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| It's funny because people keep telling him to wake up. |
I often complain about games that were made by people who really just wanted to make movies. Alan Wake is definitely one of these. Well, I guess the intention was more to make a TV-series... They even broke it down into episodes and what not.
As a matter of fact, it fits that description so well, I think I'll review this in three separate parts: As a game, as a series, and as a book.
Alan Wake: The Game
Alan Wake isn't much of a game. It's linear, slow, tedious and boring. The same encounters are repeated over and over ad nauseum and it feels like slogging through endless filler. The controls are lazy and the camera angle is horrible. There are few enemy types and few weapons. What's there is annoying to use. The incessant tiny ammo cashes every five paces are stupid and immersion breaking.
Gameplay-wise, the one potentially interesting thing about it is the novel gameplay mechanic: Your enemies are clad in shadows, you must shine your flashlight on them first to make them vulnerable, only then can you shoot and kill them. It's even kind of neat- until you realize this idea is as old as time: Point (and shoot) your shield-destroying gun at enemies until their shields are down, then shoot to lower their health, sound familiar? Still, credit to them for giving it such a nice new spin.
Alan Wake: The TV-series
As a visual-thing-that-one-watches, AW is not bad. The visuals are pretty nice. The dark woods look beautiful, the locales are interesting, detailed and well made. The characters are irritating but amusing to watch. The "acting" is quite hammy and bad, but again, it manages to be amusing in its incompetence, so it's okay. I also really like how, occasionally, you get TV-screens turning on to show yourself monologuing about the plot and just generally exposition-ing.
One annoying thing are the cheeky "Last on Alan Wake" recap segments. These happen at the beginning of every "episode's" cutscene. I don't know why they thought everyone plays their games one part a time - I don't! I play until whenever and save when I want to stop. Sometimes I save mid-episode. Sometimes I do more than one episode in one go. You know how super annoying it is when you marathon a TV-series and you have to keep skipping the recap bits because you literally watched the previous episode five minutes ago? Well, in Alan Wake, you can't even skip them.
Alan Wake: The Story
At the "low-level", the writing is great: The way the sentences are strung together, the tone, the word choices. It's all quite well executed and enjoyable to hear.
At the higher level, hoo boy. It just makes me grit my teeth in anger when I think about it. The story is full of overused cliches, cliches which are extremely obvious to someone who doesn't read a many horror books like me. But more importantly, it commits the cardinal sin of these stories: The characters are dumb. Why doesn't Alan just talk to the bloody police when he first gets proof of his wife's kidnapping? So what if they might kill her? Maybe if he plays along, they'll kill her anyway. And why is he just so damn... Stupid? Why does he not notice when characters start speaking in a creepy, monotone voice all of a sudden? Why does he not draw attention to the fact? Why does he keep leaving people and his weapons in places where something might happen to them? Why does he never question how his flashlight can recharge its batteries while on? Or how paper can stay planted firmly on the ground in a wind strong enough to shake trees? Why does he keep strutting straight into situations that will be difficult to get out of? The unfortunate fact is that the game would be minutes long if only Alan had an ounce of the sense he purportedly does, and you can never really forget about this because of how much the plot hinges on Alan's tremendous stupidity and ridiculous lack of genre-savviness. I mean, he's a horror writer, trapped in a horror story, that HE'S writing, and clearly aware of it no less. Come ON.
And not just Alan, either. Why does Barry, his supposed close friend, refuse to believe Alan when he clearly has been injured? Supposedly, he knows Alan as very logical and sane - why does he immediately assume he magically developed severe schizophrenia overnight? Why does the FBI begin to fire on an unarmed, innocent man with lethal force out of the blue? Why do they not take action against the fucking shadow zombies?
In the end, Alan Wake is a bad game with pretty visuals and a story good by videogame standards, but awful by book standards. It's a fairly interesting story, but it has no end (he sacrifices himself to save his wife from... drowning... or something; there, saved you a couple of hours) and no point, and the conclusion is unsatisfying and leaves you with a feeling of unwittingly having wasted your time on nonsense. If you like that sort of thing, I recommend finding a playthrough video. The gameplay is too tedious and drawn out; I can only imagine someone playing it in exchange for a decent hourly rate. Be warned: There's escort missions and vehicle sessions, although neither is the worst I've seen.
Score: 2/5
Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteHmm, sounds good. Might have to check it out
ReplyDeleteI played Alan Wake for about 5 minutes. In the first minute i was already disgusted by the tutorial bothering me all the time telling me where to look (I don't think this is a good way to learn things, don't tell me what to do, put me in the situation and let me figure it out by myself). The story was already spoiled by the same tutorial, the characters from my novel are my enemy.. build it up a little man! Every second some voice or some thing happening all the time, leave me alone. Are you sure you want to uninstall Alan Wake? YES, gbye man.
ReplyDelete(Minor Spoilers Ahead, for anyone who hasn't played it for longer than five minutes)
DeleteThe tutorial was necessary because it wouldn't have made any sense (story-wise) for Alan to know that the key to taking down an ax murderer was to shine a flashlight on him. I actually didn't mind the tutorial-in-dream sequence, and came to appreciate it even more when people began to criticize it (Imagine that!) Because it made me realize that since the bright light was in Alan's dream and not in the "real world", you just know when you see Stucky that you're all alone in that lumber yard with no one to save you.
Further, the true antagonist doesn't appear to have anything to do with the characters in Wake's novel... It's a shame you took the evil shadow guy's word as truth! Why on earth did you do that, hmmmmm? :P
"I often complain about games that were made by people who really just wanted to make movies. Alan Wake is definitely one of these. Well, I guess the intention was more to make a TV-series... They even broke it down into episodes and what not."
ReplyDeleteThis is silly. If they wanted to make a movie or TV series, they would've. But it's fair enough to say that they wanted the game to feel much like an interactive TV series.
"Alan Wake isn't much of a game. It's linear, slow, tedious and boring."
Aside from "tedious and boring", I agree. The linearity was an obviously good decision. There's no suspense in being able to decide where you go and when, stockpiling ammo before taking on every area that looks challenging. Just given your one word criticisms here, I'd wager you simply expected another sort of game. But I thought it presented itself well, as exactly what it was. Oh well.
"The same encounters are repeated over and over ad nauseum and it feels like slogging through endless filler."
There is a great deal of model repetition, I'll give you that. But given the ever-changing environment, variations in your inventory, and other environmental factors (bear traps, vehicles, raging rivers, heights, etc.) I have no choice but to call your "same encounters" assertion crazy. To me, every situation was unique when all factors were taken together.
"The controls are lazy and the camera angle is horrible."
Got no idea what you mean. I had no issues with either of these things.
"There are few enemy types and few weapons. What's there is annoying to use. The incessant tiny ammo cashes every five paces are stupid and immersion breaking."
To me, the combat was FUN. I've played the game six times now for the combat and atmosphere alone. And the game more or less explains the ammo caches, until which point only add to the mystery of it all.
"Gameplay-wise, the one potentially interesting thing about it is the novel gameplay mechanic: Your enemies are clad in shadows, you must shine your flashlight on them first to make them vulnerable, only then can you shoot and kill them. It's even kind of neat- until you realize this idea is as old as time: Point (and shoot) your shield-destroying gun at enemies until their shields are down, then shoot to lower their health, sound familiar? Still, credit to them for giving it such a nice new spin."
Hmmm, well so long as you give every other shooter that same half-criticism in every review you do from this point, I guess you make sense...
And I actually liked the whole TV series presentation at the end of each episode. Especially the music they had playing! A nice touch.
"The characters are dumb. Why doesn't Alan just talk to the bloody police when he first gets proof of his wife's kidnapping? So what if they might kill her? Maybe if he plays along, they'll kill her anyway."
I think it makes sense, if only for the fact that I can understand how he regards it all as a delicate matter, one which he'd rather not put into the hands of people (cops or no) he doesn't know or trust. And besides, if he brought cops and kidnapper killed her because of THAT, that's a bit worse because he'll go the rest of his life blaming himself for it.
"Why does he not notice when characters start speaking in a creepy, monotone voice all of a sudden? Why does he not draw attention to the fact?"
I can only assume you're talking about Rose. Yeah, they could've done that scene better. But in his defense, up until this point, the only possessed/darkness-controlled he's heard (that he's aware of) are the Taken. Rose didn't sound anything like a Taken. And besides, it was daytime. Presumably the darkness couldn't even reach them.
"Why does he keep leaving people and his weapons in places where something might happen to them?"
I can't think of an example of this, sorry.
"Why does he never question how his flashlight can recharge its batteries while on? Or how paper can stay planted firmly on the ground in a wind strong enough to shake trees?"
ReplyDeleteHaha, why does every gameplay mechanism have to have an in-story explanation? Why not just ask "Doesn't he notice that he jumps every time a giant visible through the screen that's following him around pushes a button on their video game controller?" and be done with it? ;)
Okay, how's this: The boosting mechanism is actually touched on in the spin-off, 'Alan Wake's American Nightmare', where it is said this occurs when Alan is more concentrated on the enemy in his sights. In a way, this could be a lesser form of him actually rewriting this part of reality with his imagination alone (which at least coincides with the idea that it was his writing that brought everything life to begin with). Plus, in one of the DLCs, Zane tells Alan "It's not the light itself, but what it represents" while giving him a flashlight. Taken with the aforementioned manuscript, it could be FAITH is what makes the Taken vulnerable, and more determined focus on the Taken is a sign of that faith. So you have a couple of possibilities there, neither of which are harder to believe than the premise of, well, any game where you fight undead creatures.
As for the manuscripts, let's take note of the fact that they seem radiant with light before Alan picks them up. Perhaps the darkness (which is all the "wind" really is) simply can't get close enough due to the light they emit to budge them? Sounds reasonable enough to me, once you buy the premise of the game itself, once more.
"I mean, he's a horror writer, trapped in a horror story, that HE'S writing, and clearly aware of it no less. Come ON."
That's all wrong. He's a mystery novelist trapped in a horror story that he's already written but can't remember writing (and I would say more but I don't want to spoil it for the others).
"And not just Alan, either. Why does Barry, his supposed close friend, refuse to believe Alan when he clearly has been injured? Supposedly, he knows Alan as very logical and sane - why does he immediately assume he magically developed severe schizophrenia overnight?"
That's WHY he doesn't believe him, WHY he thinks Alan may be hallucinating - BECAUSE Alan hit his head. I'm sorry, Barry's assumption is a lot more rational than believing that he was attacked by someone who was bulletproof until Alan pointed a flashlight at him and then vanished in thin air after Alan shot him!
BTW, the rest of the flashlight explanation was simply "Both concentration and faith are fluctuating, never constant in any human being".
Delete"Why does the FBI begin to fire on an unarmed, innocent man with lethal force out of the blue? Why do they not take action against the fucking shadow zombies?"
ReplyDeleteI think you can hear them shooting at the Taken (but of course it doesn't work).
Now, the manhunt is not all that difficult to explain either. First, right off the bat, if you hear a gunshot and you’re not sure who fired first, you immediately pursue the guy you came to interrogate (and yes, open fire, especially if your commanding officer gives the order, which we can safely assume he did). No questions asked. But let’s put that to the side and assume all the cops did know it was Nightingale who fired the shots. It’s also, unfortunately, Nightingale who CALLS the shots. That might not have meant much if their very own trusted Sheriff hadn’t have sent them along knowing by default they’d be under his command (could be that she didn’t tell them why, which was presumably and ironically so they could keep eyes on Nightingale).
But now, suppose none of this convinces you. Here is where you must give the banality of evil its credit. Far worse atrocities have taken place because people were “just doing their job” or “just following orders” in our real world’s history. And these were even acts being committed in broad daylight, with everyone knowing exactly who did what. Now, add to this the sense of urgency and adrenaline rush of the chase (it’s not unheard of for police to get this carried away!) and the heightened possibility that no one will witness whatever you end up doing? Yes, it’s wrong. Yes, it’s crazy. But unrealistic? Hard to believe? Not by a long shot.
"It's a fairly interesting story, but it has no end (he sacrifices himself to save his wife from... drowning... or something; there, saved you a couple of hours) and no point, and the conclusion is unsatisfying and leaves you with a feeling of unwittingly having wasted your time on nonsense."
I wish I'da known you were gonna spoil the game at the end of your review before typing up my response! Anyway, what can you really expect of a horror game/movie OR a psychological thriller? I thought it was just the right amount of closure. You save Alice, which was the goal, but also the story is far from over. Doesn't mean it doesn't have an end, just that it isn't over yet. And that's not a bad thing no matter how you spin it.
Sorry, I disagree on almost all grounds. Alan Wake was a remarkable game. That goes for its gameplay, visuals, and story.