Alan Wake

Spoilers Alert- I will referance some in-game moments

So basically this is 'the Dave' doing a written review of Alan Wake and im going to have to really be brutal to myself, because I will be honest I dont enjoy picking holes into games I actually really enjoy. That being said there are moments that even I can see why people would get a little irritated, this was to be the next beloved offspring to Remedy Entertainment. Can I just say that this is the company who made Max Payne.... firstly does something strike you..... for one the title of both the games are the main protagonists. Secondly they hint towards the theme of the game 'Max Payne' sounds like 'Max Pain' which seems to be some referance to the undercurrent of the game, revenge, suffering and general action focused game.
'Alan Wake' is no different, with 'Wake' in his name suggesting he's got to try and wakeup from a nightmare which will seem never ending or to be precise a darkness.

Im all up for title relevance in fact I applaud it, but when it is also a protagonists name and not just for one of your intellectual properties but both... it may seem quirky to you but to us it seems lazy. However put this ridiculously over used title element aside and lets delve into it.

Now if theres one thing this game managed to achieve was alot of pressure, pressure to get it right. Remedy was hyping the game up badly and what made matters worse was that Max Payne was a highly popular intellectual property, which had fans begging for this to be 'The Game!' (sorry everyone)to top even the Max Payne franchise. It was hoping to be the game that defined Xbox 360, much like how Halo influenced Xbox sales to a degree back in the day, and much like how we connect certain characters with certain consoles/companies Mario with Nintendo, Master Cheif Xbox, Sonic with..... enough with sonic allready Sega!!! your only destroying him!!!
unfortunatly it did not achieve that, however they did create in my opinion a damn fine game and I will tell you why...



I may be a sucker to thrillers, but this really does feel like a fluid psycological thrill ride and allthough not the scariest of games you can buy, the darkness does throw you into slightly tense moments. It does however get bogged down to the fact that the game screams out 'Stephen King!!!' as if this one game was purely made as a hommage...hell on numerous occasions the protagonist...Alan...*pause*...Wake *sigh* mentions how he was allways inspired by Stephen King. "You and all the Stephen King fans out there Al!", it does often confuse me on whither the developers wanted to purely make this game a homage to Stephen King and basically call the game 'Stephen King....true story documentary' What it loses with the Stephen King esque loose plot it gains with good implemented results.

Its anouther adult title for a maturer audience, I would say comparable to the matureness of Heavy Rain maybe a little less so, its nice also to view a game which dosn't have the main protagonist as a pumped up action man and as a character who stands as a believable middle aged adult, dealing with problems in his life.
The episodic nature was very unique and characteristic of the game, and grabbed my attention on numerous occasions it also acted as 'put the controller down and relax moments'. The whole music at the end and re-cap at the beginning was a nice touch, I felt like I was participating within an actual thriller tv series and it actually works, only gripe is that later portions of the game become longer so its not allways a great estimate to when to put your controller down to take a break.

A gripe that a number of people state is that the environment becomes too similar after a while, particularily the beautifully rendered Woodland/forest scenes. I disallow this argument, everyones entitled to an opinion, however I feel that you cant argue about the featured environments because it stayed fitting with both plot and the isolated tense atmosphere. It wasn't at all possible to change locations too much without it seeming surreal and losing its isolated feeling. The woods seemed to go on forever, but that is a brilliant atmosphere, its exactly how I feel when I go into the woodland or I start watching a good horror film.



Anouther gripe that angers me is when people argue that due to the finding of pages you could tell what was about to happen which killed your fear factor...(aka.Yahtzee haha) well your partly right but it still dosn't change the fact that none of the pages declaire when that event or enemy will actually occure, so the element of surprise is still present. Its like if you went into a cinema to watch a horror film you know there is going to be an attempt to scare you, hell there are moments where its painfully obvious something is going to go wrong, but you still jump. The pages were a big plot element and to get rid of them or just simply replace them with unreadable pages would of been unbeneficial.

So we come back full circle to mention the plot again which does feature some twists allthough the twists are a little predictable and you can work out a few things from the offset. The characters themselves are relatively well developed in this game, there are the odd few characters who seem a little stale, but in comparison to some games of this generation, it does quite well to develope characters in what could be a restrictive means of any form of character development.

The action itself is unique and people could argue its a gimmick and if so its the only gimmick of this generation that has actual reason to be present. Motion sensing wii remotes have less purpose to be present in any game, so in comparison Alan Wake shows the wii how things should be implemented within reason. The gimmick was light being used as a weapon and it fits in nicely with plot, gameplay and general visual design. The light generally didnt kill some of the opposition bar a few, hence why you also carry a handy gun, ammo is reletively restrictive at times depending on the difficulty, I found that on normal I had a fair amount of ammo and there really was only one single part about halfway through where I completely lost ammo, however thats partly due to reckless shooting.



Finally I will put this review to a close even though I could say plenty more, the worst aspect of this game is the mouth animations, they still seem to suffer from the same horrid mouth problems in Max Payne (maybe they dont have a proper dentist and their mouths are constantly in pain...still doesn't explain the geometric mouths though haha) seriously, these are up there as the worst mouth animations for a realism game I have seen for quite some time, but put aside the minor faults and look at the great benefits and you have quite a good underated action game which will satisfy you for some hours, it may not be the longest game, but it certainly adds a fair whack of gaming hours, and also implements a nice story, maybe not the most memorable game, but worth experiencing.

Thanks for reading and generally being allround good guys, from 'The Dave'....stay awesome viewers!