Video Game Review: Atmospheric, Entertaining ‘Alan Wake’ Must Be Played

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CHICAGO – With echoes of the literature of Stephen King, “The Twilight Zone,” “Twin Peaks,” and “Lost,” the Xbox-exclusive “Alan Wake” is a daring, ambitious title that demands your attention. Why? Because while it’s an imperfect title on a gameplay level and I wish I could have tweaked the storytelling a bit, games that try to break the mold and present something this unique deserve an audience.

Video Game Rating: 4.0/5.0

The team behind “Max Payne” have taken years to develop this unusual thriller, a game brilliantly divided into six episodes that play almost like two-hour installments of a TV show complete with “Previously On” segments and full songs that somewhat replicate the feel of credits between them. The structure of the game is one of its most laudable achievements. Instead of the neverending flow of plot in most games, the story of “Alan Wake” has been divided into six episodes with their own arcs, climaxes, and cliffhangers. It’s a brilliant decision that basically creates six mini-games, allowing you to pick up and play for a couple hours and leave satisfied until you “see” the next episode.

Alan Wake
Photo credit: Microsoft Game Studios

The episodic story centers, of course, on the title character, a successful writer who would love to be compared to Stephen King (the game’s clearest influence as he’s referenced more than once and the plot has echoes of several of his stories) and seems to have found a similar level of success. Alan Wake (whose very name should give you a hint at the title’s dream-like nature if you take just his first initial and surname) travels to a remote Washington town named Bright Falls with his wife Alice in an attempt to break his writer’s block and finish his newest book.

Alan Wake Photo credit: Microsoft Game Studios

Shortly after arriving at their secluded cabin in Bright Falls, Alice goes plunging over the cabin railing into Cauldron Lake. Alan jumps in after her and wakes up a week later behind the wheel of a crashed car. Where’s Alice? What happened during the last week? What secrets are held by Bright Falls?

Before he knows it, the forests around the few well-lit areas of Bright Falls prove to be very dangerous to Mr. Wake. Shadowy figures with axes and other instruments of death pop up out of the corner of the player’s eye and they take light to defeat. In a smart storytelling move, the creatures of the dark must be dragged into the light to kill them. Most of the game, you’ll aim your flashlight at an enemy for a few seconds, making them killable with your trusty shotgun, revolver, etc. Flares, flashbangs, and other weapons of light play a major role. Eventually, everything could be possessed by poltergeists from barrels to bulldozers. It sometimes feels like the darkness itself is alive and waiting to kill you.

Sadly, I rarely felt like the darkness or any of the enemies of “Alan Wake” had enough personality to provoke actual fear. The bad guys start to resemble the zombies of the “Resident Evil” franchise in that they’re certainly a little scary, especially when they pop up out of nowhere, but they become less so as you become more adept at the flashlight/shotgun technique. There’s also a bit too much repetition to the gameplay and repetition is the mortal enemy of honest fear. When you feel like you know what’s coming, it’s impossible to be truly frightened. I wish one of the episodes didn’t revolve around Alan getting from point A to point B through what is essentially the same series of enemies on a similar path.

Alan Wake Photo credit: Microsoft Game Studios

The few deviations from the general gameplay hint at what could have been if the developers had taken a few more risks overall. Almost the entirety of the game takes place in the forests of Bright Falls but when I was wandering through a mine and heard Alice’s voice call my name, the hair on the back of my neck stood up simply because it was so unexpected. And the few indoor levels add to the fear as the safety of moonlight and forest paths are gone and you can only see exactly what’s in front of your flashlight.

The final flaw of “Alan Wake” is that the linear nature of the title somewhat makes for a feeling that the player feels like they are watching the story instead of authoring it. When the game was over, I didn’t really feel like it was a unique experience to me in that there’s clearly only one path and one ending. I like the strength of storytelling in the title but with a few options, even choosing one path over another, replay value would have been higher.

Even with all of the repetitive, linear flaws of the game, there’s way too much to like about “Alan Wake” to dismiss this title. First, it looks spectacular. The character models are merely so-so, but the backgrounds and general design of Bright Falls is something to behold. And the soundtrack, something often ignored by most developers, is a great one, particularly the use of pop music in a way that would make David Lynch proud.

Alan Wake Photo credit: Microsoft Game Studios

There’s also a rhythm and pace to the storytelling in “Alan Wake” that can’t be denied. Even through the flaws mentioned above, I was never once bored and always curious where the writers were taking the story next. We’ve all played games where the story took a back seat to the gameplay and that never happens in “Alan Wake”.

Ultimately, despite its flaws, I feel almost an obligation to support “Alan Wake” because there needs to be more games like this one on the market. It’s daring to make a game that feels like a Stephen King novel and one that breaks many of the traditional rules of the third-person shooter. I wish “Alan Wake” broke a few more rules than it does but it’s still a riveting, enjoyable, unique experience in which the positives far outweigh the negatives. If more developers took chances on titles like “Alan Wake,” the resulting diversity in the world of gaming would be a dream come true.

Check out this excellent trailer before you go get a copy for yourself:

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com [email protected]