Alan Wake

by Ashley Lavin | 10:06 pm 11/07/2010

Xbox360 Exclusive (4/5)

Alan Wake is an art game for men. Unlike Flower or Braid this game features amazing cinematics, menacing Darkness monsters (à la the Heartless and Nobodies in Kingdom Hearts) and without a doubt the best storyline for a game I have played this year.

You play as Alan Wake, a man who seems to have wandered onto the set of Secret Window and finds that his wife has gone missing and his dreams are trying to destroy his life. In hindsight, this was one of many allusions to artistic films and storylines. The game enjoys throwing in a Lovecraftian reference or a Stephen King plotline here and there. Essentially, Alan Wake isn’t about the game play. It is a story; a deep story that keeps you guessing until the very end, and even for a little bit afterwards.

The game-play is hardly revolutionary but still manages to feel original. Armed with your torch and pistol you weaken enemies with the light, and then shoot them until they explode into flames. The method of weakening these creatures with light stops the user from just running through the game blindly shooting up the landscape and missing the entirety of the large sub-plot – it forces the gamer to focus on the moment.

This game is an important step in gaming, critical acclaim or not. This game shows that you can have great game-play that doesn’t just consist of point, shoot, kill, tea-bag, and still manage to fit an intelligent story in with all the pretty graphics. This game is for those of you who enjoy an erudite horror and those who even know what that means.

Back