Alan Wake - review

Alan Wake is a third-person psychological thriller from Max Payne developer, Remedy. Prior to release, it had, famously, 'enjoyed' a lengthy development period - up to 6 years, depending on which source you believe.  Accordingly, there was a lot of anticipation, tempered with a jigger of hype and seasoned with  a dash of fanboyism (as an Xbox 360-exclusive) ahead of its release.

Note torch.  You'll be shining it a lot

The titular Wake is a Stephen King-esque author suffering from writer's block, who goes on holiday to the small northwestern US town of Bright Falls with his wife, Alice (a ruse on her part to get him to write again).  Early on in the game Alice is abducted by dark, supernatural, forces and the rest of the game revolves around Wake's attempts to find her.

The 'dark supernatural forces' really are dark - their physical manifestations can be harmed by light, mainly that emitted by Wake's Energizer-eating torch (as well as ammo for his weapons, batteries for Wake's torch must continually be found). Those inhabitants of Bright Falls that become possessed by the dark must first be stunned by light before becoming vulnerable to gunfire. Light itself (from street lights, for instance) becomes a haven from the dark, where Wake can rest undisturbed (and trigger checkpoints).

There are driving sections.  They're not that good.

The game owes a debt to a wide-range of popular culture influences.  Bright Falls echoes the town of Twin Peaks and also Blue Velvet's Lumberton, as do many of its inhabitants (Cynthia Weaver *is* the Log Lady from Twin Peaks); the quest for a lost relative was seen in seminal survival horror game,  Silent Hill;  the dark presence reminded me of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos and some of the set pieces towards the end of the game were extremely similar (though presumably completely coincidental, given their respective development cycles) to those in Left 4 Dead 2.

The game is extremely linear, as can be seen from the map below (I can predict confidently that this will be the only map ever published on my blog).

It is very much a case of 'got to A, then go to B, via C' and the characters that you meet dictate a lot of the story - and where you are to go next - to Wake, via cutscenes (the lack of story-breaking side missions seems quite a dated gameplay mechanic).

While the graphics are excellent, the voice acting is, at best, hit-and-miss - Wake is OK, Barry, Wake's literary agent is annoying (but not badly-acted annoying) but some of the voicing of the supporting case is very variable in its quality.  I quite like that, reminding me of the (far worse) voice acting in Silent Hill, which led you to wonder if the characters were 'baddies' or just 'badly acted'.

At the sheriff's.  Like in Twin Peaks.

I throughly enjoyed playing the game despite its flaws but, unfortunately, it's had a poor time at retail, selling (I read in 360 magazine a couple of weeks ago)  only 500,000 copies.  It was discounted quite heavily within a couple of months of its release (as I said here I picked up the Collector's Edition for only £20 in July) in the face of gamer apathy.

While it received some decent reviews (it got an 8/10 and 7/10, respectively,  in gamesTM and Edge, the UK's finest multi-format magazines and a 7/10 on www.eurogamer.net), it didn't receive the unanimous 9s and 10s that maybe some had thought that its pedigree  long gestation and would have warranted.  A large factor in its lack of activity at retail was its release, in the EU, on 14 May 2010 (coincidentally, my birthday) - just 7 days before the sublime Red Dead Redemption (which did, deservedly, receive stellar reviews).  RDR sucked  all of  the oxygen out of the games market in one giant copy-selling behemoth and another story-led game (though RDR's 'modular' story structure was far more innovative than that used in Alan Wake) didn't stand much chance.  The multi-format RDR has sold approaching 7m copies to date.  Even if that figure is split evenly between the 360 and PS3 versions, it has still outsold Alan Wake 7-1 in a similar timeframe. I would be very surprised if Microsoft thought that it would compete in a meaningful way with Rockstar's game but even so, half a million copies must be a disappointment.

Stuck on a boat and now some guy's doing his Eric Morecambe impression. Worst. Holiday. Ever.

It is unfortunate that the game has not been more successful.  As I said, it is very linear but it is difficult to make something as tightly story-driven as this without having a degree of linearity (for the same reason you don't start turn to the middle of a book after the first chapter, outside of a Fighting Fantasy book anyway), as Heavy Rain found earlier this year. If such games aren't successful, simple economics dictates that similar games won't be green-lighted in future - boxed console games cost millions to develop and consequently need to sell millions to recoup the investment.  If the moneymen think that Medal of Duty 4: Tactical Warfare is a better option than original IP, then that's what they'll fund (and that isn't necessarily a criticism of them - once upon a time, I qualified as an accountant).

Although it acts as a veritable magpie towards other fiction, the work of synthesis that Remedy has created is original in its own right and should be welcomed for that in an increasingly risk averse market.