Alan Wake

When/where/why Steam store, 2013/14 winter holiday sales. For $3. Because, well, that sounded like a lot of game for not much money.

What/who Alan Wake is a third-person supernatural horror/shooter. You play as the titular character, a best-selling horror novelist now suffering from writer’s block, who has gone on holiday with his wife to hunting/logging town Twin Peaks Bright Falls. But then the wife goes missing and you’ve got to get her back, armed with guns (for shooting things) and torches (for shining at things). It’s just a pity your sprint stamina is so terrible. Convoluted meta-narratives and ominous dark/light personifications abound.

It was developed by Remedy Entertainment, a Finland-based company who are also famous for the Max Payne series. It was originally launced as an Xbox 360 exclusive in 2010, if I’m not mistaken.

First install? Yes.

Play time? Finishment? 13 hours according to the steam log, but feel free to subtract a couple for pause-idling. I finished the game on hard difficulty (edit - just normal difficulty, for some reason I have an achievement for hard difficulty), hooray for me! And I notched up 32 out of 67 achievements, not that anyone should be counting.

Is it good? Yes, look. It’s okay.

Things I liked.
The sense of place is strong for what is, essentially, a linear shooting game. I liked the way this was achieved, particularly the radio snippets that are (usually) tucked away in safe-spots - I was always happy to pause and let them unfold. The environment is unrelentingly picturesque, although a bit samey as the game goes on.

I quite liked the novelty of the combat, which was largely a balancing act of light, guns and the occasional grenade. I liked, also, that ammo supply was a concern at times, and that the option to just dodge and run on to the next checkpoint was often viable, and that seeing as killing dudes didn’t return any tangible in-game benefits anyway, why bother sticking around in the dark. But the act of running away itself takes a bit of measured patience, due to Alan Wake’s inability to run 20 metres without being able to walk any more (coz he’s a writer hurrrr).

It also seemed the right amount of suspenseful, at least for me. Once I got used to the games sound-and-video shock tactics during combat, I appreciated the horror atmospherics without being too put off to continue playing.

And although a lot of movies and novels come to mind, at least the plot feels inventive in delivery compared to many other games where shooting is the main pastime. For better or worse, the story kept me interested and kept me guessing, even if it was a bit silly. The red herrings and false endings kept me playing during patches that, had I realised how much game I really still had to go, I probably would have given up and moved on. Some of it is very cheesey, horror-tropey (“touched by the darkness”, anyone?), but this is forgiveable because, well, videogamez. The conversations and cut-scenes that fill-in the gaps are often welcome, pacing-wise, and none-too-shabby writing-wise. I liked the story-within-a-story device of the scattered narrative pages (a good collectible! all them thermos on the otherhand…)

But I guess this is also where Alan Wake fell a bit flat for me. Oftentimes it felt like a bit of a grind, especially as the game would add large chunks of game-play without advancing the plot by inventing map-related inconveniences and diversions, all a touch too transparently. I couldn’t help but feeling a little disappointed when the red herring placed three chapters in fell away and I realised there was so much more game to go. Perhaps this is a matter of context. Perhaps if you’ve spent $80 to play this on your console, you want to get some mileage out of it and these filler sections (“the gate’s locked! you better go around the other way!”) keep coming up, you don’t mind. But if you’ve got 350 games, and counting, left to tick off, and you really just want to see where this plot goes, and sure this combat system is okay but we’re really just doing the same thing over and over again now, aren’t we, there’s only so many tricks they can throw here and look maybe it was a bad idea to go this far because we’re invested in it but it would be silly to stop playing now. As a side-note, it occurs to me that it’s most likely going to be this sort of scenario that eventually derails this project - getting too far in a game to feel okay about moving on to the next one, but not interested enough to finish the current one, damning it to a stalled oblivion

So maybe that’s a bit unfair of me. But maybe also this is the changing face of gaming. There are so many games to play, and for many people nowadays time is a more precious resource than the money with which the games are bought.

Come back to it later? Nope, I can’t really see why I’d play Alan Wake again, now that I’ve finished it once. Given where the plot ended though, and the one or two loose ends left dangling from within, I’d be curious to see what happens in the Alan Wake: American Nightmare sequel/expansion/whatever. Just maybe not any time soon.

edit - when I went back in to get a screenshot, I noticed two unplayed “Special” episodes. Upon investigation this seems to be some kind of DLC which continues where the story leaves off. NO, Alan Wake. The answer is NO.

up next is Altitude