Alan Wake + DLC Review (Xbox 360)

Meh Full

“It was a dark and stormy night; the wind howled like howler monkeys – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by the whirring of the disc (for it is on Xbox 360 that our game is played) that hissed and ebbed and fiercely streamed the digital rendering of Alan Wake as he struggled against the darkness…”

Alan Wake is a videogame that emulates a TV show about literature, the kind of literature that thinks describing blood-soaked snow as a “gruesome slushie” is a good use of metaphor. And yet it manages to blend elements from all three media into an amazingly atmospheric, self-aware and tasteful little horror game. It isn’t anything terribly fresh or innovative. It doesn’t break new ground or, as its advertising claims, “raise the bar for storytelling in videogames;” but it does offer an exciting, tension-dripping ride through some dark and stormy nights.

The story plays out like a television miniseries with six episodes, each complete with ending music and a “Previously on Alan Wake…” segment. The plot follows an author (whose name escapes me at the moment) as he travels to an isolated wooded mountain town to rest, recuperate and overcome a troubling bout of writer’s block (the constipation of the brain). And overcome it he does. He wakes up one night all in a panic and realizes that he has written an entirely new novel. A horror novel. About an ancient dark presence. That’s coming true. And he’s the main character!

Da, Da, DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Okay, so originality is not Alan Wake’s strongest card and it knows that. It may not have a new thought in its head, but it wears its influences on its sleeve. Wake himself admits to being a huge Stephen King fan and he acknowledges the Dark Presence as being Lovecraftian. An FBI agent named Nightingale delights in calling Wake by the names of similar authors and there is an in-universe TV show called “Night Springs” that bears a striking resemblance to The Twilight Zone. Alan Wake is like a horror geek in videogame form, pointing out all of the little references, allusions and influences sprinkled throughout the narrative. Really, the only one it’s missing is Silent Hill.

But then, Alan Wake isn’t really about redefining the videogame method of storytelling, so much as incorporating the methods of other media to supplement the current definition. It uses a TV-styled episodic division to break up levels in a more narratively logical way; and as you move through the game, you find manuscript pages written by Wake that detail the events of his mysterious new book. Sometimes these just add bits of characterization and background, while other times they are placed perfectly to work as foreshadowing.

Unfortunately, they are occasionally placed deliberately out of your way and hidden. The problem with that is that the manuscript pages were created as a means of extending the narrative, but they’re treated like any standard videogame collectible (a bit weird, really, seeing as Alan Wake already has a standard collectible in coffee thermoses). A game shouldn’t be trying to hide its story from the player; it just makes things frustrating. Bioshock had a similar problem with its audio diaries, but Alan Wake takes it one step further by making it so it is impossible to find all the pages unless you’re playing on the highest difficulty setting, a difficulty setting that doesn’t unlock until you’ve beaten the game at least once. I understand the desire to reward players who have conquered the game’s greatest challenge, but better options can be found in alternate costumes, secret weapons, cheat codes or even a second internally coherent – and completely independent – story path with a different character. Chopping out bits of the main story isn’t a reward for people who play on Nightmare, it’s a punishment for people who don’t.

Beyond that, though, the story is actually fairly involving. The most important aspect for horror in any medium is the establishment of atmosphere; it’s the absence of this element that drags down most modern slasher movies, but Alan Wake’s got it in spades. The creepy forest paths draped in shadow, the abandoned mineshafts, the town itself — all of these are brilliantly realized to keep you on edge, to keep you guessing at what might jump out of the shadows next. And the Dark Presence itself is also magnificent, manifesting at times as a shadowy tornado or as a creepy old woman who hangs out by the men’s room. It’s the sort of thing you have to see to understand, but everything with the Dark Presence – from its appearance to the sound effects that accompany it – is pitch perfect to sell this thing as scary… except of course for its name.

Yes, unfortunately, “The Dark Presence” isn’t an example of extra-diegetic nomenclature (like the Elder God in Legacy of Kain), but rather what this thing is actually called in-game. And it’s such a dopey, literal name that it detracts from the mystery and elusiveness of the entity and sometimes makes it hard to remember why you ever thought this thing was scary.

But then it throws a train car at you – seriously, a flippin’ train car – and the memories all come rushing back.

How was Wake supposed to know he'd face supernatural peril in a small, isolated town in the woods? He's just a horror writer.

And a dopey, literal approach doesn’t always lead to a misstep; in fact, other instances ensure that Alan Wake retains a sense of personality. Most horror stories are so po-faced and serious, even before the slashing and gashing start, that the inevitable screaming becomes a welcome reprieve from the tedium. But Alan Wake actually has a sense of humor about itself. It doesn’t just wear its influences on its sleeve, it also gives them a friendly poke now and then. The “Night Springs” episodes you come across are written more like a parody of The Twilight Zone than an homage; and some of the manuscript pages you find are actually from Wake’s earlier Chandler-esque novels (which is where the “gruesome slushie” line comes from).

The characters are fairly boilerplate, but they’re entertaining all the same. The young waitress who happens to be Wake’s biggest fan, the aging rockers completely out of their minds, Wake’s manager and comic-relief sidekick who comes to town and threatens to sue everybody – they’re all fairly standard, but well written and acted, providing some much-appreciated levity amidst all the gloom and doom. Even the character of Nightingale (who really should be infuriating because he makes no sense) is enjoyable because of his insults-via-literati.

But the absolute best example of good literal dopiness is this song you hear later on that outlines your objectives with the following chorus:

“And now to see your love set free,

You will need the witch’s cabin key.

Find the lady of the light,

Gone mad with the night.

That’s how you reshape destiny.”

This song so capably toes that line between hokey and awesome that it makes one wish more gameplay instructions were written like that.

Speaking of gameplay…

It’s separated into nighttime and daytime sections, which is to say it’s separated into the actual game and the bits in between. There really is no gameplay during the day, it’s all there for story; you’re just walking from cutscene to cutscene while keeping an eye out for collectibles. So, the daylight sections go by very fast (sometimes ending quite abruptly); they’re just there to allow you to catch your breath in between the more frenetic night sequences. And the gameplay of those segments consists almost entirely of combat.