Alan Wake

I like horror games, shooters, and horror shooters. I hate this game. Not once was I scared or even apprehensive. I spent almost the whole game bored, literally from the beginning, when you have to wander around several set pieces at Alan's slowpoke walk. The whole theme of the game is that "darkness is scary," but there is no darkness in the game. No matter how dark it's supposed to be (night, overcast, indoors...), everything is very well-lit. It's obviously nighttime, there's just an invisible floodlight illuminating everything. The antagonist is boring. It's supposed to be a scary darkness-based entity pretending to be an old woman, but all it does is throw objects at you and tell you to turn around, go back, you can't win...over and over. Combat is very boring. Enemies have shields which you have to deplete with your flashlight and health you deplete with your revolver. Every fight begins with a slow-mo scene in which they say one random sentence like "fishing can be a hobby and a job" or "we get up early at the farm," then throw hammers and axes at you. Driving sequences are clunky and irritating and appear to have been just dropped into the game. The protagonist is an ass. He is abusive to his wife, agent, fans, and random people he just met - and doesn't bat an eye at killing every adult male in town, Rambo-style. Did I mention he's an out-of-shape writer who can barely jog 20 feet before having to rest? Voice acting is emotionless and bland. Characters (except the underused Sherriff Breaker) are idiots with no common sense, including you. Worst of all, the game tries and fails to be smart about all this. It's *constantly* comparing itself to the work of Stephen King and Lovecraft. Alan notes that the power company has a lot of flash-bangs. Unlike other games, the meta-awareness is not done well. Everything is told, nothing is shown, and the story is derivative and not well-executed anyway. Don't waste your money.

So my juvenile brain shares thoughts on the game I gushed about last week, Alan Wake. The game has a really good story (minus some really awful dialogue)and it was very gripping at first. However, the play balancing is atrocious. Checkpoints are laid out badly, sometimes forcing you to repeat numerous encounters over and again, just to die the end of the check and repeat 5-10 minutes over and over and over again because of one misstep and the poor controls. Also the “Taken” monsters can be too tough, taking sometimes 7-8 shots to kill when you have limited ammo, originally a 5 out of 5 star game in my book, the way they ruined the fun in an otherwise epic game brings it down to a 2.5 at best. Yes, the play-balancing, poor controls, and cheap deaths are really that bad. Remedy, usually makes good games, but this is the crap experience I expect from Electronic Arts, Replay, and Ubisoft, not the ones who brought Max Payne to the world.

OK, It should actually be three stars because there are many things bad about the game but the story has its mood and is quite consistent and the ending is only a tiny bit disappointing so I give it a one star extra. The good - the story, the mood, the visuals (for its time). The game quotes Stephen King and clearly draws from his works but does it good. You feel the heavy atmosphere that you can almost literarily cut with a knife. The in-game graphics are good for its time and are quite consistent in its design - although the overall feeling is a little... bleak. It could use a good counterpoint here and there, especially in the day episodes. The bad - of course the main culprit - the camera angle. I understand that probably the idea was to give you more of the protagoinst than just his backside but it's so annoying to not be able to know precisely where you are going. Ugh. Hate it. The gameplay is... interesting for a very short time. Then it quickly becomes simply tedious. You run around a lot, get ambushed from out of nowhere and you're always out of ammo. I get it, it's a survival horror (even though the authors say otherwise) and you're supposed to feel overwhelmed. But here there's no way to influence the game with your play style. You simply have to fight wave by wave of opponents. Boooooring. But maybe that's just that it doesn't fit my playing style. And of course since it's a console-based game we have the annoying checkpoint-based save system. I simply hate it. And the game is linear as hell. OK, you can walk around looking for radios, thermoses and alarm clocks but other than that it's simply following the dot on the "radar" and fighting enemies. With a trivial "puzzle" thrown here and there. And you have the "minigames" of clicking the mouse to push cart or jump-start a generator. And you have collecting the pages which doesn't seem to influence anything. Overall - playwise nothing to write home about. Luckily, the story saves the game.

You have to get this. This is a must own and deserves to be played. The story is great and the setting is amazing. Get it. Now.

This game has the storyline and suspense to rival some of the best of other forms of media for sure! Others have already stated what's good about the game so I'll leave it at that, just wanted to rate 5 stars for sure