Awake

A short review of Alan Wake.

Short because it's not all that great and also because it's not a brand new game. Astute readers will have noticed that I discuss little of the story and here will do less so due to the fact that this game is all story. Well, mostly plot anyway. Big maps, nice scenery, but generally a straight line. Slight deviations for collectibles but despite some open looking areas, exploration is not really rewarded. You'll follow a path towards a pool of light, where you get a checkpoint save. Normally I hate checkpoint saves, but at least here you get plenty of them.

The game is really aiming for atmosphere, which it does well but still can't really frighten the player with much other than jump scares, though it has some creepy moments. But there is plenty of darkness and the game features an excellent lighting engine. Seriously guys, make Pitch Black into a game with this engine. As much as they touted the "light as a weapon" though, it's really "use light, then a weapon" most of the time. The light has to burn off shadow to make enemies vulnerable. Thematically this is somewhat coherent, but I really get the feeling that it was "I have this story in mind, and here's how we can make a game out of it". And I don't recall, but was this game released in episodes? Because it plays as episodes. This means that you start over fresh as far as weapons go, every time you have an episode break.

Combat just feels really jarring at times, even though it looks cool when you fire a flare gun (the game's super-weapon). Part of my issue with the combat is that the controls aren't always responsive; try to dodge and you get hit, dodge too much and you can't run away and jumping doesn't always happen. And enemies spawn all around you most of the time, so you'll be lighting up baddies in front and get hacked at from the side. What's weird though is that the camera is positioned so Wake is always running at an angle to the centre of the screen, but seems to back off a little when enemies are around.

What I like: The lighting is fantastic, the graphics in general are great and despite playing out mostly in darkness, this game features more colour than Tomb Raider did. I kind of like the story, but I definitely like the in-jokes and Max Payne references (Sam Lake is not above self-satire).

What I didn't like: The camera and controls. Combat. Huh, that's about it really, although combat makes up a fair amount of the game.

So far the Nightmare mode pages haven't been hard to find, but it doesn't really lend itself to repeats. I got it very cheaply, so a few (OK, several) moments of frustration during combat and occasionally falling off a ledge can be overlooked somewhat. And this came out about as long as my other game reviews, hmmm.