Tuesday 8 February 2011

Alan Wake

Writing is relatively easy. Writing well is another matter all together and I cannot think of anything that can corroborate that statement more than Alan Wake.

There's a reason that games tend to have simplistic stories and tend not to dwell on complex storyline arcs that can capture the imagination that other media forms can. If you can write a good story, you write a book, a stage play or a screenplay. These formats have been around much, much longer than video games and are (and always will be) the preferred route for creative story tellers.

So now we have Alan Wake. A supposed, self identified, psychological thriller based around the titular best selling author, who has retreated to the idyllic town of Bright Falls to recover his creative spark. Little does he know a dark presence is waiting to use his novel to break from it's slumber and take over the town!

So, how do you stop the author from simply ending the novel with "and they all lived happily ever after"? With the most classical of classic plot hole covering devices, amnesia. After the opening scene, where Wake's wife is dragged away into a lake, he finds himself in a car accident with the aforementioned amnesia.

What follows for the next 5 hours can only be described as a seemingly never ending slog through the same wooded area fending off the same bad guys over and over. Honestly, Bright Falls looks like a very small town, possibly having a population of no more than a few hundred. Throughout the game Wake must kill at least half the town, judging by how many enemies the game throws at you. Which itself is a shame. I was hoping for a really scary, lonely experience, where the enemies would be few but incredibly hard to beat. Just from the amount of enemies and how easy they are to dispatch makes this game neither a thriller/horror or able to affect my psyche, rendering the game a simple third person shooter.

I will say, however, that the light versus dark mechanic is very nice. While the game does degenerate into a shooting gallery at times, at least there are some dying embers of originality. Using flares, for example, act as a repellent as if you were holding garlic to a vampire. It makes sense within the story and it works well. As does the lighting engine, making full use of volumetric lights like they were going out of fashion.

With great lighting comes great ambience responsibility. While the lighting looks great, there is far too much of it. For a game that relies heavily on the distinction between light and dark, it isn't half bright at night. Now, I've seen some pretty bright moonlit nights, but this is just outrageous. It completely takes away the feeling of being surrounded by the ominous "dark presence". It also degrades the flashlight from compulsory accessory to an overused weapon.

Once you have gone through the first 4 and a half episodes, the game starts to kick it's feet, get into gear and other intolerable cliché remarks about getting better. After being spoonfed the storyline in another example of utterly tedious walking and talking, Wake finds himself on a farm used by a pair of old rock stars, stage and all. I found this moment to be the highlight of the game, fending off ghoulies using pyrotechnics and a buttload of flashbangs. One reason I liked it more than the rest of the game is the presence of Wake's agent, Barry Wheeler. Throughout the game, Wake has been alone in his struggles and now we have some much needed comedic foil for Wake's dreary, monotonous tone. On that point, Wake's voice actor is truly terrible; trying to fake the awful gruff, manly delivery that seems so fashionable these days. I blame Christian Bale... for many things, but mostly that.

I'm the god damn Batman

As mentioned before, the game starts to pick up momentum but it maintains one of the most annoying traits in any story driven game. The arbitrary lengthening happenstance (technical term). There is not a single moment in the game where there is an A to B objective. It's always A to every other letter in the god damn alphabet to B for no discernible reason. At one point Wake has to get to Barry who has used a flare to show his location. He was behind a chest high railing and some parked cars and I was forced to go through several shops and onto some roofs. Seriously, why? At least put him behind a 20ft wall or something.

And so, we come to the ending. I'll not make it sound like I know what happened because I don't. I just don't. Wake manages to make it back to the cabin to write the ending to the manuscript, to defeat the dark presence. He writes an ending to save his wife. She emerges from the lake and we see Wake at the typewriter once more. He utters the line "It's not a lake; it's an ocean" and then... nothing. In all honesty, I just don't get it.

Intentional cliffhangers piss me off and in this day and age of downloadable content it's an obvious attempt to wring more money out of the consumer. Two pieces of DLC have been released to continue the story but no, I will not spend more money just to get another inevitable cliffhanger. I'm sorry Mr Wake, you're going to be stuck in that lake for eternity I'm afraid.