Video Game Review: Alan Wake (360)

More and more these days video games are gaining a new found respect alongside books and movies, no longer the pursuit of spotty social recluses confined to their bedrooms. Last year the video game industry in the UK, shadowing other countries, made more money than movies. That is the combined totals of trips to the cinema and DVD sales. The games industry turnover in September 2009 was reported to be £1.73billion, compared to films which reported £1billion in takings at the cinema and only £198million in DVD and Blu-Ray sales. The way that I view video games is essentially an interactive form of movies or books. Instead of merely watching or reading, you are actually participating in increasingly compelling narratives which blur the lines with traditional story telling mediums. Alan Wake is the next leap in this vain. Games are, like films and books, artistic creations in their own right, offering a form of interactive storytelling unachievable through 'established' forms. Uncharted was the first game to really cast fog on traditional separations between games and film, setting a precedent which will continue in the future with productions like Alan Wake.

Somehow I managed to get the collectors edition from GAME for only £39.99, which was strange given that it RRP-ed for £49.99. I was half expecting my receipt to be updated when I received it in the post, but no! I had performed a swindle of sorts! And I wasn't going to ask them if they'd made a mistake either. I think my friend was a little pissed though; he paid full whack. Har! Anyhow, before I begin talking about the game I must dedicate this paragraph to the beautifully presented collectors edition. It really is one of most neatly put-together box sets I have ever encountered, for anything. It's stylishly presented as an incredibly thick novel, and the goodies inside are just as neat.

Inside is:

• A copy of Alan Wake, duh. 
• A code for more downloadable content they'll release in July.
• The exquisite game soundtrack by Petri Alanko.
• Bonus content such as behind the scenes, video documentaries, XBox themes, avatars etc.
• A book (yes, a real book!). The Alan Wake files: A separate investigation following the aftermath of Alan Wake, going into depth about characters you come across.

Onward!

Review

You play Alan Wake, a thriller writer who travels to Bright Falls with his wife on holiday, hoping to ameliorate his writer's block. It's not long before weird shit starts to occur as your wife disappears under mysterious circumstances and Wake is plunged into a town whose residents have been taken over by an ominous darkness.

Bright Falls is so incredibly well realised that I can think of no adjectives that will do justice to the atmosphere created here. It is heavy. Very heavy. And dark. Alan Wake takes place predominantly at night, when the evil darkness, which takes the form of a wispy smoke, envelopes the town unencumbered by light. When I first saw it I instantly thought that the smoke monster from Lost had found new employment. Unlike the smoke monster from Lost however, the townsfolk possessed by it are weak against light. So much so that Alan must shine his trusty torch in their face to weaken them before bullets do any harm. The looming shadows really do shroud things that go bump in the night, creating an exceedingly claustrophobic feeling as it swirls around you.

The majority of the game has you running around in pitch black woods with nothing but a torch and pee-wee revolver to defend yourself. All the while you are stalked by entities lurking in the gloomy recesses just beyond your narrow beam of light. There are moments where you swear you saw something move, only for it to be the shadow of a tree reflected from your torch. Your heart skips a beat, you don't know where the next nasty will jump from as you make your way through the game. You breath a huge sighs of relief as you make it to a lone lamp post which bathes you in light and your health recharges. You are safe, until you decide to move. To make matters worse, your ammunition is limited, so as you venture out from the safety of the light havens dotted around the game, you are also acutely aware that you must conserve ammo, intensifying the tension as your heart races faster. It really is an incredibly harrowing experience, giving a real palpable sense of panic.

Alan Wake feels like one of those cheap American thriller films from the 90s that Channel 5 used to show. And I don't mean that in a disparaging way. It is genuinely very well done. The story gets a little convoluted in places, some complaining that it is difficult to follow. But I liken it to Twin Peaks in that no one actually knew what the hell was going on, but it still made for compelling viewing. Even at the end don't expect everything to be clarified. Alan Wake faithfully sticks to the psychological-thriller genre of a highly interpretable and open ending.

The great thing about Alan Wake though is the little things. Firstly, it is presented like a television show. As you complete each chapter, or 'level', it will end with a cut scene, a fade of the screen and catchy song. When you are ready to begin the next chapter, you get a little montage and voice over of; "Previously on Alan Wake...". Of course, you've just played it, so you know what happened, but not only does it neatly summarise the story for you so far, the fact that it is presented in such a manner is yet another illustration of what I mean about the blurring of video games with other entertainment mediums. One of the things I loved most about it however were the radios and television sets lying around which you could tune into to get a bit of the background surrounding Bright Falls. There is a brilliant little thing the devs have put on the TVs called 'Night Springs'. This is essentially a two-minute show which is a homage/piss-take of 'The Twilight Zone' and 'The Outer Limits'. There are several episodes to find, my personal favourite being the ingeniously titled 'Quantum Suicide'. It's the little touches like this that just add to the overall depth of the game, the world it's attempting to create and the story it's trying to tell.

It's difficult to find any faults with Alan Wake. I had a couple of personal peeves with it, but these were so incredibly minor it's scarcely worth mentioning them. The camera angle from which you control Wake was a little irritating at times, as was the the 'auto-lock-on' with his torch when it would just find itself in a position of no use to you at a moment of critical importance. There were also moments in the game where I really began to tire of the wooded environments, walking through the same dark forest occasionally punctuated with a run-down logging site. Thankfully no sooner had it started to grate that the game seemed to sense my frustration and jump to some totally new environment to keep me entertained. Like I said though, these are so minuscule and do not detract from what will probably be one of the games of the year. Alan Wake is a masterpiece in narrative. Not just in the gaming genre, but as narrative goes as a whole.

As it stands, games of this breed are rare, and I can only think of Uncharted which has tried something equally bold here. However, with the way games are developing at the moment, it won't be long before these types of distinctive stories become the norm. If you have a 360, there really is no excuse to miss this.