{"id":3023,"date":"2010-09-30T07:36:44","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T21:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=3023"},"modified":"2014-05-13T12:58:01","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T02:58:01","slug":"alan-wake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=3023","title":{"rendered":"Alan Wake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"alanwake\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Platform:\u00a0 <\/strong>Xbox 360<\/em>
\nDeveloper:\u00a0 <\/strong>Remedy Entertainment<\/em>
\nPublisher:\u00a0 <\/strong>Microsoft Game Studios
\n<\/em><\/p>\nA<\/span>lan Wake is an \u2018action thriller\u2019 game by Remedy Entertainment that has been five years in the making.\u00a0 Subject to multiple delays and redesigns, it has gradually reduced in scope over the years from its origins in 2005 as an open world game pushing graphical boundaries on the PC and Xbox 360 to a linear Xbox-exclusive release in 2010.<\/p>\n

Players are introduced to the eponymous lead Alan Wake, a famous writer who is holidaying in Maine and is struggling to overcome a bout of writers block after his most recent bestseller.\u00a0 Wake and his wife Alice ending up lodging in a cabin in Bright Falls which is filled with quirky and oddball inhabitants.<\/p>\n

Alan Wake<\/em> is a game that wears its inspiration on its sleeve.\u00a0 The game opens with a voice over from Wake and his first words directly mention Stephen King.\u00a0 Sure enough, the characters in Bright Falls feel as though they are lifted directly from the pages of a King novel.\u00a0 There\u2019s the feisty local sheriff, a crazy old widower, an airheaded waitress at the local diner and a night owl radio deejay who hosts the midnight radio show.\u00a0 It\u2019s no matter that these aren\u2019t the most original characters by conventional horror genre standards, its still a far better effort at characterisation than you\u2019d see in most video games and Remedy has done an effective job in making Bright Falls feel full of character and worthy of exploration.<\/p>\n

Although Alan Wake<\/em> is a thriller about an author who finds himself in a world where his own writing has come to life, the game itself draws greater inspiration from the medium of television.\u00a0 The game is divided into six episodes, each of which starts with a \u2018Previously…on Alan Wake\u2019 recap of whats happened so far.\u00a0 The game also has one of the finest soundtracks for a video game set in a contemporary environment, using licensed tracks from artists such as Nick Cave and David Bowie.\u00a0 These tracks add a tangible level of polish to the game\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Once the opening cinematics have finished and the game begins in earnest, Remedy\u2019s inexplicable slavish adherence to video game convention begin to spoil the otherwise well crafted atmosphere and presentation.\u00a0 For starters, there is a rather intrusive onscreen mission objective that is stamped on the screen at all times.\u00a0 Why couldn\u2019t this be hidden away in a menu screen?\u00a0 Surely a game that aims to immerse the player in darkness cannot afford to have so much clutter on the screen.<\/p>\n

The game also has a measure of self awareness but lacks consistency in this approach.\u00a0 Wake marvels at the convenience of having so many weapon caches lying around Bright Falls, an observation that deliberately calls to attention a common video game design construct that usually makes very little sense.\u00a0 Wake explains these caches as being the handywork of a well intentioned helper who is aiding him in his travels (and he doesn\u2019t mean the game designer either).<\/p>\n

This is all well and good but Wake then makes no acknowledgement of the hundreds of coffee thermoses that are mysteriously scattered around Bright Falls.\u00a0 Why Remedy felt the need to include a videogame collect-a-thon in Alan Wake<\/em> is equally puzzling.\u00a0 Or for that matter, why they insist on placing these thermoses in prominent locations that break the game\u2019s suspension of disbelief.\u00a0 For example, late in the game there is a tornado tearing through Bright Falls that dislodges and hurls vehicles around the environment.\u00a0 This would be a terrific visual effect were it not for the fact that there is a coffee thermos on the pavement that is apparently so weighty that it remains grounded while tractors and buses are sent flying.\u00a0 Surely there isn’t a single person playing this game whose experience has been heightened by collecting these things?<\/p>\n

The game is also disappointingly limited in its scope.\u00a0 I was hoping for more opportunities to converse with the residents of Bright Falls, perhaps utilizing an interactive dialogue tree similar to Mass Effect<\/em> or Heavy Rain<\/em>.\u00a0 Instead the game is heavily focused on Wake\u2019s combat with shifty dark figures called The Taken.\u00a0 You shine your torch on them and then shoot these fellas in the face.\u00a0 Rinse and repeat this process about 150 times and thats the game.\u00a0 There is no noticable change in the design or AI of The Taken from the first guy you fight in the game to the last.\u00a0 For the sake of variety, the game does introduce some evil puddles and evil gates in the third episode.\u00a0 As you would expect, they don\u2019t much greater challenges than your every day puddles and gates.\u00a0 Considering Alan Wake<\/em> took five years to make, it is astonishingly limited in its gameplay variety.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, your enjoyment of Alan Wake<\/em> will be tied heavily into how invested you become in its narrative.\u00a0 It certainly won\u2019t be the simple shooter mechanics that keep you coming back.\u00a0 Remedy are to be commended for trying something a bit different with Alan Wake<\/em> and to their credit, I think they do some interesting things with the story and presentation.\u00a0 Unfortunately, like many games in this generation of consoles, Remedy run into the same problem that Rockstar did with Grand Theft Auto IV<\/em>.\u00a0 They seem interested in creating a game with greater sophistication and characterisation but are unsure and lack confidence in creating interaction beyond the scope of shooting everything that moves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wakey wakey, hands off snakey<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[623,652,9],"class_list":["post-3023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-alan-wake","tag-coffee-thermos","tag-xbox360"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3023"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14880,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions\/14880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}