Alan Wake (2010)

Alan Wake was in my backlog for a long while; but with the hype from the second game's release in the air, I decided to finally sit down and play it. The game isn't all that long, but it took me a while to actually get to it as I struggled to remain engaged with it for a few reasons. Usually I'd come back to it after it had been long enough I forgot how frustrating it was. I don't think it's a completely terrible game, and some things it does decently well, but overall I didn't enjoy my time with it very much.

The biggest issue was that the combat is pretty awful. There's a light mechanic that requires you to shine your flashlight on enemies to make them vulnerable to damage, which I think might've worked as a special mechanic for a few enemy types, but it starts to feel rote when it applies to basically everything. But more than that, the combat encounters themselves are just poorly designed. Each fight is a slog and after the first like two or so (of way too many), any novelty had worn off. This is especially so because of how repetitive the fights are, facing mostly the same small handful of enemy types throughout almost the whole game. You find a few new tools and weapons as the game goes on but the best thrill these offered was getting something overpowered like flash grenades that trivialized encounters, meaning I wouldn't have to play them as much. And that comment really illustrates my main issues: not only is the combat boring, but there's way too much of it. It's in many ways not even that hard, but enemies can attack you from off-screen and the bulk of my deaths felt unfair and due to poorly-telegraphed attacks from nowhere with too little notice. That sort of thing could be effective in moderation to keep you on your toes, but it felt more cheap and annoying than anything. And more importantly, even when I wasn't dying to a frustrating attack I wasn't aware of, the combat just didn't feel good and thus was at best boring. A short ways into the game, I started groaning every time a combat sequence was starting.

If there's a strong point to the Alan Wake, it's the story, though even here I felt like the game had more a good vibe than a good story. Truthfully, I probably would've enjoyed it more if I'd played the game across a shorter time period because by the time I mustered up the willpower to pick the game back up, I'd forgotten the bulk of what had happened previously. I think the premise has potential, but by the end of the game, I was kind of lost. Even if that's sort of on me, I still hold it against the game that I didn't feel all that compelled to stick with it and figure it out.

I would say the presentation is generally decent. Sound-wise, the voice acting was okay, though the enemies' nonsense lines they would repeat got old. There are some pretty neat landscapes and vistas to explore with some daytime adventuring mixed in here and there to contrast with the dark mountain forest look much of the game has. Outside of combat, I found the exploration atmospheric and it did help to set the stage for the story well.

In the end, I found myself glad to be done with the game, but without any real sense of satisfaction. I do plan to check out the sequel as it looks quite different and I did enjoy Control, but in retrospect, I wish I'd just looked up a story overview for this game and skipped it. While it's not the best feeling to be looking forward to a sequel hoping it's not much like its predecessor, I do think some of my primary gripes with the combat would've been a non-issue had this game come out even just a few years later. As it is, I can't really recommend Alan Wake.

This is a very creative game with good writing, excellent atmosphere and art direction. It's a meta narrative, and while that's a style I often find to be too pretentious/cringey, I felt that Alan Wake strikes a good balance and avoids falling into that trapping. I actually really like how the game uses a meta narrative and ties it directly to gameplay, particularly in the DLC. Finding pages of a manuscript that Wake wrote that either explains past events or foreshadows things to come is a neat framing device.

What I will say is Alan Wake certainly falls under the washed out grey palette that was very popular when it was released. I actually think this color palette works really well for this game though. Especially with its themes of light versus darkness. As engaging as the story is, sadly, I do think the game stumbles with its combat. The game loves to throw hordes of enemies at you you and you will often get smacked in the back of the head with a wrench. This happens SO much that it does ultimately make the game more annoying than scary or exhilarating.

Combat also doesn't really evolve. After the first Episode, you effectively see every type of Taken that the game will throw at you. It's these constant combat scenarios that I think hold this game back from being a masterpiece. The combat isn't bad in a vacuum. Controls are reasonably responsive and I really like the concept of using a light source to burn through shields before you can hurt enemies. But at the same time, this means you deal with every enemy in the exact same way and all enemies effectively charge you, or throw things at you. Which makes combat become very repetitive very quickly. And with the constant hordes of enemies thrown at you, who have a tendency to spawn behind you and smack you in the head with a wrench, it can get tiresome.

That said, there are well directed and designed combat scenarios in the game. Such as the rockin' roll stage, or some of the encounters in the DLC, but these are mostly the exceptions and not the rule. If combat scenarios had been cut in half, I feel the game would have been improved.

The weapons in this game I do like. The flare gun in particular is a really neat ultimate weapon. This type of weapon would normally just be some sort of utility item, but here it is effectively your rocket launcher and it is really satisfying to use. It's not a big arsenal, but given the themes of light and darkness it is clever to use a flare gun.

Another gripe I have with the game, aside from too much combat (or at the very least too many repetitive combat scenarios), is Wake's awful cardio. He runs out of endurance faster than a chain smoker. It doesn't ruin the game by any means, but it is definitely something that will annoy you over the full course of the game as it constantly comes up. You can also argue the car driving sequences feel like padding, and I definitely would agree with that. They aren't needed, but at the same time, the driving didn't really bother me either since it meant I wouldn't need to get into another horde battle. Well the game will still throw hordes of enemies at you while driving, but at least you have a car that can run the Taken over.

Aside from those issues, I found myself engaged and wanting to find out the next plot development. The pacing could have been improved with less combat. The DLC has some really stunning visuals and creative ideas, but it really doesn't advance the plot nor is necessary for the story. Still, in spite of these issues, this game was still very memorable and I am glad to finally have experienced it. Certainly curious to check out Alan Wake 2.

I grew up in a time and age were cynicism and detachment were the marks of critical intellectualism. I am not knowledgeable enough to affirm that it has always been like that, but in the nascent internet years I felt that those spaces were you could be positive yet critical of the content you enjoyed were rare. I have learned with time, maturity and by watching others to be more kind in that sense, to try and not to impose my very own personal experiences with stuff as a measurement of taste for others.

For example, I REALLY DID NOT ENJOY playing Alan Wake, at some points I kinda hated it. Why I rated it 5 stars then? because the reasons for that feeling are entirely on me. The game by itself is very very good.

Lets start on the negatives: I am not entirely sure, but I think that my recent experience with PS5 games have shifted something in me in terms of comfort playing a game. I find Alan Wake's gameplay to be very, very uncomfortable. The camera is wonky and fast and has this blurred motion effect that disorients you greatly, the character himself is slow and unresponsive at time, it is definitely no heir of the Sakai Samurai Clan. The terrain and the level design is... Unappealing, most of the time. I don't know.

I am aware that what I am describing here are staples of the Survival Horror genre. The discomfort is part of the gaming experience in such an oppressive, ambient-based game. And I actually think it really works, the fact that your protagonist is not a super skilled ninja but a clumsy out-of-shape writer really enhances the immersion experience. The thing is I just don't find that experience to be very fun.

This game made me realize that I don't think I like Survival Horror games. I am a big fan of horror literature and fiction but I loathe jumpscares, and my previous experiences with Survival Horror (Silent Hill 1, 2 and 4, Fatal Frame, even some Resident Evil) were fun because I played them with roommates or family. Survival Horror on my own with headphones on is really not something I enjoy, maybe I am too chicken-shit, but every Jumpscare makes me super aware and paranoid and I spent the rest of the playing session trying to anticipate the next one.

WIth all that said, Alan Wake is a very good... Actually I don't think it classifies as Survival Horror, is more of a Survival Thriller, and a very good one. Despite all the things I found unpleasant about this game the story captured me almost immediately. I did not want to play the game but I really wanted to go where the story went, I wanted to see what happened to the characters (Barry is the absolute best, I love my George Constanza stand-in). At the beginning I wasn't feeling the voice acting, but by the end I was fully enamored with the cast. Story-wise it is a blast.

I have to say that I found some aspects of the gameplay endearing: the light beam used as aim is really fun, and in general how the character interacts with light is very cool.

The fact that the game (and maybe the genre) is not for me does not diminish one bit the fact that Alan Wake is damn good.

Alan Wake was released in 2010, but most people nowadays will probably play it from the remastered version, which came out in 2021 (or 2022, if you are talking about the Switch version).

Now, talking about the Switch version... It is a little rough around the edges, I had some bugs, the highlight being a moment where the doors in a building were floating and phasing the wall, the flares always lagged the game and sometimes made the whole camera move in circles for some strange reason, and the illumination... Could have been better. But overall, it is playable, and nothing is game-breaking, so you can complete the whole game without problems on Nintendo Switch.

Regarding the game itself, the gameplay was a little interesting at first, having to use light against the enemies before doing damage starts interesting, but the novelty wears out after a while, and when you are in episode 4, you are already bored of the gameplay loop. An episode where you don't have a flashlight and all light depends on the environment, or you don't have weapons and you have to escape until the end, could have been greatly appreciated, because having to attack and avoid the same enemies in the same way over and over gets old, even with a game as short as this one (you could complete the whole 8 episodes in less than 10 hours).

So, the main reason you want to finish this game is the story, which had me hooked as soon as the plot sets the main objective: Saving your wife from the darkness. There is nothing revolutionary here, and the game isn't subtle about its influences (think Stephen King, which is referenced directly multiple times, Twin Peaks, Lovecraft, and most modern horror you could think of), but the way the mystery unfolds, and the theme of darkness vs. light is treated, is endearing, and being a huge fan of King and Twin Peaks myself, I liked the atmosphere and cheeky tone even more.

The secondary characters are also great. I loved when you had to team up with Barry and Sarah, their interactions and voice lines help break the monotony of the gameplay a lot, and when you are alone again you can feel their absence, which is always a good sign of good character writing. None of them are complex or anything like that, but when you spend most of your time alone in the darkness, trying to arrive at a specific place, company is always appreciated.

There is a lot of optional info that deepens the themes and plot, but we warned that you will have to watch the TV without touching the control for many minutes to get everything, which isn't necessarily what people want to do when playing video games. Still, it's obvious there was a lot of effort put into the TV and radio shows, as well as the dialogue, so it's worth checking it once in a while to appreciate how complex the city of Bright Falls really is.

Finally, if you care about modern gaming you will already know that the sequel was released a couple of months ago and that it was a big hit, being considered one of the best horror games released in the last couple of years. But being a direct continuation, I doubt you will appreciate it without playing the first part previously, so I recommend playing this if you are interested in the second part. There are some things you won't get just by watching a retrospective or summary on YouTube.

In conclusion, it is far from being a perfect game, and it works better as an interactive story (I even recommend playing it on easy so you can complete the gameplay sections faster, the normal mode isn't even difficult, so you won't miss anything), but if you like modern horror tropes, like abstract monsters terrorizing rural towns, I'm sure you will enjoy Alan Wake, even if you don't plan on playing the sequel.

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure.

Game number 17 was Alan Wake. This is a narrative-focused, 3rd person shooter, horror game; where you take control of the titular character, Alan Wake, as one of the horror stories he has written starts to come to life around him.

The story in Alan Wake is both the most prominent and the most memorable aspect of the game. It essentially consists of him going insane, losing his wife, and having to battle darkness to get her back. I wouldn’t say that I was scared at any point throughout the experience, but I was captivated and enjoyed the story here. It really feels like reading through a Stephen King novel and has the same vibes as something like The Shining.

The gameplay is less than perfect, but better than I see a lot of reviewers giving it. Alan wake is a 3rd person shooter and it’s gameplay exists somewhere between a survival game with heavy resource management and mowing down tons of enemies. You only ever face a few enemies at a time, but each enemy doesn’t hold the weight of a zombie in RE1 or something like that. I would say that Alan Wake feels similar to the RE4 remake (go play RE4 or the remake if you haven't).

The process of actually killing an enemy has you shine a flashlight on them until they become vulnerable, then shooting them to kill them. It's a little slow and clunky at times + it does feel like enemies will teleport right behind you the second that they aren’t in your field of vision any more.

Probably the most annoying aspect of combat is the graphics. I know the game is going for a foggy, spooky, scary vibe… but it gets annoying when you die to stuff because you literally could not see it. There were times that the game was physically painful to look at because of the fog textures… but I do think that this was an issue with me playing the game on the Xbox 360 and it may have looked good for the time period. It was certainly better than the Black Ops 2 Transit fog.

Overall, I think that Alan Wake told a very interesting story that I think is worth playing for anyone who really likes horror games or horror novels. Stephen King fans in particular will have a good time playing through this, as it was essentially an homage to him. The gameplay isn’t really good or memorable at all though and there are a billion other 3rd person shooters from this era if that’s your thing. (6/10)

I spent 7 hrs, 36 min, and 58 sec playing Alan Wake.

I have spent 205 hrs and 24 min so far on the Road to 360 challenge.

Next Game: Too Human

This game is 90% listening to the protagonist huff and puff out of breath since you can't run for more than 4 seconds. The controls are insanely unresponsive. This game is repetition to an insane level. It has 3-4 enemy types, maybe 4 guns, and the same environments with a few changes here and there. The gameplay only consists of using a flashlight, firing your gun, and dodging enemies with one of the worse most unresponsive dodge mechanics I have ever seen. I was into the story for the most part, but everyone just got so annoying. I can't say I liked anything from this game, at all. No idea why it's popular. Gets creativity points for the premise and unique storytelling I guess.

I could not have been a bigger fan of control, and I love twin peaks, resident evil… so how was this so bad?

The gameplay is horrible, so repetitive. The environments equally repetitive. The VA, lore, everything was so predictable and flat. I got to chapter 4 and was done.

On the bright side, what an improvement Control is, definitely was my favorite game of that year.

PROS

• Strong art direction and lighting effects, the flares especially look amazing
• Polished controls and slick presentation
• Kills can feel pretty satisfying once you get a flow going
• A third-person shooter set entirely in a single, fully-rendered location is a cool idea

CONS

• Bland, simplistic mechanics get monotonous pretty fast
• Silly design decisions like a sprint that lasts ten feet and flashlight batteries that last two seconds make the game feel dated
• Constant equipment resets destroy any sense of character progression
• Linear level designs make poor use of the game's setting
• Uncreative enemies fail to feel threatening: "Oh, no possessed construction workers and flying tires!"
• Unsatisfying plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense

Alan Wake had been on my shelf of games to play for almost a decade now, and after seeing it place quite high on a few “games of the decade” lists, considering I like to play spookier games over October, and since I’ve been meaning to play a game from Remedy for quite some time (and before I play Control), I figured it was the perfect time to finally give Alan Wake a try.

Alan Wake plays like the beginning of a great idea, but never gets much further than that. There are six episodes to Alan Wake, and by the end of the first episode, I felt like I had seen everything that the game had to offer. I kept waiting for the game to up the stakes, or add some new dynamic, weapons, enemies, anything, and instead, I basically got six episodes that felt like a variety of the same things, over and over.

The story started off interesting to me, but the more the game tries to explain what’s happening, the more it all just seems like silly, Stephen King-lite horror. At one point near the end, Alan Wake states that his story follows a weird sort of dream logic, and that's completely accurate. I almost wish this game went weirder than it does, or was able to make better sense of what’s going on here, but it sorts of goes right down the middle in terms of rationalizing the story.

The fighting here is presented early on and then never deviates or gets any deeper throughout. Wake has to hit enemies with light, then shoot them. It’s basically a more mature Luigi’s Mansion. I was kind of shocked that the weapons you use through the entire game are presented within the first hour or so and they never get any stronger. Enemies are the same way. Sometimes they’re slightly stronger, but that’s about as much variety as this game offers up. Eventually, the game starts literally throwing inanimate objects at you, and it’s clear the game didn’t know how to expand its roster of enemies.

But even though these enemies never change, the combat remains frustrating throughout. Enemies appear from the darkness, so there’s never any way to know where they’re going to come from. This is presented as a scary situation, but really, it’s irritating to have no way to know where you should be attacking, especially the hundredth time a character comes out of nowhere and throws an ax at you. There’s no way to have any strategy against these enemies and the game quickly becomes little more than trial and error.

This is especially true when the game starts bringing inanimate objects at you. Every item around you becomes a potential enemy to fight, and the game whips them at you without any chance of avoidance. Near the end, this leads to the ground coming apart underneath you, and the clunky controls ask you to do some very wonky platforming that again, feels like trial and error. At a certain point, I just wanted to get from point A to point B as quickly as I could so I could wrap up the story.

Alan Wake doesn’t give you much to do beyond that though, so that’s not really that difficult to do. The game will throw out different collectibles that somewhat flesh out the world, like TV and radio broadcasts, but collectibles like coffee thermos seemingly serve no purpose, and finding pages from Wake’s manuscript is by design describing events that have already taken place, which doesn’t make them feel all that worthwhile either.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy Alan Wake, but considering its reputation, I kept hoping and waiting for more than what I was being given. Like I said, there are good ideas here, but the execution left me wanting more. I almost would like to see what this game would’ve been like if Remedy had made this is 2019, or what they would change if they remade it today. Alan Wake left me hoping for a sequel, if for no other reason than to see these solid ideas fleshed out a bit more.

Accepted: The winks to Max Payne

Rejected: One of the worst vehicle controls in game history.

By the tenth time a swarmed of enemies sent me back to a badly-placed checkpoint I decided I was done with this game. It's not all bad, but most of it is.

A voice-over welcomes you rushing unemotionally through a mediocre introduction that could've used a second draft. Then, you're dropped off to an introduction that works as a tutorial for combat: enemies are invulnerable until you "deshield" them with your torch. You'd better remember this, because is all you're going to do for the following 10 hours or so.

The combat is not uninteresting per se, but it's wonky and over-used. Telegraphed enemies encounters are all over the place and they all feel the same. Flares and flash grenades offer a bit of variety, but not nearly enough. Fights follow always the same arc: you enter an area, get a quick (but unskippable) cinematic show-casting the appearing enemies, you kill or damage some of them before getting killed by an axe coming from behind you with no visual warning whatsoever. That's when you are forced back to a checkpoint that, more often than not, is woefully misplaced and to then watch the same (I repeat, unskippable) cinematic and try again, this time knowing about the enemy that was lurking behind you. You will try to dodge the incoming attacks, but either the unreliable dodge action will fail, or the enemies will stun-lock you.

I could bare the mediocre and frustrating combat because the main story is not uninteresting. At the beginning, the idea of a writer whose writing changes the world around him is well used. Scattered book extracts foreshadow what is going to happen next, and there's an unreal quality of a story that is unfolding in many places at once.

But like the combat, the foreshadowing got stale by the fifth time it happened and it doesn't make sense that the Alan Wake doesn't comment on it or use the knowledge in his advantage. The story in itself also kept repeating, consisting mostly on the protagonist being stringed from place to place by his wife's kidnapper, which in practice means long walks through similar-looking locations at night spruced by the aforementioned predictable enemy encounters.

For the record, I quit the game after the kidnapper asked me to go to this abandoned quarry just to pull off a "But Our Princess is in Another Castle" and making me go to another location. A waste of everyone's time.

What's the point of finding pages that foretell what's about to come if I can't react to them or change them? Alan reads about walking into a trap and then does it anyway.

I didn't mind Alan as a protagonist, but I didn't care for his wife at all. Alice personality was literally just "the Wife", she's kind and kind and kind and cooks I guess. She's treated as a damsel in distress the entire game, and 70% of her screen time she's wearing only panties and a tank-top because of course.

But I think what I dislike the most about this game is the lack of mechanics, it just has one really (besides the basics of course), fighting darkness with light, and that's very limited, so you do the exact same thing most of the game. There aren't even many enemy type or weapons.

The atmosphere is good, but walking in the woods for over ten hours gets very tedious, even with the driving and story breaks.

Weirdly enough the most I enjoyed myself is with the last two DLC chapters, It adds a new mechanic and has more interesting environments, but they are not worth going through the entire game for that, specially if you aren't interested in the story.

Overall I really did enjoy the game and honestly I believe it is worth picking up.

The story of the game is something you would expect from King or Coontz. You are a writer. A writer with a writers block - sounds familiar? You go on holiday with your wife and something starts happening. Strange darkness attacks you and you start living out a story written by you that you don't remember writing. Oh - and there is some lake that the native americans living in the area called gate to hell or something like that. At this point I really thought I'm going to despise the story. But oddly enough after a rough start I really did like it and felt it wasn't all that bad.

The strong part for the game are the visuals which are very nicely done. The scenery is pretty nice, and the lighting effects which are pretty important part of the story are very well made as well. Locations at the beginning tend to be bland - forest, forest and nothing interesting. But later on they do change and are quite nicely designed.

The main part of the game is trying to find your wife and beat the darkness. You do this by following the story and fighting people possessed by the darkness. You kill them by shining your flash light on them long enough so they become vulnerable at which point you can safely unload your gun and finally kill them. And you pretty much do that all through the game with just a couple of guns - revolver, shotgun, hunting rifle and assorted helpers like flares or flash grenades. It does get repetitive after a while but not to a point that you hate the whole fighting. And I must admit that I did got scared once or twice - though mostly the game is not really that scary. But has a very consistent atmosphere and you generally feel quite nice when the sun rises.

There are also a couple of elements involving driving a car - but these could have been surely skipped as they're pretty dreadful.

Voice acting and animation is of very nice quality so watching cut scenes is quite pleasant.

Overall after a week beginning the game provides good fun up till the very last part which seems a bit dull and you have to push through it. Luckily it's not long enough too leave a bad impression on the game. I had fun. I really enjoyed it. If you like story driven action games along the lines of resident evil or alone in the dark there is little fear you will not like this game.