Alan Wake Review
By:
Schuyler Lystad
|
May 7, 2010, 1:46 pm
You've got to tie your shoelaces before you can run.
Alan Wake, the game, is about Alan Wake, the man, who is having a difficult time continuing through his writer's block. He and his wife have come to a sleepy town in the Pacific Northwest to rent a cabin so he can relax. He has a dream in which he's driving to a lighthouse, and is attacked by enemies called the Taken, people consumed by the malevolent Darkness into attacking him. The way you, as Alan, combat them is by shining enough light on them with the flashlight in your hand to make them vulnerable, at which point you can resort to your other hand, which can hold a few different guns and weapons. Different enemies require a different amount of light to have their defenses broken, the amount sometimes more than your flashlight can produce in one charge, and there's a constant struggle to bring light to the darkness in any forms you can find it.

The problems arise by there being little to no variation. This is an eight to ten hour game of six episodes, and you've gone through the entire stock of enemies in the first few hours. There were a few cheap tricks used to make the battles more challenging, but they backfired in a cloud of frustration. The camera would pull back and go into slow motion, showing an enemy sneaking up on you from a distance, in some instances, or in mid-swing, well past the dodging window, for others. And while this may alert you to one enemy, usually in front of you, it fails to give you any indication that three more have spawned behind you, until they land an attack, managing perfect stealth and silence until their hatchet has taken its toll. As the game progresses and enemies gain combo attacks, this becomes increasingly frustrating. From the beginning, though, aspects of the combat feel flimsy. You're not suddenly whipping your flashlight around behind you because there was a noise or you're paranoid, it merely becomes a defensive measure, because the game is taking cheap hits at you. My theory is that this stems from a lack of atmosphere (more on this later), but in the end, every battle except the last (which was spectacularly disappointing) came down to the same formula, and the same challenge. This combat system is not strong enough to bear the weight of even this short game, and I kept waiting for an additional layer of depth that never came.
The most tragic aspect of this was the dodge. If you can time it right, Alan will dodge cinematically from an impending attack, usually one that's already in mid-swing, avoiding what would otherwise be a solid hit. As multiple enemies attack you at once, and you can select the direction in which you dodge, this seems like it would be strategic, and in some cases it was, my snap decisions saving my life. However, the window for doing this is deceptively large, and after a few dodges, you'll have the pattern down. This becomes difficult for two reasons: the aforementioned surprise, and the mapping of these buttons. The problem with the mapping is you need to hit the left bumper to dodge, and the stick to choose your direction. This is fine when it's all that you're doing, but the flashlight and gun are mapped to the two triggers. In an intense fight, where a near-miss would only increase the tension and immersion, I need to stop and think about moving my index finger to the bumper, and getting my left middle finger in to pick up the slack, so that the moment I come out of my dodge, I could fight back with my flashlight in preparation for my gun. This may seem like a small complaint, but with such a shallow battle system, it came up often, and stood out to me as a problem throughout the game, one I wish had been more adequately addressed.

Cinematic games seem to be a trend now, and with better graphics and bigger budgets, the goal for immersion is to make an engrossing atmosphere. But it seems more attention was paid to voice acting and song licensing than storyline and immersion. In fact, the story is split up into six episodes, each of which is separated by returning to the title card, and then going to a screen that proclaims in giant letters the end of the episode. Then a song that doesn't really fit will play until you skip it. There then is a recap (I kid you not) of the last hour or two of gameplay you just went through, as if tuning into a new episode of a TV series. Not only does this not keep with the theme of the game, nor keep continual progression in a story-and-tension-driven game, it single-handedly destroys any immersion you may have been feeling, unless you don't like playing it for more than an hour or two at a time. The tension of a psychological horror or survival game never quite has the chance to build up, and with the rest of the game building around that missing core, it comes across as very incomplete. Messages scribbled on walls that are only visible with your flashlight are a nice touch, and the rattling of the poltergeist items (possessed inanimate objects that attack you) were a great addition, but other aspects just needed polish, or were incomprehensible in this sort of genre. Enemies stumbling towards you with battle cries of 65 billion cows and pigs being on the Earth, or waking up with the sun on the farm, or (I kid you not) how omega 3 fatty acids are good for your heart does not equal terror. Yes, they actually swing into battle speaking about heart health. Truly, my heart is stricken with terror, and sweat glistens my brow as panic shades my mind's eye. 
There were also a few instances where I ran out of ammunition, which were in stark contrast to the rest of the game, where my pockets were bulging (until some random event would take it all away), a small thing that, when compared to, say, Resident Evil 4 and it's perfect micromanagement of ammo to add fear. In these instances, I was left harmless, and I merely began running through the woods. Enemies would chase me and attack, then I would dodge, and keep running, until it repeated with such precision, it could've been timed by a metronome. This continued until I got to the next checkpoint, a streetlamp, where all the enemies were magically and inexplicably removed. I can't imagine a better way to shatter the illusion of danger, or how this could've been prevented with a little bit of tweaking the ammo situation. Then there are poorly voice-acted programs you can watch on various TVs in the game. While it's great that they got real actors to do them, including several about Wake himself with a well-cast actor, they were ultimately pointless and had a vague connotation in theme to what was happening, if at all. Usually I grew bored quickly, and moved on before they were finished. The only effective use of the TVs was in the opening chapter, and it was all downhill from there. The only other complaint I had with the immersion was the collectibles. There are 106 manuscript pages, 100 thermoses, a few dozen ammo dumps, over a dozen radios, TVs, 30 or so signs, and more that can be collected in this eight to ten hour game. So many things that I often was more interested in collecting random paraphernalia with no discernible purpose than fighting the Darkness. Barraging the player with so many useless things to collect was really a bad idea on the developers' part, constantly throwing little extras that made no sense and were ultimately pointless to collect for anything more than an achievement. Could they really not think of anything else?

For the reasons outlined above, please understand that when I say this game is dark, I don't mean noir, I just mean dark. While the characters (especially their lip syncing) look less than impressive, the light spilling into the dark has never looked more amazing. The direction of the central element of this game is strong, and more than once you'll take a step back in wonderment. How blind you become when you find a brilliant source of light after wandering through the woods at night was nothing shy of spectacular, and relying on your flashlight like a crutch as you scour corners darker than the midnight sky was done as well as it could've been. The only thing I wish was that just once I had turned a corner and seen an enemy standing smack in front of me, in ambush, revealed with my flashlight rather than a change of music, and I had that moment of panic that I've seen games just like this pull off in the past. Instead, like the metaphors the story employs, the game comes off heavy-handed and unable to take advantage of its originality. 
The irony here is that I know what the game was trying to do, I've played games like that before, and what it was aiming for, and ultimately missed, was not what I found myself enjoying. The gameplay isn't deep, the final and only "boss fight" is dreadfully disappointing, and the atmosphere and psychological aspects lack punch and impact. The foundation of the game was solid, but the development seems stunted, and it never fully forms into what I was waiting for, which was something that would give me a scare. It's not that I'm a horror buff either; I don't even like watching horror movies in theatres. If you gave me a few more levels, I'd poke around just to see the slight variations of the level design and the new things they did with the lighting, but the gameplay wouldn't be the draw, and that's really a shame. A rental is all I would need to get what I enjoyed out of the game, with absolutely no reason to play it a second time unless I was an achievement hunter. But I would be happy I gave it that rent and played it the once.

Click here for our Video Review of Alan Wake

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Background Check: Schuyler
I love survival horror games, appreciating the perfect storm of fear, tension, ammo management, creepiness, atmosphere, and near-helplessness as I struggle to defeat increasing hordes of the undead, or what have you. If I come to a room and want to go in but am frightened to, the game is a success. Besides emotional involvement, I feel the true test of an artist and their style is in immersion and design, and best displayed in this genre.

Related Info

Resident Evil - Okay.

Resident Evil 4 - Loved It.

Resident Evil 5 - Loved It (but thought it was an action game, not horror).

Dead Space - Loved It.