Alan Wake

Story 8/10

Most of the points for the story go to its originality. You are Alan Wake, a writer who travels to a lakeside town to rekindle his relationship with his wife and not to do any writing – the opposite of the cliché. However, when she reveals that she set up a typewriter, he goes ape shit and storms out. And then his wife is kidnapped by dark forces and he goes on a quest to save her. With a torch.

During a week of unconsciousness, the dark forces make Alan write a novel which has the power to release them from their prison and destroy the world. And that’s where I gave up trying to understand what was going on and started playing the game.

Picture 6/10

I honestly thought the majority of the scenery and the enemies were quite poor in their appearances in comparison to some of the other games released at the time.

I gave it a six because the developers obviously were looking at lighting at being the key selling feature of the game. For example, when you shine your torch in the face of one of your allies, they will cover their eyes. I thought this was a nice touch.

However, other lighting effects were annoying and did not add to the atmosphere, which I believe was their intention. Some lights blind you for no reason other than to fuck you off. It doesn’t add to the atmosphere and ruins my gameplay experience.

Sound 5/10

The sound effects don’t really pull any punches and don’t go above and beyond trying to be a little mysterious. There were no jumpy bits enhanced by the sound so it was pretty safe and middle of the road. It didn’t stand out as a negative factor though, so that’s a major positive.

Gameplay 4/10

The majority of the game is walking from one place to another shooting bad guys after shining a torch on them. After the second episode, it became very repetitive and I found it a hell of a slog to get through the rest of the game.

The added element of having to shine a light on an evil dude before shooting him is a pain in ass, not scary and simply annoying.

Considering the main element of the gameplay is shooting, I was really surprised that you gain absolutely nothing from headshots and the only way to speed up killing dudes is by using flare guns or flashbang grenades. The game becomes more about hording the good stuff for the tough parts which adds to the boredom even further. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to rename the game Alan Asleep although that is a pretty obvious joke.

Achievements – 1,500 points – 67 achievements

In terms of earning the 67 achievements for this one, it is not too taxing and the biggest problem is falling asleep while playing. The game commits the cardinal sin of making you play through the game twice to get all the achievements. This is due to the Nightmare difficulty not unlocking until you have completed the game on a lesser difficulty first.

I really resent being told by a game that I can’t play it on the hardest difficulty until I’ve proved myself on some lesser one. It’s like the game has some kind of bizarre God complex.

Other than that though, the achievements were varied enough to keep me playing. There was one other one that I must complain about though.

If you are going to have an achievement for making it through a large section of the game without dying – or turning off the console – you absolutely cannot leave any room for glitches. For example, the achievement, Run-On Sentence  for completing The Signal DLC without dying was made to be overly frustrating when I was forced through the graphics and got trapped under a building, unable to continue and having to restart wasting half an hour of my time!

Downloadable Content – Value for money?

I thought that both DLCs were value for money and add to the gaming experience. The second DLC, the Writer adds a bizarre twist to Alan Wake’s world and mixes it up with semi-tricky platforming sections.

The biggest addition to the game is the amount it adds to story though, however it still didn’t reach a final conclusion and it also frames the whole thing as the writer’s internal dilemma – a bizarre spin to put on a computer game.

They add an additional 500 points to the Gamerscore and the costs are very reasonable, especially now that they have abandoned this Microsoft Points system which means you can pay the actual price rather than overpaying for the Microsoft Point packages.

Summary

It is definitely worth getting from an achievement perspective. The game was repetitive but the storyline got me through the first playthrough which was enough to net the majority of the achievements. There is next to no replay factor though, and most of my deaths on the Nightmare difficulty were due to me not paying attention due to increased levels of boredom.