Alan Wake

Alan Wake follows it's eponymous character, a writer vacationing in a small Washington town to try and get over a 2-year stretch of writers block. However, as it is with all such towns, this one harbors a dark secret  though most citizens outside of the local asylum remain blissfully unaware of it.

The asylum happens to be another reason for Alan's visit, as it specializes in treating artist - writers, painters, and musicians, such as a pair of aged rock-stars who believe themselves to be embodiments of the Norse gods Odin and Thor. The asylum even features a game designer for the purpose of an interesting easter egg  one of Alan Wake's level maps is drawn on a whiteboard in the designer's room  and a quick jab of self depreciation  he is described as barely and artist by the asylum's head doctor.

Alan and his wife suffer a fight when the reach the town, and as a result Alan's wife is kidnapped by a dark force living in the lake. Alan awakes a week later in a crashed car, with no memory of what happened that week. Stranger still, he finds a page of a manuscript that tells him what's about to happen.

Regarding Gameplay, Alan Wake is very interesting. It's is a rare Triple-A game that risks a new mechanic. The entire game is based around light and dark. Your enemy is darkness incarnate, so your main weapon is a flashlight. Standing in pools of lamplight keeps you completely safe, and will heal you. Exposing one of your enemies to a source of bright light will incinerate them instantly - which can be extremely satisfying as you manage to light up a lamp just in time to kill an enemy who's preparing to attack.

The game bases absolutely everything around its mechanic; the story, the combat, even simple things that slip under the radar like leading the player through the levels. As long as you can see light, you know which way to go. The light reveals dangers and secrets in the dark. It's an incredibly cohesive game, and it has my applause for that. Many games suffer from elements that don't fit, but this game doesn't seem to have any.

The atmosphere is so thick you could use it in a Rocky training montage as a punching bag. The music is subtle and chilling, barely noticeable as you make your way through a darkened forest. It raises in pitch and volume whenever there's an enemy nearby, adding to an already tense situation with the shock of a scare cord. The levels are dark, creepy, and reminiscent of walking through an actual forest at night - the poor light warps the bushes into looming monsters, approaching from all sides. If the player finds themselves off the path, they'll have a hard time finding their way back to it without the help of lights in the distance. It never slips right into horror territory, as its individual enemies are easy enough to dispatch, but it never stops being tense and spooky.

Of course, it's far from a perfect game. It has a large issue with its level design, in that they're very wide open. While this is excellent for immersion, it has the unfortunate side effect of making it very easy to get lost, as I'd previously mentioned. This is especially apparent in the game's many forest levels, where the environments are much the same and the light is low, making it even harder to find landmarks. There are often lights in the distance leading you where to go regardless, but even still you will find yourself blundering through the bush, dogged by enemies wherever you turn, slowly getting weaker and weaker.

On that note, it's worth mentioning that the combat can get repetitive fast. As most of the enemies are easy to dispatch it's easy to fall into a pattern when dealing with them. Point your flashlight, shoot twice, rinse and repeat for every enemy you face. Times when you have to fight large groups of enemies, and they can sneak up on you are extremely tense, but on average the combat is a slow point of the game.

It does suffer from issues story wise as well, in spite of its story being very good by game standards. It very clearly takes its inspiration from the works of Stephen King. This fact in and of itself is not a bad thing, but Alan Wake constantly draws attention to this fact. It makes it feel somewhat derivative, where otherwise the inspiration would have been clear but it would have stood strongly as its own  work. The 'comic relief' character can also be abrasive at times, though thankfully the spotlight is rarely on him.

The game also has an interesting feature that I can't say I've ever seen before. A lot of games model themselves after movies; there's a single long stretch of gameplay with nothing to break it up, ending in a huge climax. Alan Wake, on the other hand, models itself after a Miniseries. It's divided into 6 chapters, each chapter having it's own defined arc, plot and climax. There's cliffhanger endings, and short 'last time on Alan Wake' segments at the beginning of each. Given the similarities of the game to Stephen King, who's had several books adapted to miniseries, I think it's an  appropriate choice of aesthetic. On the Whole, the game feels wonderfully cohesive, excellently designed, and delightfully spooky.

I sadly can't speak of the game's price, nor where you could find it. I imagine it's available to be purchased at any game retailer, or on Xbox Live.