Alan Wake (2010) VG Review

After encountering a severe case of writers block while working on his upcoming novel, famous author Alan Wake travels with his wife to the Pacific Northwest in order to get away. However, it soon becomes clear that a dark malevolent force is following Alan Wake, and after his wife goes missing he must uncover the dark secret surrounding the town of Bright Falls, Washington.

The game pays direct homage to television shows such as Twin Peaks, and the Twilight Zone with its mysterious twisting narrative. Conceptually, the story of Alan Wake is very strong, and deals with the idea of how a writer “creates” a narrative and how the real world and fiction can intertwine. The developers even went as far as breaking up the game into “episodes” complete with title and ending credits as well as a “previously on Alan Wake” segment.

Unfortunately, while it is great to see a game attempt to recreate TV style episodic story telling, the game suffers from weak voicing acting and some truly cheesy dialogue. Alan Wake’s character in particularly suffers from some lame pseudo-intellectual voice overs throughout the games cutscenes and gameplay. The cut scenes themselves are also distracting as character’s facial animations and voices never sync up quite right. These factors unfortunately took me out of what was otherwise a pretty successful narrative.


Above all, Alan Wake succeeds at creating truly creepy and suspenseful atmosphere. Most of the game’s environments are heavily forested areas, abandoned mines, and deserted buildings. The forest environments are detailed with swaying pine trees, and underbrush, and the game has extremely eerie lighting and environmental effects. It doesn’t help, that often enemies can materialize instantly from almost any direction, and often times the player turn around only to see an enemy about to stab him in the back.

At its core Alan Wake is primarily a third person shooter with an interesting gameplay twist. The player must use light sources to weaken the demonically possessed enemies known as the taken and make them vulnerable to conventional attack. Enemies are numerous, and often attack in large swarms. Completing the game successfully means using your flashlight, flares, and other environmental light sources to keep the enemy swarms at bay, and whittle away their health with your firearms. A distinct lack of enemy and weapon variety can lead to the combat becoming a bit formulaic as the game goes on, but the level design and atmosphere (including some excellent scripted sequences such as poltergeist attacks) serve to help keep the gameplay fresh.

The game attempts to integrate more character based elements and interactions with day time levels taking place in Bright Falls. However these non combat sections consist of mainly listening to exposition from certain characters, and running through a certain location to the end. If Remedy had taken more time to make these segments a little more involving and interesting, it would have added a bit more depth and variety to the game.

While Alan Wake is a great experience for horror fans, it never truly rises above the box’s bold claim of being “A Psychological Action Thriller,” and is instead content with being a competent third person shooter with great atmosphere and an ambitious but clumsily told story. It is disappointing that after five years of development, Remedy did not make something really new or unique but for those who looking for a creepy shooter, Alan Wake is a good time.

7/10