Alan Wake is the star of the new game from Finish development team Remedy. Yes the guys who brought us Max Payne back in 2003 and introduced use to bullet time all those years ago. This xbox 360 exclusive has been a long time coming although the game has been finished for a while now, Remedy not content with rushing it’s release held back to continue to polish the final product and it has been worth the wait. What we end up with is a game that captures the feeling of both a novel and the TV show spin off.

Alan is an unlikely hero. He has built a career as a successful fiction writer but now suffering the pressures of his success and coupled with a bout of writers block. Alan and his wife decide to escape to the country to try and relax and patch up their own relationship. What starts out as a simple vacation to get his creative juices flowing again soon takes a sinister twist. A darkness is consuming the town and not everything is has it seems.  

The story is told in 6 episodes made to look very much like a 6 part TV show, with intro credits, cliff hanger endings and even a “Last time on Alan Wake” catch up real before the start of each new episode. Expect the unusual here as this is a Twin Peaks  kind of adventure with winks to Steven King and huge nods to the Twilight zone. It is written to keep you guessing so don’t expect to understand exactly what’s going on from the get go.   

The town of Bright Falls has been taken over by this darkness, so as you can guess the  darkness and in turn the light take on massive role. For the most part the locals are normal ….well normalish any way. Some of the town’s people or the “Taken” as they are called lurk in the shadows waiting to deal out some hurt for our hero. During the daylight scenes you are pretty much just interacting as normal with the normal characters your agent, the cops, the waitresses etc.

But at night when you are walking in the woods alone the “Taken” come out. You need a two pronged approach to kill them first off light is their enemy so armed with a torch you can force them back then of course you need to blast them with one of the many weapons you have been forced turn to Pistols, shotguns and rifles etc. It is a novel idea from Remedy to use light. A simple street light could be all that stands between you are the darkness trying to consume you. Generators are placed around to help you out. Light based ammo such as Flare guns and Flash bang grenades are also at your disposal. Street lights are not just safe havens but also check points as they continue the theme.

To the look of the game as lighting is so important it was crucial that it looks the part.) The way your torch lights up portions of the screen creating moving shadows in the corner of your eyes. Was that a stone? or a bush? or a axe wielding maniac?!!. All this works to create the atmosphere of fear that drives this game. I have honestly aged about ten years playing this game. At times it was so spooky that it was unpleasant to play you are often low on ammo and batteries. Reloading takes time but can be sped up by quickly tapping the reload button but then this adds to your panic as you are being surrounded, but the relief you feel after getting out of situations makes the whole experience. Maybe I’m just a scaredy cat !!  

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Other aspects to the game include the collecting of manuscript pages that apparently you have written but without any recollection of doing so . The pages are littered across the town and what’s worse is that the pages seem to be making sense. Some fill in blanks in the back story while others warn of upcoming encounters.  

Graphically this is as good as you can get, it looks amazing. Pushing the boundaries again of what we are coming to expect from our games. The town had been beautifully crafted in the mountains with forests and water falls. Bright falls is an old mining town that saw the last mines shut in 1970 so as such lots of old run down mines and equipment feature. The Characters are impressive in both cut scenes and gameplay. Animations are smooth as are the controls even though you have to do a lot of spinning around (as they do like to creep up on you that’s for sure). Panic does set in as you spin around franticly pointing your torch and letting shots fly into the darkness you don’t ever really feel like you have lost control of the character.

Because this game does tend to get lost into the world of the supernatural, if your not a big fan you can become a little bit detached from it. But what Remedy have created is an impressive piece of work. Ground breaking the game isn’t but Remedy have tried to do something new for the genre. But at the end of the day this is still the old tried and trusted genre of survival horror, of collecting ammo and clues in a third person view.  

It is presented beautifully and using the TV style episodes, the narrative and the story to drive it along it does keep you glued and the addition of the light source weapons do do enough to make you feel like you haven’t played this anywhere else. Alan Wake is highly recommended grab a copy and switch off the lights and get lost in Bright Falls.


SCORE 93%