Alan Wake

I don’t know what to make of Alan Wake as a novelist. His writings, while fairly manageable to comprehend, seem indescript, ridden with clichés. I have a feeling that my former Creative Writing teacher would probably rip the pretentious drunk to shreds if he ever took a glance at his works. However, the game does make allusions to a series of “Alex Casey” books starring a presumably dashing male lead hero. This suggests that Alan Wake is intended to be a straight-to-drugstore novelist, the Dan Brown of video games. And then again, I’ve never read an Alan Wake book, I can only evaluate his typing prowess based on the loose pages scattered around his self-titled video game.

Alan Wake is indeed a video game about a successful book writer. He attempts to live the life of a book writer by way of sewing patches onto his elbows and balancing alcoholism with Vicodins, but the whole “success” and “loving wife” business interfere with his starving artist roots. So he and the missus take a trip to a suspicious and haunted town in the woods. The kind of town where everyone knows everyone’s name, and shotguns and pitchforks keep away outsiders with crazy ideas like “internet” and “Starbucks.”

Alan’s wife goes missing, and he must unravel the mystery to rescue his princess from the castle that was his cabin…or something. Or is it even something at all? Maybe all of the dark and spooky events of the game are happening in Alan Wake’s hallucinogenic head. Sadly, the pretentious “everything is a metaphor for something else” ending I was hoping for didn’t happen, though we may have to wait until Braid is a few years older before that concept is fresh again. But I did enjoy the story in its own way. The game is smart in throwing some kind of crazy cliffhanger at the end of each “episode” to entice in into continuing. And the end payoff for your troubles is mostly satisfying, with a slight dash of the pretentiousness I was gunning for.

The game does abide by its own unlikely conventions. Scattered throughout the worlds are pages of a manuscript for the very game you are playing, spoiling events that are yet to come. I get that including so many spoilers is meant to give these pages a haunted quality, but this is a game that already spoils itself too much. Before each “episode” is a recap of the prior events, a “previously on Alan Wake” package akin to a typical television drama. Like a typical television drama, you can pick out a handful of spoilers of what’s to come based on what is highlighted in these video reels. I get the whole homage business, but I’d rather not pick up crucial plot points before they happen. On a brighter note, I did appreciate the moments where a television flickers on, showing footage of Alan himself soliloquizing about “how books have a life of their own and the writing controls you and” blah blah blah. I laughed so hard watching these because THAT is what so many novelists and poets think of their work. Egotistical writers eat self-directed hyperbole for breakfast and wash it down with a glass of pride and Jack Daniels. So Alan Wake definitely lives up to the role.

Though the fact that he just so happens to be proficient with firearms could be a stretch, despite his coming from NYC. This, by the way, is an action game of sorts with horror-based intentions. Reminiscent of another famous action game of sorts with horror-based intentions. Lets call Alan Wake “Rural Evil 4.” During the day, Alan walks around in search of the specific spot to stand in to trigger the next cutscene, preferably a cutscene that’ll activate night time. During late hours, the dark forces of darkness appear with intent to darkly consume Alan Wake into darkness. Then the game becomes a third person gunfest, although Alan is a third of the man Leon Kennedy was. (For one, Leon doesn’t drop all of his weapons and ammunition every other cutscene.)

The whole gimmick hook behind fighting the dark darkness is that you must first shine a light onto your enemies long enough to annoy them, then you riddle their peeved body with bullets. The game does kind of rewire your thinking to accommodate this pro-light stance. You’ll hunt down spotlights and exploding gas canisters as alternate means to defeat enemies, and suddenly a flare gun strike becomes the most visually spectacular video game explosion since the Modern Warfare nuke.

So Alan Wake works as an action game. An action game with a distinct setting, to be sure. The foggy forests of yore make for a decidedly more enthralling setting than your typical abandoned warehouses and fire temples of other games. But I should also profess that the game strikes me as a complete failure when it comes to the “horror” bit of the experience. I can’t quite put my finger as to why. Maybe it’s the complete lack of gore for this T-rated thriller. Maybe it’s because I was never short on ammo, or because a man with self-regenerating health has nothing to fear in the dark. Perhaps playing a harder difficulty would raise the proverbial stakes. Or perhaps it is because the forces of darkness only know of three methods of attack.

-Evil lumberjacks. (Numbering in the thousands. Bright Falls is very much a one-industry town. If environmentalists had their way with the logging industry, this town is toast.)
-Evil possessed objects. (Which Mr Wake quickly points out is a homage to Stephen King.)
-Evil possessed birds. (Which Mr Wake does not point out is a homage to Alfred Hitchcock.)

Except for perhaps a few moments near the end of the game, these three elements are spread out just far enough to never feel redundant. But that the evil force has no other means to surprise you yanks out some of the fear of the unknown that a horror game should have. Oh, and every time a force of evil ambushes you, the game is quick to slow down time and direct the camera towards their dramatic stage entrance. That’s a bit of a fear-killer too.

But at the same time, I was quick to welcome back these bullet-time sequences. And the game does not skimp out on the use of Bullet Time. I shouldn’t have expected anything less from the same development team that conjured up Max Payne. So I found myself readjusting my standards, deciding to anticipate less of a psychological horror and more stylish hard action, but with a properly-clothed protagonist. And I found myself appreciating the experience more for it.

And there are several other staples that you would anticipate seeing from a Remedy game. Like televisions airing a direct spoof of the show that influenced the very game you are playing. And great original music. And an idol worship for Norse mythology.

It took me about 9 hours to finish the game. Keep in mind that this was a very dedicated 9 hours, with few breaks in between. So this is a game that knows how to sink its hooks into you. (To quote a cliché my teacher would hate me for using.) Alan Wake is that Bioshock-kind of good. It’s the kind of game you are going to want to play once, and savour the experience for a long time. The catch being that in playing it once, you will get your fill and never yearn to touch it again. There are two downloadable packs coming, including one that sounds like an arena challenge mode (which is kind of what some of the final level is anyways) so I have my reservations on the chances of interesting DLC. Nonetheless, this is a moody-fun morself of action non-horror.

4 stars