Alan Wake is a game that I had long dismissed as complete and utter vaporware.  Given that fact, even when they started a full-court media press about it after last year’s E3, a small part of me still believed that it was never coming out, and so I paid it no mind.  This willful ignorance actually had a positive effect on my overall experience with the game, as I went in knowing absolutely nothing about what this game was about, save for the fact that it came to me billed as a game filled with “Stephen King style horror.”  Being a complete horror apologist and fan, that was all it took to sell me on the game, and so with a steeled heart, a darkened room, and headphones cranked to 11, I ventured into the world of Alan Wake.

The thing that will immediately strike you about this game is its’ presentation.  The narrative of the game plays out over six “episodes” that are presented like a TV miniseries.  Each “episode” of the story has a concrete beginning and ending point, complete with TV-style title cards, and subsequent episodes begin with a “previously on Alan Wake” montage that summarizes the events of the episode that came before.  While these touches don’t do anything in particular to advance the story, they add leaps and bounds to what would’ve been an otherwise cut-and-dry presentation, as well as adding a real sense of motivation to “just play until the end of the episode.”  Each episode runs about two to two and a half hours, and I ended up playing each episode of the game in a single sitting, which says a lot, speaking as someone with the attention span of a goldfish.

In addition to the episodic presentation, Remedy has put in a ton of work to make this feel like a fully fleshed out, realized world.  As Alan arrives in the town of Bright Falls, the town is gearing up for a yearly festival, and while you don’t spend much time in the town, you really feel like it’s a organic entity with a life of its own.  People react and mill around like they would as “extras” in a real TV show.  Again, it’s not a necessary touch, just some more icing on the cake.

The atmosphere doesn’t stop in the town, though.  During the nighttime sequences, you’ll find yourself running through the woods, the lumber yards, the woods, an abandoned mine, the woods, a historical park, the woods, a dam and its surrounding environs, and the woods.  What I’m getting at, for the reading impaired, is that you’ll find yourself running through dark woods a lot.  Any excuse that they find to dump you in a dark forest, you can bet they’ll use it.  Normally, Id find this repetition of environment incredibly annoying, but for a game with this type of atmosphere, it actually works.  When you venture off the path, or even stay out of the light too long, the game’s main enemy, the darkness, starts to creep up on you.

This creeping feeling is one of the places where the game is at its strongest.  The wind begins to blow, the scenery, even the stars themselves seem to take on a darker hue, and the low hum of the music will start to grow louder and louder in your headphones.  I found myself sitting on my couch, leaning forward, jamming on the “run” button, just knowing that if I didn’t get to some light soon, some serious shit is about to go down.  Given that not only does standing under a light banish any nearby enemies, it also restores your health to maximum, getting from light to light becomes your driving motivation.  In some areas of the woods, the lamps are few and far between, which makes the feeling of tension even greater.  To top it off, some of the lights are powered by generators that need to be cranked on lawnmower-style, which requires repeated timed presses of the A button (one of the game’s very, very few quick-time events, thankfully).  While these QTEs are in no way difficult, even their simplicity can become daunting when you’re trying to get the timing right with The Taken bearing down on you.

Which brings me to the one part of the game where I have a bit of a complaint:  the combat.  Your main enemies in this game are “the taken;” townspeople who have been possessed by the darkness and turned into warped versions of themselves.  These enemies are protected by the darkness, which can be dispelled by the light of Alan’s flashlight.  Once the darkness has been dispelled (by holding your flashlight beam on the enemy for a given period of time), Alan can get to work on them with the standard array of revolvers, shotguns, rifles, etc.  Supplementing this arsenal are roadflares and flashbangs, the first of which can be used to chase enemies away from you, while the second will kill most enemies outright.  The darkness mechanic is an interesting take on the standard combat formula, but unfortunately becomes very formulaic as the game goes on.  With the exception of fights with “poltergeists,” objects which float and fly at you until you dispel them with your flashlight, and a few possessed flocks of birds that can be offed with flares, the combat remains the same through the entire game.  The strategies you use at the beginning of the game will work at the end of the game, which makes combat sometimes more of a chore than an actual tense situation.  The exception to this rule is in some of the random encounters in-between lampposts in the woods, where the enemies will spawn endlessly.  In this case, all you can do is run, which creates for some great chase sequences, reminiscent of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.  In fact, I actually feel that these sequences were more effective than their Silent Hill brethren, given that while you actually do have the option to turn and fight, in the long run your fighting is ineffective against the coming onslaught.  In a way, having weapons and having them be ultimately useless is far more effective than being completely unarmed.

It’s difficult to describe the plot to Alan Wake without having it be completely spoiler-laden, but it suffices to say that while it isn’t a twisting maze, there are some interesting turns and surprises that will keep you going right up until the end.  Particularly effective was the addition of the manuscript pages you find in the game.  Alan is a writer, and the story he’s writing is coming true as he’s writing it.  While this has been done before in movies, I can’t think of a time it’s been tried in a game.  As you progress through the episodes, Alan will find pages of a manuscript he himself is writing, which depict events happening in the future of the episode.  It’s an interesting storytelling method, given that you often know the ending of the chapter almost from the beginning, and then learn as the chapter unfolds how you got to that point.  The ending itself is probably the weakest point of the narrative, since it looks like given the endless “sequel-itis” that is plaguing the industry, the developers decided to leave it open ended, leaving some of your questions unanswered and a feeling that while the immediate threat is gone, there isn’t much closure to be had.

Frankly, I could sum up this review with a simple “while it’s not without its flaws”, but in this game, the narrative style, the gripping story and the completely oppressive atmosphere far outweigh any flaws this game may have.  If you own a 360, and care about story-driven gaming at all, then you owe it to yourself to pick up Alan Wake.