Everyone has heard of the game Red Dead Redemption. It's basically Grand Theft Auto on horses in the Wild West. The game sold huge numbers the week it was released. Which is why for the life of me I don't understand why the good people at Remedy decided to release their game Alan Wake on the exact same day. That week I walked into a Gamestop looking to buy a game and was torn between which of the two to buy. The teenage kid working behind the counter was giving me this hard sell or Red Dead, at which point he said something like, "I'm sure who ever your are buying this game for will love Red Dead Redemption." At which point I looked right at him and said, "In that case, I'll get a copy of Alan Wake." What a great decision, because Alan Wake is simply one of the best games of the year that no one is talking about.
Alan Wake is the story of a writer named (you guessed it) Alan Wake, who goes on a vacation with his wife Alice to the town of Bright Falls located in the Pacific Northwest. Think the town of Twin Peaks crossed with the town from Twilight. It's cold and dreary and everyone in the town is really nice but all very odd. Shortly after arriving at your rented lake house, Alice goes missing and Alan blacks out. When he wakes up, he's in the middle of the forest at night with the only his flashlight and gun to protect him. Here's where things get all higgledy piggledy. Alan gets attacked by all kinds of locals who are possessed by some kind of darkness and the only way to kill them is to shine the flashlight on them until the darkness disappears and then shoot them dead.
The story is absolutely great. It's engaging and you truely want to know what is going on in this town and what happend to Alice. The atmosphere is awesome. The use of shadows in this game are amazing. Light is your only safe haven and you find yourself frantically looking for it at all times. The idea of using batteries for your flashlight like ammo for a gun is ingenius. When you are running through the woods and the flashlight starts to flicker out because your battery is dying, you start to feel real terror.
Now I'm past the point of gory things scaring me. I don't get scared by the Resident Evil games or anything like that. But this game, with it's use of darkness, had me on the edge of my seat and jumpy the entire time playing it. One time, in the middle of the night, I'm playing Alan Wake and The 30YO Wife sneaks up behind me and says hello at which point I screamed which made her scream which made me scream louder. That's the sign of an engrossing game.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with Alan Wake and beat the game in about 10 hours. There's two extra downloadable contents that are about an hour each, so overall your adventure with Alan is about 10-12 hours. The game ends with a cliffhanger leading us into a sequel. My only concern is because these guys got killed at retail by Red Dead Redemption, I'm not sure if a sequel will be greenlit. I certainly hope it does because Alan Wake was a great example of great story telling and engrossing game play. If you are looking for an intense thriller for a video game, look no further.
Until next time,
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