Alan Wake Review (lijunkang🍍)
To be honest, I have rather mixed feelings about Alan Wake, since I find both its strengths and flaws to be prominent.
* In terms of music, atmosphere, and environment, Alan Wake is simply top-notch. The game is cinematic and stylish. It has a dark, mysterious, and slightly horrific tone, which, as its locations and settings, is heavily inspired by Twin Peaks. The influence from Twin Peaks is so conspicuous that homage and references to the show are omnipresent.
* While the game is not well-optimised, it looks good on max setting and its graphics does age well. On the other hand, the graphics are honestly not that important if you take into account the fact that you spend around 80% of your time scrambling and rummaging through darkness with your flashlight. As a result, you probably should save a few bucks buying this original title instead of the Epic exclusive Alan Wake Remastered.
* Story-wise, it is very much like an episode of The Twilight Zone (they even have an in-game television show which is a parody of The Twilight Zone!). Some other reviews also cite Stephen King and Lovecraft as influences. However, this game feels drawn-out and twice as long as it should be, with repetitive fights and locations as fillers. I keep playing the game, but in the end nothing interesting ever happens, nor can I find a satisfying closure of the unfolding plot: the writing is just incoherent and illogical, and the denouement is utterly disappointing. Also, half of the story is told by collectibles. Such a storytelling method could work out nicely if the environment is fun to explore, which is clearly not the case in this game since most of the time you just stumble in the dark.
* As a TPS, Alan Wake has an inventive combat mechanic: you need to use light to weaken your enemies before your bullets can hurt them. On normal difficulty, the combat is not difficult. And dying is no big deal since checkpoints are abundant so dying only sets you back one or two minutes. However, the combat still gets old pretty fast due to the lack of variety of enemies, weapons, and terrains. And other than a few spectacular battles, fights take place in similar-looking dark woods or abandoned houses/fields, thus feel repetitive half way in. Not to mention that the control feels clunky, partly because the protagonist does not walk or look straight, which complicates considerably the jumping and aiming.
* Finally, I should mention that this game is a literal nightmare for completionists. It has all kinds of nerve-racking missable achievements:
- achievements for defeating an optional enemy;
- achievements for finishing part of an episode within a time limit / without firing a weapon / without getting seriously hurt / without dying or restarting a checkpoint (quit the game and resume later also counts as a restart);
- achievements for farming kills with each weapon / against certain enemies;
- achievements for beating the game in various difficulty, including the most difficult one which only unlocks after a first playthrough;
- and achievements for various collectibles! Wow, this game has the most kinds of collectibles I have ever seen in a video game: can pyramids, radios, TVs, signs, secret chests, manuscript pages (some can only be found when you play in the highest difficulty), coffee thermoses, alarm clocks, cardboard standees, video games...
You name your least favourite kind of achievement, Alan Wake has it. What makes the matter worse is that episodes are divided into hour-long parts, and after finishing the game you can only restart a game from those parts. And there is no way to see which collectibles you miss (only their number is shown), so good luck finding them out in your second playthrough! To avoid all these hassles, you are highly recommended to follow complete walkthroughs such as this one on TrueAchievements, or simply avoid this game like a plague.
All in all, I pretty much agree with everything said in this wonderful review from Rock Paper Shotgun. But in the end, I would still give a borderline recommendation for Alan Wake, for I still slightly enjoy my playthrough, and I appreciate its noticeable nod to The Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks; the vibe is really there.
And this concludes my 100th review on Steam.