Alan Wake Review

Alan should have hit snooze.

So they’ve had awhile to sort this game out, god knows how many years they’ve delayed it.
It’s good to see they’ve been busy…

(That was internet sarcasm, I’m no good at it.)

The whole thing takes place in a little town, you follow the tale of an author. Who gets into an argument with his wife, a set up some may of seen before, which is okay it’s a pretty vague beginning. But then he literally says “Like Johnny from Stephen Kings the Shining”.

Then there’s a myth of an Indian burial ground. And just when I thought they couldn’t suck up to him any more I swear the house from poltergeist was in it!

I can deal with the sucking up, kind of but I can’t help and feel this is basically a Stephen King version of “My Name is Bruce”. Which was a film, and the whole suck up to Stephen King thing would be okay, if it was a film. And they hadn’t kept the fans waiting this long to basically say “Hey, go read this book, and while you’re at it, buy some energizer batteries”

The amount of advertising in the game was horrific, but I guess they have to get money from somewhere right?

Moving on, the main villain behind it looks like some like of Nannie McPhee rip off that you’d find in an “Adult film”. The acting, except for 2 characters was nothing short of turd for the ears. I guess that knocks down one theory of where the money went.

There are four, maybe five different enemies in this, and I don’t mean re-colours like usual, they were quite frankly too lazy to bother to even re-colour them! I wish I knew why so many fisherman hung around the electric plant.

The battle system was pretty decent, an interesting and some what unique blend of gun fire and light saber; – I mean flash light. And that’s all well and good but when gates come in that you literally have to stand, and just point a light at for about a minute it, which quickly becomes annoying. And believe me, those minutes take a toll when you’re just standing there.

The physic engine is really broken, objects getting stuck, moving upside down and on the odd occasion flying. And on top of that one NPC named “Sarah” seemed to be teeming with glitches, running into walls, repeating the same line over and over, which didn’t happen for any other character.

Alan Wake is split up into episodes, and they do a “Previously on Alan Wake” thing, which didn’t work last time did it Alone in the dark?

So why the hell they thought it’d be a good bloody idea to try it again is beyond me. I’ve just played that bit, I know what happened, and if I can’t remember then your game is failing at the story telling because it’s not re-memorable!

The missions tend to follow the same trait:
Kill some things, go to light, fix a generator
Kill some things, follow someone, fix a light
Kill some things, wander around for awhile, find some light.

And when I say follow, I actually mean watch as your partner runs into a wall and you have to make her follow you!

What really really really annoyed me? It’s been long enough, and they still can’t spell “Cabin”
If you look at the picture found below, take a look at the “I” in cabin. An “I” should have a line at the top and the bottom, or it becomes a “T”.

There’s a brilliant bit where your best friend does an impression of you with a cut out, bringing in a nice mix of humour in all the drama. The game misses little things, graphical things like if he takes pills, they don’t show up in his hand, and he doesn’t take the lid off, these are classic mistakes they’ve had time to deal with.

All in all I DID enjoy playing the game, a little tedious at points sure, but enjoyable.

Keep in mind, even if you limit yourself to doing one episode a day, that’s still less than a week, this is a rental or bargain bin buy at best, it’s not the kind of game you can re play a lot.

So I’m giving Alan Wake a 6/10. If we didn’t have to wait as long, I’d probably be a bit nicer.

Games: Alan Wake, Platforms: Xbox 360, Genres: Other, Publishers: Microsoft Game Studios, Developers: Remedy Entertainment