News and Reviews: Alan Wake

Okay, okay... I promise to talk about other things sometime soon.  I do other things than talk about video games, I swear.  I have a half-dozen crafts and creations on the go at any given time, you'd think I'd post about those.  But, I (finally) finished Alan Wake and I think I should cover it while it's fresh.

Alan Wake is a psychological action horror game, made out of equal parts Stephen King and Twilight Zone, with a sprinkling of Max Payne for gameplay.  Just a pinch.  It all bakes together to make a delicious little game that breaks down cooking metaphors almost immediately.  This game presents a compelling, unfolding horror story that evolves over six chapters to make you seriously question what, if anything, is real.  It's an experience, and one well worth having.  This is one of those games we can point to, as a community, and say "Here is art.  Here is the power of the Story" in more ways than one.


 Now, I really enjoyed this game.  Quite a lot, actually.  How much of this is due to the similarities in my passions to a certain awesome webcomic writer are entirely debatable.  But the majority of the reason for my enjoyment of this experience comes from the atmosphere.

The whole game exists in this murky, oppressive, clinging darkness that permeates the entire experience.  Even the sections that take place in Wake's brightly lit, daytime New York City apartment are tainted by this feeling of darkness in the corners, creeping slowly forth to consume you. This is accomplished through an impressive unity of design not commonly found in any work of art.  This prevailing sense of darkness exists in the art direction, the level design, the dialogue, the gameplay, and even within the characters themselves.  You spend an entire game trying to burn the darkness out of your enemies before you can destroy them, only to find out you're an angry, almost abusive husband filled with more than his own share of darkness.

It's unnerving.  It's creepy.  It speaks to the horrors of everyday life through the format of the supernatural.  It's everything a good horror story wants to be, and it walks you through that very idea step by step as Alan explains how the story is written.  It's meta-horror, and I have to say it works like a charm.

Every piece of this game has been carefully crafted, refined, and perfected.  The long development cycle shows its worth here, from the beautiful models and levels to the pitch-black story, to the little details, the extras, scattered throughout your journey that pluck at the seams of your understanding.  Like the televisions you can turn on and watch an episode of the Twilight Zone-esque Night Springs.  Each one weirder and creepier than the last, each time making you wonder about some aspect of the game that you've experienced so far.  Or the songs stashed about each episode, each one an audibly delicious reflection on what you're hip deep in at the moment.

So, this game is great.  That's what I'm saying here.  Try it.  Grab a copy however you can, and give it a spin.  There's no one thing that makes it worth playing, it's a package deal.  Each direction you look you'll find something gleaming with polish and worth investigating.

But it's not perfect.  Nothing is.  No game should be, because as soon as we make the perfect game, kaput!  There goes the industry.  Why make games anymore?  What's wrong with Alan Wake?

Not... a lot.  It suffers from a slow beginning, a common symptom of the genre in literary works at least.  Could they jazz it up?  Make it more exciting?  Probably... not.  It's a part of the tone, it dips you into the growing sense of unease, ensuring a fine, slimy coating all over your mind.  But still, it's slow, so it can be hard to get into.

Also, and this is really just a hoarder's gripe, but you lose your inventory after each episode.  If I'd learned to use all my flare gun shots and flashbangs at appropriate times instead of thinking "No... something more dangerous might come!" at every single turn, it wouldn't have been an issue.  But there's me, pockets jangling with a hundred pounds of light-emitting objects, running in fear from the mob of Taken but still thinking "I can do this with the flashlight, it'll be fine.... OH GOD MY FACE!"

So yes, play this game.  Enjoy it.  Drink it in.  Let us see what we can learn about ourselves, and what we can learn for our industry, from this game.  There's a lot to take away here, and I really think Alan Wake provides us with an important cultural stepping stone.

If nothing else, more games need a cardboard cutout of the main character being toted around for half the game by a sidekick.

It's like looking in a corrugated mirror!