After the recent unveiling of the name and trailer for the next Alan Wake game, titled Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, I decided that now was a pretty good time to post a review about the first game.
Alan Wake was originally announced at E3 back in 2005. Back then it was supposed to have an open world for players to explore, however Remedy eventually decided that in order to maintain the story and pacing of the game they had to shrink it down and eliminate the open world element. That being said the environments in Alan Wake are still fairly large, giving you lots of room to explore as well as great views of the rest of the very detailed world that Remedy designed.
Alan Wake’s combat system works well and consists of two parts. The first part is penetrating the darkness that surrounds all of your enemies and the second is destroying them. In order to rid your enemies of their dark barrier you need light which you get from your flashlight and later on flares. Once their barrier is gone in order to kill them you need to shoot them with one of your guns which will either be a revolver, shotgun or rifle. There are multiple enemy types helping to change it up and keep combat fast and intense. The battles that are the most fun are the ones when you’re totally surrounded and have to franticly switch between weakening some enemies’ barriers and blowing others away. It gets pretty intense since you will have to constantly dodge and shine light on different opponents to keep away from them yet focus your light and weapons on specific enemies so you can actually finish them off.
The game’s greatest asset however is the creepy and intense atmosphere that starts the very first time you battle with someone who is possessed by the darkness and stays strong all the way till the end. I found myself constantly looking around in the trees wondering if I just saw something move in the corner of the screen of if it was just a shadow. Now just so you know I don’t play many survival horror games, but of the ones I have played this is the one that kept me on the edge of my seat the most. This brings me to something that I feel needs to be said, you should definitely play this game at night trust me it’s a lot more fun. Closer to the end enemies and battles can get less scary because you do get better weapons but for me it stayed intense because I was afraid to waste them in case something big came along.
Alan Wake isn’t without its flaws though. The games facial models aren’t very good, I mean when you’re playing they’re fine (because they aren’t moving) but in the cutscenes when the characters are talking they just look weird; something about the animation just doesn’t seem right. This is very strange since everything else in the game was rendered beautifully. While this is distracting it isn’t anywhere near as bad as the collectibles. There are four main things that you will be looking for while playing the game which is way too many. Now I don’t dislike collectibles per say, they are fine in games like Gears of War (Cog Tags) and Halo (Skulls) but four different types is just too many. The first of these items are the missing pages to Alan’s manuscript which is a part of the story and is just fine, cool even, if you choose to read them. Then there are the TVs which show cool Twilight Zone inspired shorts. Next comes the radios which are ok but they do more to distract the player then immerse them even though they discuss stuff happening in the town sometimes. Lastly are the thermoses which are scattered around for no reason and just totally break immersion and ruin the great tension that the game creates. I’ll be on my way to try and help someone, or I’ll be running for my life and then go totally out of my way down the wrong path just to look for a useless thermos.
However the collectibles actually aren’t my biggest problem with the game, no my biggest problem with the game is how it ends. You see I like Alan Wake’s story a lot of it was cool, creepy, thought provoking and well written, just like I wanted it to be. However at the end it just goes crazy and ruins everything it worked so hard to achieve. Alan Wake’s ending is one of those where you get to interpret what it meant sort of things which I’m not a fan of, I prefer a definitive ending. I mean usually in this position I just form my opinion and that’s it, but Alan Wake doesn’t let me do that. Rather than having two possible endings and letting me pick, it has like eight endings and no this isn’t one of those your choices affect the ending games, they all happen no matter what you do. Plus the ending cut scenes have parts of them that contradict every single possible ending. After I finished the game I played the last level again the next day because I thought I missed something and that after sleeping I could figure it out. It turns out I missed the last line, which adds another possible ending that has its own reasons not to exist and helps screw the others up even more!
Score: 3/5
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