Butler grabs his critical flashlight and delves into Alan Wake's mountain town of Bright Falls. What did he find emerging from the darkness? Find out after the jump...
There was a lot of potential for this game to blow. Like, a lot. It's developers, Remedy Entertainment (best known for development of the Max Payne series), had the game in development hell for almost 10 years (though the game was not officially announced until 2005, it had been in production since 2001) and the switch from classic Xbox to the 360 meant they basically had to tear the whole damn thing down and start over halfway through. This is almost always a bad sign. However, as I stood in the Longmont Game Force contemplating what to spend my store credit on now that I had purged Dante's Inferno from my collection, I found myself really drawn to this title. I think it's probably because it was the only new thing out that didn't either look like it blew right off the bat, or was just an installment of Grand Theft Equine. So I set out to explore this new IP that had been 10 years in the works, hoping that maybe this time all of that time they spent on the damn thing would actually pay off.
You know what we've been missing a lot of in our games lately? The ability to play as normal dudes. I find that almost every game I own either features roided-up (space?) marines or the equivalent thereof, girly looking "Japanese" dudes, or anthropomorphic mystery animals. There's nothing wrong with a lot of these titles, but holy balls, do you remember Silent Hill 2? Even with its dated graphics and godawful voice acting, that game scares the shit out of me to this day, and it is precisely because I felt like James Sunderland, who arrives in a seemingly abandoned town only to be attacked by hordes of rape demons. Running only worked for so long, the enemies would chew through your ammo like nobody's business, and that was assuming the programmed terrible aiming system allowed your shots to hit in the first place. The point is, in any horror type game that has come out in the last few years simply can't make me feel scared because they never make you feel like you are actually in any kind of danger. Hell, this isn't even that new a problem.
As usual, however, I am getting ahead of myself. What the hell is Alan Wake and what goes down therein? The player is placed in the shoes of the titular character, a horror novel writer who has been unable to write for years. He goes on vacation to the mountain town of Bright Falls with his wife, and of course, something mysterious happens to her and she disappears. Suddenly, Wake finds himself in a crashed car missing a week of his life. At this time, some manuscript pages, apparently penned by him, start turning up wherever he goes, all of which describe events that have happened in the town, or offer chilling premonitions of things to come.
Contained herein: some spooky shit.
The appearance of the mysterious manuscript pages and disappearance of Wake's wife coincides with the appearance of an evil "dark presence" that starts to take over the town, first person by person, then object by object. In order to take out these enemies, you must first shine your flashlight on the enemies long enough to purge them of the darkness, then it is simply a matter of capping them enough times with whatever weapon you have handy. In terms of the actual combat, the game does not deviate from this formula in any particularly significant way, but rather in a way that offers you options. Eventually you get road flares (to give you breathing room), flashbang grenades (fuck everything up nearby), and a flare gun (fuck EVERYTHING up, but ammo is a pain to come by) and it becomes your job to judiciously use these items, along with any light sources or traps you can find in the environment to make it through dark expanse of woods after dark expanse of woods. OK, I will say this, if you get tired of copy-pasted scenery too easily, you will become infuriated with this game halfway through. I personally found the story to be compelling enough to overlook the repetitive environments, but the dark woods become a lot less spooky when it's the gazillionth time you've had to trek from the safety of the town back into the goddamn forest, getting more and more weapons each time, along with better flashlights and all the batteries you can hold.
Pictured: what roughly 80% of the game looks like
OK, so earlier I was talking about how I missed getting to feel like a normal guy in video games at times. After all, I can relate to a writer a hell of a lot better than I can a space marine. However, as I mentioned above, the combat becomes relatively standard within a few hours: Shine light, backpedal until darkness is expelled, double tap to the dome, repeat. And this is the case for almost every enemy in the game. Hell, once the darkness starts possessing inanimate objects, while it is jarring at first, it essentially becomes the same process minus the double tap (poltergeisted objects are defeated only with light). However, as I played through the game on the normal difficulty, never wanting for ammo or supplies, I still relished each large encounter almost as a combination fight/puzzle. Certain situations can be cleared out with standard run and guns, but sometimes you DO have to go for strategic flare deployment, or decide whether the big baddie in the middle of the area is worth taking down with the revolver you have equipped, or if you have time to switch to the shotgun. Lots of little decisions keep the combat mostly fresh, and even when it is feeling stagnant, I never got tired of scrounging for those manuscript pages, both to get hints at what might be coming up so I could prepare better, as well as to get the exposition on other characters, all of whom are pretty well rounded and fun, even if every one of them is lifted from a Steven King book. For that matter, the plot is very similar to King's The Dark Half, and they do kind of like to namedrop the guy at weird moments, but bizarre fetishism aside, the plot is like a good, pre-car-accident Stephen King book, as opposed to his shitty post accident work. Are they borrowing a lot of his elements? yeah, but at least they're up front about it. And if you're a fan of a well spun horror story, the plot and characters are sure to capture your attention (particularly Wake's agent), and the overall feel of the setting is very tight, with nary a dangling thread to be found.
There is no place for your kind here.
So your average normal playthrough, then, is for the kind of person who will allow repetitive gameplay, so long as it is not unreasonably difficult, in favor of a very good, pretty engrossing story and characters. But what happened to that notion of "being a normal guy", the virtues of which I was extolling mere paragraphs ago? Well, tragically, when you play this game on its standard difficulty, getting scared is not a commonplace occurrence due to the massive amounts of ammo and light sources you always have. It's fun, but the successor to Silent Hill 2 that it was hyped as, hell no. But check this out, and prepare to have your mind blown. If you REALLY want to feel like a hapless bastard battling an unknowable evil against which you are never fully prepared, just crank the difficulty up to "nightmare". Hell, some manuscript pages are only findable on nightmare mode anyway, so there's even some actual in-game incentive. The point is, all it does is raise the number of shots enemies take to die, and lower the number of hits you can take to about 2. But my god will you feel the fear as you run screaming from the 5 guys chasing you with axes, knowing you've spent all of your revolver ammo taking down two of them and have 2 batteries left. And once poltergeisted train cars start hurling themselves at you, prepare to feel the terror, as getting hit by a train car on nightmare does exactly what you'd expect (hint: it crushes your narrating ass). My point is, there is a very obvious solution to turn this game into the survival horror it was billed as, so if you find yourself damning the game due to its easiness, try the old "nightmare" trick and see if your testicles shrivel a little.
All in all, I really like this game. Yes, having Alan Wake narrate every damn thing he sees while you yourself are watching it unfold gets a little tiresome, yes sometimes hunting for manuscripts or the random coffee thermoses (No, I don't know why they are there other than ever since GTA III it has been mandatory that all games have pointless collectibles that number at least 100) can feel like some painful length padding, but you know what? At least it's something new. At least somebody out there took a look at the games we've got and said "hey, how about we come up with something that people HAVEN'T played yet?" Alright, so someone said that back in 2001, but still, it's the damn thought that counts, as they did keep the sentiment alive for 9 years until the game was finally released. This game, unlike many "original" IPs, doesn't really lend itself to being likened to another title to adequately summarize the gameplay, and my god is that a refreshing change. It's not the best game ever, but it's the only thing that has actually gotten me to turn on my Xbox in months, and I found myself lamenting that it was coming to an end as I reached the final chapter. In fact, if they can take a title that is losing its credibility faster and faster due to massive delays and still make it come out this well, I think I have some ideas for what we could put Remedy to work on next...
It's a sequel to another IP, true, but last I checked,
these guys could REALLY use a hand.
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