"Stephen King once wrote, ‘Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear’. 'The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest'" This will be the quote you hear during the opening of Remedy's 'Psy. Action Thriller' Alan Wake. The game takes place in a Northwestern town called Bright Falls in which things aren't what they seem to be after Alan arrives.
Alan (your character) and Alice, his wife, come to Bright Falls to help Alan get over the writer's block he's had for about 2 years. Everything starts out well until they arrive at their honeymoon cabin where Alice is suddenly captured by an unknown, malevolent force. While you try to find and save your wife, you soon see manuscript pages of Alan's next novel that he doesn't remember writing and is becoming reality right before his very eyes.
Some of the major keynotes of the game revolve around its well-scripted story, stand-out soundtrack/original score, and engaging gameplay. Alan Wake's story is well formatted and welcomingly original. It offers each chapter as a TV episode that helps recap the earlier chapter with a "Previously on Alan Wake". The story also unfolded in the manuscript pages (100+ total on Nightmare Mode) that act as a collectable and offer a better glimpse of the characters revolving around Alan's story. You may see a sense of absurbity in certain ending parts but overall, the game's able to drive through these with its sharp writing.
Alan Wake's design on its technical fronts are also worth praising. While not having the best graphics on consoles, Alan Wake offers some great landscapes to this very-wooded world while also keeping in touch with the actuality of how wooded the Northwest can be. Almost every aspect of the game ranks up with the best looking console games with the execeptions being certain muddy textures to be found and off lip synching. It's quite tough not to say that this isn't the best looking 360 game to date. As stated previously, Alan Wake also holds a well-rounded soundtrack/music score that's arguably the best one of the year (thus far).
Alan Wake's gameplay revolves around a light/dark mechanic of destroying these creatures called Taken by shining a flashlight on them until all of the dark presence is burned away and then finishing them off with a gun. The controls are simplistic and responsive but yet can be very rewarding thanks to the "bullet-time" dodge Alan can pull. While the gameplay could be found to be repetitive at first, it opens up to simple puzzles, driving, and exploration to help vary things up. What's one stand-out to this exemplary adventure is how well the camera's done. For one moment you feel safe, the next may show a swarm coming at you from behind pitched by a high violin note.
What's certainly one great feature not seen much in games is how "real world" this game feels. From the added value of TV shows, radios, and manuscript pages to the setup of all the stages, Alan Wake never strives from feeling like an actual Northwestern town.
While there are a few minor quirks to be fixed in Alan Wake and it may not offer a wholesome ending to all, but one thing holds true: the mystery will stay with you the longest.
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VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "All in all, it’s not hard to see why Alan Wake has received a bit of a cult following (there’s that famous foreshadowing again). It’s a title that blends themes and gameplay, while pushing the limits of storytelling by putting stories within stories and letting you read those stories before you get to that part in… the story. It has flaws, to be sure - the gameplay side can’t quite keep up with the rest of its ambitions - but overall it’s a great game that stands out among its peers and is undeniably… one for the books."
Alan Wake 2 continues the writer's story, 13 years later.
Remedy has Alan Wake merch on sale, including a pretty blue thermos. Unfortunately, things haven’t gone according to plan, and many players who want a thermos find themselves without one, though it does appear that Remedy is attempting to fix things. Nevertheless, it has resulted in a lot of upset, illustrating just how much the thermos means to Alan Wake fans.
