In darkness, fight with light: Alan Wake review

Story (Warning, spoilers!)

You play as a character called Alan Wake. He is a famous crime fiction author who hasn’t been able to get any ideas down on paper in over 2 years. He and his wife, Alice, decide to take a vacation to a nice town called Bright Falls to see if the new environment will stimulate his creativity; they are politely greeted by the townsfolk. When Alan  goes to get the keys from Mr. Stuky, a women in a black veil gives him the keys instead. He thinks that they are the right keys and they leave to go to the cabin. They drive to the house which is in the middle of Cauldron Lake. He and Alice get into a fight and he leaves, knowing that she wouldn’t follow because she is afraid of the dark. She suddenly starts screaming and Alan runs back into the house. He finds out that she has fallen into the lake. He dives in after her. He blacks out, then he later wakes up in his car and his head is bleeding after he got into a car crash. He then heads toward the nearest gas station facing a whole bunch of Taken. These are the townspeople who have been possessed by the Dark Presence. When he arrives at the gas station he looks at a sign and realizes that it has been a whole week since he had jumped into the lake. He then calls a sheriff and tells her that his wife has gone missing and that they lived on Cauldron Lake. The sheriff tells him that there hasn’t been a house on Cauldron Lake since the 1970. After a little clip you have now completed chapter one. To give you a heads up, there are a total of six chapters and even if you don’t explore and do the story head on, each chapter will take you up to 1-2 hours to complete. At the end of chapter one the story starts to take a weird turn. I will not explain each chapter for you but I will give you heads up on what you are going to have to face in the upcoming chapters. You are going to face inanimate objects controlled be the dark presence, which will be thrown out at you and is very deadly. You will face stronger taken with special abilities such as an axe, or a chainsaw wielder.

Gameplay

The story plays out in an episodic format, with a TV show style for each episode and chapter. During the chapters you will collect things called a manuscript; this is the story that you wrote but don’t remember writing; the story you wrote is coming to life. If you collect them in order and read each one, you will be able to predict when and where stuff will happen. When you are doing the main storyline there is a big open area you can explore, but it’s not a free roam type of game. While you can explore the area without going right to the main storyline to find more manuscripts, different types of guns such as the shotgun or hunting rifle. If you’re lucky you can find lithium batteries. While you are exploring enemies will pop out in slow motion which gives you a chance to do a cinematic maneuver away from them. There are a lot of genres for the game such as psychological thriller and horror, survival horror, and action. A game add-on is coming out on July 27 which adds another episode to the story. The add-on is called “The Signal”

My Opinion

To really understand the game you have to pay attention the cinematic scenes and not just skip them because if you were one place you would probably wonder why you’re nowhere near it in the next episode. If you pay or don’t pay attention, the game finds a way to mess with your head and give you a big migraine sometimes. The game was fun all around from exploring secret areas to destroying the Taken. My favorite weapon in the game would have to be the hunting rifle. This is because when you weaken the Taken with the light from the flashlight it only takes one precise shot to kill them. I was really surprised how much I enjoyed playing the game. But I had a good feeling that it was going to be a fun game in the end. The game offered so many different twists, left you with cliffhangers, and it built it up before the epic conclusion to the game.

I liked that you get to carry little things that stun or kill the taken. These are such as stun grenades and flares. When the stun grenade is thrown and the enemy is close enough they will automatically die, which always came great for me especially in chapters 3 and 4 where I needed to fight off a lot of taken. While the flare isn’t as cool as the stun grenade, when thrown it scares your enemy off a little bit moving it away from you, giving you time to change your battery or reload your gun.

I would recommend this game to anyone no matter which genre you are into; it was an all around good game and you would have to be on some type of medication not to pick up a copy.

Rating- 10/10

Graphics- When you play you will realize right away how superb the graphics are and how real they look. Especially when they do the cinematic scenes, it feels like you’re watching a regular TV show and not playing a game.

Sound- The sound that they used for each episode and chapter always reflected the mood around you when it’s calm for the first time in ages, all the way up to being alone in the dark and you’re always turning around because you think that something is always there watching you.

Gameplay- It always keeps you on your toes, not knowing what’s going to happen when you lock yourself in a cabin and there are hordes of Taken trying to break in. You could interact with every character that you came in contact with from the main characters you need to talk to, to the little side quests that you can do for people.

Story- The story was golden from the get go, you knew something was going to go wrong, but you didn’t know that they were going to mess with your mind while you are trying to solve the puzzles of Bright Falls.

Genre- I thought that I wouldn’t like the cinematic scenes for the game but I ended up falling in love with the way that Remedy was able to use it in such a good way. I loved it.