Alan Wake tells the story of an author in a surreal battle between light and dark. Created by developer Remedy Entertainment, known for the classic Max Payne series, has created a semi-spiritual successor to it. The question is, does this game live up to the lofty standards set by this previous series? Well, yes. For the most part. Alan Wake is a game that succeeds as an experience, but is less successful as a game. It succeeds in world building and its characters.

STORY
The story of Alan Wake is as follows: You play as the titular character Alan, who is an author who has decided to take a vacation with his lovely wife Alice to Bright Falls, Washington. Of course, this is no ordinary vacation, and things go awry quite quickly. He soon finds himself battling with a supernatural force who has taken his wife captive. And that's just the beginning chapter of the game. The story of Alan Wake is where the game succeeds; the main characters are well voice acted, and have genuine character, as well as motivations. The world itself has plenty of little touches and detail that are worth observing. For instance, one particular cafe that you visit early on in the game can be entered and left in a matter of minutes, but there's plenty of people to talk to and little things to interact with that should not be overlooked. And players will be rewarded with items or little story tidbits that give greater understanding to the game's complex plot. The game is so good at building up intrigue that it's hard not to get caught up in the game's story. The story itself is, at heart, a mystery that seems to add another layer of plot twist each chapter. Each of the 6 sections of the game are told in an episodic fashion, with each episode lasting about 2 to 3 hours, with a recap of previous events happening before each episode. Each chapter is suited to one play session, and the overall pacing works very well. Much of the story is told through finding little pieces of paper on the ground, and it's an awesome way of telling a story, and can't exactly be replicated by any other art form except video games.
If the story has a downfall, it's that the game might not give enough closure to players expecting a definite ending. And the pacing is harmed by the unfortunate choice to make the final chapter of the game a seemingly endless stretch of woods. While chapters 1-5 involve a hearty amount of story and gameplay, the final 6th chapter is just padding of running through the woods, shooting bad guys for much too long of a time. This section could have been taken out and simply ended with a half hour section as opposed to drawing it out unnecessarily long.

GAMEPLAY
The gameplay of Alan Wake is divided into two sections: story building sections where you, as Alan Wake, will exist in a narrative, walking around areas, talking to characters, and performing small tasks. This is where much of the story is told, through here and, of course, the in game cutscenes. The core action portion of the gameplay comes through sections where the story somehow ends up bringing Alan to dark, spooky forests. Here you will fight shadowy creatures known as The Taken, residents of Bright Falls that have been taken over by the mysterious dark force. You fight using an arsenal of standard weapons such as a pistol, shotgun, rifle, et cetera. Although your main weapon here are not these guns, but your flashlight. Light is your main weapon in this game. All enemies are coated in darkness that must be trickled away using your flashlight's light. All enemies must be shined on with light enough to remove their darkness layer in order to kill them with your guns. Your flashlight has a special high-powered option that you can use that will take away the darkness coating from The Taken, but will also drain the flashlight's battery. Batteries are the flashlight's ammo. The whole "darkness coating" mechanic works well, and adds a nice unique touch to the game's otherwise basic third-person shooting mechanics.
What isn't so great about the gameplay, however, is that it's MUCH TOO EASY.  Ammo, health-replenishing checkpoints, and insta-kill flashbangs are given out extremely liberally. On the game's "hard" difficulty, this is still the case. Enemies will go down quite quickly, and it takes away from the overall immersion of the game. If the game wants us to truly fear these creatures, it should be somewhat of a challenge to take them down; even the most inexperienced gamer shouldn't have too much trouble with this game's difficulty, except for the last areas of the game in which some strategy is required due to some actual challenge appearing. Beating the game once will unlock a higher difficulty that should've
been present from the beginning, and it will let you unlock a few more story tidbits, which adds a nice amount of playability.

GRAPHICS
This game looks great. Much of the game is spent in unsettling darkness, and the fog, clouds, trees, everything that should be in a creepy forest area is in this game. The atmosphere is VERY well done. You may have heard that
this is a survival horror game, which is most definitely not true; rather, it is a creepy action game (or as the game puts it, a "psychological action thriller"). It's hard not to play this game without feeling the chill and the overall sense that something is not quite right that this game's visuals seem to radiate. In contrast, the scenes during the day look quite beautiful and are a nice reprieve from the dark areas of the night. Not only this, but the game has plenty of little things to read and explore littered about the area of Bright Falls, and these little graphical touches succeed in making the world feel that much more real.
However, the main and only real noticeable graphical flaw of Alan Wake is that screen tearing pops up quite frequently during gameplay. It can break the immersion factor a bit, which is too bad.

SOUND
Alan Wake has an awesome soundtrack. It utilizes licensed music from many different decades, and it's very well implemented, with even some original songs written for the game that pertain to the plot showing up. The licensed music really adds to the overall feeling of a living, breathing world.
As far as sound effects go, they're also great. They definitely create an atmosphere no matter what the setting, and are sure to freak you out.

OVERALL
Alan Wake is an awesome experience. The story that it tells is enthralling, and is sure to intrigue you. It has some truly mind-twisting moments, as well as some genuinely dark stuff as well. This game definitely pushes the T for Teen rating to it's very limit. Alan Wake presents the world of Bright Falls as one that seems very real, with tons of detail put into the atmosphere. The game never really goes into the "horror" genre, but definitely has some really unnerving moments. Unfortunately, Alan Wake's gameplay isn't nearly as good as it's story, with the action being much too easy. Although it still works well, it would have been nice to have a bit of strategy instead of being constantly over saturated with helpful items. But, this is a game where story and atmosphere is the focus, not gameplay. And in that regard, Alan Wake totally succeeds, and is definitely worth checking out.

I think this is the first review of yours I am reading, and I already am eager to read another one! Your structure is very clear, your account of the game is well-written and detailled, making it easy to follow through. But you could have gone into more details for the music: what are some of the tracks we can hear? What about the sound effect: are they life-like? do you get scared by them because they are too loud or because they really suprise you?

It is still worth a 5 in my book

janus : Thank you so very much!! I'm glad you liked it. I appreciate the criticism, I realize some stuff could be more fleshed out. I actually love discussing music so perhaps next review I'll go a bit more in depth. If you read any other reviews, let me know what you think of them! (be wary of my earlier ones, though. They suck.)

You did a really nice job with this review. You added a great amount of detail and you did a great job with explaining why you feel the way you do about the game. I do agree with Janus about the sound category, since you could've added more detail there. Other than that though, you did a really great job. Keep up the good work.

gamerforlifeforever2 : Thank you man, I really appreciate it!