If you pride yourself on a person who enjoys games for their storylines, Alan Wake is a must have!
The story follows Alan Wake, a once renowned writer, now suffering from writer's block, who is taken to the small fictional town of Bright Falls to relax and perhaps find some creative inspiration for his next works. Upon finding that his wife, Alice, had the sole intention of having him continue his work here, stormed off to cool off; whilst away, the darkness from the lake took Alice and forced Alan to write her back into existence, unbeknownst to him that he would be bringing the dark into the real world. Alan must stop the darkness and save Alice with the help of Thomas Zane, a man who has already been through this situation before. The way the story is told is very different to the way most games present the narrative; Alan Wake is split into six 'episodes', each one ending with a cliff-hanger and the next answering the mysteries of the dark piece by piece, very similar in the way stories are told in television shows. This allows for future downloadable content to be released in the same format without adding any kind of hindrance on the plot as it can simply resume where the previous episode left off. When a level or episode has been completed, the game will generally cut to a sort of zoomed out view of whatever environment is happening, generally to add depth to the scene, which will then cut to a song from one of several artists, one of which being the Finnish musicians, Poets of the Fall, under the guise 'Old Gods of Asgard' who have appeared in other Remedy Games, namely the Max Payne series.
The game play to Alan Wake has him using light as a weapon against the dark, whilst using a variety of different flashlights to take off the layer of darkness surrounding the enemies, then finishing the job with a certain gun, be it a rifle, shotgun or handgun. Other interesting aspects of the combat include using a flash bang grenade against enemies in the way normal grenades are used against opponents in other conventional games, as it is quite literally an explosion of light. Other weapons include the headlights of vehicles, flares that can be propelled by a flare gun and old service lights used by miners.
The environments of Alan Wake are very varied; the first level in fact is within a dream, where the player must travel to a light house whilst being chased by the darkness. From here the small town of Bright Falls is the players next stop, a small diner being the point you explore, friendly interactions of characters the player will meet later set a nice calm, relaxed scene. The interesting thing about Alan Wake is that the player can walk around an area during the day, then later return here during the night, the differences in scene are quite remarkable as nothing actually changes within the environment itself, however it feels like a different place, in the same sense as the realms within the other renowned title of the same genre, Silent Hill.
As with most psychological thrillers, the sound is a major aspect of it, using very quite and subtle atmospheric sounds for the majority of the game and very loud booming noises to present certain aspects, such as enemies or a key point of interest. As the game as no such 'radar' or any way or showing when enemies will present themselves, the sound does that job by having them speak, and that being the foreground of sound, booming and echoing above all else.
A major attractive technique that companies can use to draw audiences to a product is crossing the threshold into other Medias; Alan Wake uses this technique perfectly. The story is the major aspect of the game, so releasing a six part, live action and free prequel to Xbox Live Marketplace, YouTube and Zune was a stroke of genius. Simply watching 'Bright Falls' brings an audience by using it's fantastic story telling methods and use of actors, who incidentally gave their voice and likeness to the main game. Also bundled with the Limited Edition of the game was an Epilogue, written in the form of a diary, told from the perspective of a character met in the story that follows Alan to Bright Falls and documents what he finds there.
With all the other mainstream games out on the market made by various titans to the games industry, Alan Wake received much critisms for being 'boring and lacking depth.' It's a very sad idea to think new and unique Intellectual Properties can surface onto the market and disappear rather quickly, to be dismissed by other games, however despite this the story of Bright Falls and the darkness that resides there was one that is certainly Game of the Year worthy. A fantastic heart warming experience of a man whose imagination was his own enemy is a tale worth telling and a must have title for any gamer who prides themselves on someone who appreciates a game with a story.