Alan Wake

Remedy knows how to tell a story. They have known it with Max Payne back then and after so many years of developing Alan Wake they prove they can still manage it. It is very story and combat focused. For my taste it is a little too much on the combat aspect and it gets a little bit repetitive. But that is the only downside for me. It has great graphics –especially the PC version, which is one of the best ports ever– with HD textures, a great customisability on the graphics and even the FOV can be changed and the HUD elements be hidden completely if wanted. Apart form that Alan Wake offers a great, dark and creepy atmosphere. You want daylight so badly because it is the only safe thing. But after a cutscene or a couple of events it gets dark again and you think "oh nooooo...." and the horror gets on. Compared with the horror a Amnesia: The Dark Descent offers it is by far not that creepy. But at least it is a horror atmosphere which lets you actually play and enjoy this game. Amnesia is like self-flagellation which prevents you from playing at some point probably. So in the ende Alan Wake is great action game with a twisted plot which moves you further and you cannot stop thinking "what is going on here?" and you want to know so badly what is it all about. One of my all time favourite games.

...which makes a horror game less scary than it should be. I liked it, I liked the premise, execution and graphics. I didn't like, as I said, overload of repetitive combat sequences... and controls are a little sluggish. Still, a very good game with some great pop-culture references.

One of the best game I've ever played and I'm still playing it. People reviewed it pretty well already for the only reason that it's a must have game. The graphics, details are amazing. Can't even compare them to nowadays games. Get it, you won't regret it.

Awesome atmosphere, awesome story, awesome graphics, awesome old-school gameplay, awesome everything. Buy it!

In Alan Wake, you play the titular Alan Wake, a successful writer from New York with the rather mysterious sounding name of Alan Wake. Secretly, Alan is a superhero. A Guardian of the Light. When he's asleep, he enters a parallel dimension where he roams the galaxy fighting megalomanical demi-gods and insane zealots with his trusty companions; a talking raccoon and a sentient tree. When he hears his name in the real world "Alan... Wake... Alan... Wake...", he wakes up and returns to the real world. Unfortunately, none of this is in the game. At the beginning of the game, Alan is on a vacation with his wife Alice MacGuffin in a Pacific Northwest town named Mystic Falls. It just so happens that Mystic Falls has a history of strange goings-on dating back hundreds of years; like the time when the town was infested by vampires and the townsfolk trapped them all under a church. More recently, there was that incident where Mr. Muldoon, the groundskeeper of the local school, dressed as a ghost as part of an elaborate scam in cahoots with a crooked property developer, but was foiled by a bunch of meddling kids and a talking dog. Seeking some peace and solitude, Alan rents an old dilapidated cabin on a tiny island at a nearby haunted lake named Lake Placid. According to the tourist brochure, the lake is used by the military as a dumping ground for failed genetic experiments and is full of weaponised piranhas, giant crocodiles, and Miley Cyrus. Even worse, it's also where Microsoft dumped all their unsold Microsoft Zunes. On a cloudless night, one can see entire shoals of Microsoft Zunes gently bobbing on the waves, a shroud of failure covering the entire lake, as far as the eye can see. However, just when Alan thought he could relax, he suddenly wakes up in a car crash with absolutely no memory of the event whatsoever. He's in a car he can't remember driving, next to an empty bottle of Vodka he can't remember drinking. When he goes looking for help, random strangers try to kill him. This is normal in New York City but unheard of in the Pacific Northwest. Even stranger still, he starts finding pages from a manuscript that he's absolutely sure he wrote but doesn't remember writing. One of them was titled "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". Harry, Hogwarts, and Dumbledore... it all felt terribly familiar to Alan. To top it all off, Alan's wife Alice disappears under mysterious circumstances. The only clue Alan could find was Alice's phone. All it contained was a digital receipt for a one-way plane ticket to Vegas and salacious text messages to a muscular Yoga instructor named Julio. Apparently Alice loved doing the Downward Dog with Julio. Other than that, it was a complete mystery. Not deterred, Alan decides to go look for Alice. By blundering around the forest at night, in the dark, yelling her name. For some reason, a bunch of people known as 'The Taken' want to kill Alan. Why they would name themselves after a Liam Neeson movie is a mystery that's never explained. Fortunately, Alan is not totally defenceless. He's actually quite handy with flashlights. Sometimes he puts it under his chin and tells scary stories. He also waves it around and makes Lightsabre noises. But most of his fights involve him shining light in peoples faces until they get mad and try to kill him. Then he runs like a sissy girl for the next checkpoint. At this point, the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur and the storytelling takes on a surreal quality. Some guy named Billy Zane tries to help Alan. "Alan, you're not a kid anymore, you could get hurt out there," said Billy Zane helpfully. Then there was a Walk-Off and David Bowie was there and some guy pulled his underpants out without removing his pants. It was all hazy to Alan. So many mysteries, so little explanation. That's why Alan Wake is so good. Clearly inspired by authors like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, the storyline and characters are typically clichéd, but nevertheless entertaining. The plucky overweight comedy relief sidekick, feisty female sheriff, sleazy doctor, fruity FBI Agent, and kidnapped wife are all there. There's even a television program in the game named Night Springs that's clearly a parody of, or perhaps a tribute to, creepy television serials such as Twilight Zone, X-Files, and Yo Gabba Gabba. The Pacific Northwest environment, on the other hand, is very well modelled. Some of the background panoramic vistas are breathtaking and complements the storytelling perfectly. The weakest aspect of Alan Wake is the combat. While it's nowhere as good or as satisfying as similar games like Resident Evil 4, it's not terrible either. But it does get repetitive. Weapon selection is limited to revolver, rifle and shotguns. Alan also gets Flares that act as temporary 'Taken Repellant', Flash Bangs that kill anything nearby like grenades, and the smart bomb Flare Gun that's best saved for boss fights. During combat, the Taken are surrounded by shadows that make them impervious to conventional weaponry. Before Alan can hurt them, he has to 'burn away' the shadows with his flashlight. This exhausts the batteries of the flashlight. He has to do this with every single Taken and there are lots of them. Managing two combat resources, batteries and ammo, can get annoying. However, flashlight energy does regenerate slowly over time when not used in combat. The game is also fairly generous with ammo, with boxes of unlimited ammo conveniently placed near some boss encounters. What is most annoying is the lack of a melee ability. If Alan runs out of ammo he's basically screwed. You'd think being from New York City he would have at least picked up some rudimentary street-fighting skills since hailing a cab usually involves some hand-to-hand combat. To even the odds, Alan has an evasion ability that allows him to dodge melee attacks, but it's flaky and unreliable. Dodging is basically just spamming the dodge action key and hoping that it works. Overall, Alan Wake is a good game with its strength being in the narrative. A nice touch is the episodic synopsis that plays before the game begins, "Previously, on Alan Wake...", so you won't forget who Alan Wake is. There's also lots of extra content like the 2 free DLCs, good music, and an in-game commentary. Highly recommended for those who like their mystery spiced with some action. TL;DR A mediocre mystery writer battles supernatural evil in the dark using the world's worst flashlight.