is dream, what is real, and what is psychosis.
Most of the time you’re on foot and the game encourages you to explore the wide playable areas looking for pages to the manuscript Alan is writing. The manuscript echoes the story of the game, and although I personally think reading text in a game is a cop out – videogames are a visual multimedia experience and reading pages of text on screen bores me – this works here because Alan is a writer and it does recreate the Stephen King self referential mentality of many of his finest books.
There are also environmental hazards to overcome in typical 3rd person adventure style, which are generally easy to figure out. There are weapon caches to find, and TVs and Radios to tell you more of the story. The TVs show episodes of the aforementioned Night Springs, which are quite long, whilst the radio informs the player of what’s happening in the world of Bright Falls. There are signs about the town and surrounds revealing a history of the town, all which create a very real sense of place for the game. And with a cheeky nod to Twin Peaks, you’ll find coffee thermoses scattered across the landscape.
The game uses light and dark to brilliant effect, and most of your time is spent in the dark, so you’re always under constant fear of attack, and this creates and excellent way to progress the story. As light is a source of healing and every light post is a checkpoint, you actually begin to fear being in the dark too long in the game.
The first level is a dream, and here you learn the basics of how to fight what are known as the Taken. The Taken creep from the shadows, and are imbued with unholy darkness. Equipped with a torch and a gun, fighting them involves a two phase attack. Shining your torch at them nullifies their dark power and stops them momentarily, and you can boost the torch’s power with a simple button press, although this depletes the battery power so you’ll need to stock up on batteries. Once their power is gone, you can pop a cap in their ass, as long as you have enough bullets. Dropping flares keeps them at bay, and bright light kills them outright, so flash bang grenades and flare guns become your most powerful weapons, as they light up the dark and vanquish foes at once, as does flashing car or spotlights onto them.
The Taken also manifest as poltergeists, and at various points in the game you’ll find objects imbued with darkness hover and fling themselves at you. These often take a bit more of time to take down, especially the larger vehicles you’ll encounter, although ducking behind posts and rocks can shield you a little whilst you shine your light onto them and drop flares and flash bangs.
There are also a few driving sections, and these are fun as well. Considering the game is a 3rd person action game, the car controls quite well. And as there’s nothing more fun than running people over in video games, it’s even better when they’re darkness imbued zombies, as you speed towards the Taken, turn your high beams on, and mow through them faster than Ash’s zombie killing machine from Evil Dead 3.
However, like many other horror games before it, the need t make Alan Wake a videogame ruins the overall vibe of the story eventually. Whenever there are enemies nearby, there is always a ‘tell’. Like in Doom 3, there’s always a sound to alert you to an enemy’s presence. In this case it’s music, and the game also takes control of the camera and zooms out or pans around to show you your enemy. At first, this is really cool and alarming, but eventually it becomes so much part and parcel of the game you forget to be scared about it.
Boss fights are signified by the game environment opening up into a wide area, with flares in emergency boxes lying about on the trail toward them, and as you near the “you’re about to be attacked” music plays. It happens so often in the middle part of the game the dread I felt wasn’t legitimate fear, but rather boredom at yet another fight where I had to point my torch at a bad guy/thing then shoot him when he stopped emanating darkness. Towards the end, I just wanted to advance the story, not face hordes of bad dudes just because the designers wanted to make the game an hour longer.
There is one exception to this occurs a little past midway in the game. I don’t want to give too much away, but the most fun I had in the game was at the Old Gods of Asgard’s farm. What seems like it would be a similar scenario to previous levels turns into something quite different and a hell of a lot of fun.
Also annoying is Alan keeps losing his equipment. You collect a shot gun, flare gun, flash bangs and a high powered torch during a level, and it’s likely to be gone after the next cutscene ,without any real reason for this occurring other than to annoy the player who likes to hoard things. Sure, “I lost my gun in the fall” is a perfectly legitimate reason, but losing them after going to a police station? Obviously the evidence cupboards need better locks in Bright Falls!
And although a minor annoyance, you can listen to all the radio and read the pages you’ve collected in the Extras menu, but you can’t watch any of the episodes of Night Springs outside of the game. This isn’t a game killer by any means, but I would have loved to watch the shows outside of the game in another menu, as they were quite entertaining.
Conclusion
It’s worth spending a few hours alone in the dark with Alan Wake and just the glow of a TV screen. It’s certainly better than most of Stephen King’s recent book to film outings. The game creates an excellent and believable sense of ‘reality’, as much as horror story can. You’ll suspend your disbelief for the most part, and there are some very cool and spooky moments early in the game that will really put you on edge.
It’s just a shame that because games cost so much to make and sell to the consumer, and game developers have an expectation to give players their money’s worth, extending the gameplay aspects of the game tend to ruin the vibe of the story later on. I guess it’s unavoidable as no game has really been able to create the legitimate scares of a horror story throughout its ten plus hours, although I’m pretty sure a ten hour long horror film would also be rather hackneyed by the end of it as well.
Pros:
Excellent use of light and dark both in fights and setting the scene
Great story development through the use of collectables
Very good sense of Bright Falls being a real place. Well, as real as a horror story town can be.
Lots of clever nods to the horror genre
Cool driving levels with solid controls even though it’s primarily an on foot 3rd person action game.
Cons
The creepiness of the game’s early levels gives way to a “been there, done that” feeling.
Player has all their cool weapons taken away and has to go get them all again every level.
Ending is not very satisfying and screams sequel.
85/100