With Alan Wake, Remedy Entertainment Games, responsible for the successful Max Payne series, shows that it spared no effort to create a horror game that is successful both in the story and the gameplay departments, although it slips now and then in some areas.
Alan Wake’s plot may seem cliché in a superficial analysis, but as soon as the events begin to intensify, it becomes considerably thought-provoking, imaginative, and well-crafted, revolving around the idea of retribution. The plot is simple: Wake is a successful writer who is going through a period of creative block. To clear his mind, the writer decides to move away from his everyday universe and spend a vacation with his wife in the far small town of Bright Falls. However, it does not take long for him to witness a recent nightmare become real: his wife disappears and a sinister presence hidden in the shadows begins to possess the locals and make them potentially dangerous.
The game is structured in episodes such as a television series – with even a “Previously on Alan Wake” at the beginning of each one – which helps tell the story at a good pace, as it allows to alternate moments of great tension present at the end of each episode with the calmer ones at their beginning.
The game’s story, contrary to what the quote at the beginning may make us believe (“Stephen King once wrote that nightmares exist outside the field of logic and that there is little fun found in his explanations…”), makes considerable sense at the end, even borrowing elements from H. P. Lovecraft’s short stories, as the unspeakable evil presence, as well as from King’s novels, such as having a writer with creative block as a protagonist. The narrative moves in a fast pace, since every moment has a mystery being introduced – Wake begins to find in its way pages that belong to a book that he never wrote but narrates his life – or solved – the subplot involving a kidnapper is resolved quickly, for example.
The writer’s goals are innumerable: he needs to save his wife, defeat the shadowy entity who apparently inhabits Bright Falls, save the lives of the people it possesses, and understand why he finds pages of a book he never wrote, and at the same time he must run away from an insane FBI agent and try to appear normal to ordinary people. The character of Alan Wake is an interesting one because he is not an infallible man. His words seem to create life and destroy everything they touch, people die around him, his wife is missing and he makes no jokes, does not laugh, does not smile and does not relieve the tension. He is fully aware of the situation he is in. In the end, he is only a disturbed writer who is always trying to not lose his sanity. He is not one of those characters who perform miracles and impossible stunts and for which everything is fine. Wake is human and, therefore, a bit melancholy, bitter and serious.
The pages he finds serve as the collectibles of the game. As the player explores the environments, they will encounter some pages usually scattered in hidden spots – read: they are always on the alternate path when they are not in front of the player. They belong to the book entitled “Departure”, which seems to narrate the events of the game. Thus, as they also help tell the story, these pages are divided into four groups: 30% tells what will happen and spoils interesting moments, 30% tells what has happened in a banal way, 30% tells what the player never sees happening and enriches the narrative and the last 10% are only available on the Nightmare difficulty. Moreover, all are infinitely more interesting than the thermal coffee bottles that the player can also fetch and that only serve to trigger achievements.
Now, enemies are one of the main attractions of the game. The Taken, as they are called, are the people possessed by the evil entity that haunts Wake. They are enemies that can arise from any dark place, have the unfriendly habit of carrying axes and scythes and are even invincible: simply unloading a weapon in a Taken will do no harm to it. As they are shadow creatures, what the player needs to face them is light, ensuring some interesting innovations during combat.
The player’s main weapon, for example, is a flashlight. When the writer points it to Takens, the enemies are eventually released from the shadow that protects them, becoming vulnerable to conventional firearms. Thus, the basics of combat become this: a Taken appears, the player points the flashlight at him or her until the creature is released, takes out a revolver or a shotgun and shoots until the monster fades forever into light. As the camera follows the writer behind, almost over his shoulder, the combat resembles that of Resident Evil 4 – there is even a “chainsaw guy” – with the only differential being the use of light.
The factor that makes light a differential and not just an empty gimmick is the level of strategy that it requires when the player is faced with a large group of enemies: flares move away enemies momentarily, forming a safe zone around Wake while it lasts; some weapons destroy a concentrated group of Takens, and light grenades pulverize everyone in their range. Using these weapons, and taking into account the great ferocity of the enemies, players have a wide range of options when facing situations of great danger.
And the lovecraftian entity does not possess only people. Any object in the environment can also be dominated by it, opening up numerous possibilities of enemies, such as chairs, cars, logs, screws and barrels. This unpredictability about what can suddenly become hostile generates one of the best action sequences in the game: the amazing battle on a farm with a huge tractor.
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