Alan Wake - XBOX 360 (NTSC) Download

Alan Wake - XBOX 360 (NTSC)

Title: Alan Wake
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Genre: Action/Thriller
Players: 1
Rated: T for Teen

After being announced in 2005, Alan Wake fell off the radar. Now, in 2010, the game is finally a few weeks away from being released. However, should you still be interested in Alan Wake after the long span?


Alan Wake follows the title character, who is an author that hasn’t found the motivation to write a new book. To try and help this, his wife, Alice, convinces him to go to Bright Falls. During the trip, Alice gets kidnapped when the lights in their cabin goes off, starting a chain of events around Alan. The entire story is told by him like a narrator as he progresses.

Before this starts, though, players go through a dream sequence (tutorial level) where Alan tries to reach a lighthouse while dodging enemies in his dreams. Eventually, you find out that the enemies that are surrounded by darkness are called the Taken.

This is actually symbolic of what most of the game revolves around: light and darkness. Enemies are always protected by darkness when you first encounter them. To weaken them, light needs to be shined on them until the darkness disappears. You can tell how much you need to weaken them by a ring of light that will become smaller the longer light hits them.

Throughout most of the game, Alan will be armed with his flashlight to weaken enemies. While other light traps will be able to be used in the game, the flashlight is the main mechanic. By holding down LT, Alan can concentrate the flashlight beam to weaken enemies faster. However, this drains the battery when it’s used. The power will recharge over time, but the battery can be replaced to get a partial instant recharge.





So, this often becomes a choice of when to use the charge and when to just let the normal beam take the darkness down slower. You can hold up to 20 Energizer batteries (yes, product placement is seen every time you pick up a pack), but I found myself conserving these as much as possible. Weaker enemies normally can be taken down with a few short charge bursts and the normal stream. It was the bigger enemies and possessed items I found myself using the charge on the most.

Speaking of the enemy types, I want to detail them. There are basically five types: fast ones that drain quickly and take one shot to kill, average which take two shots to kill, bigger ones that can rush you and take around four shots to kill, possessed items which will fly at you that just need their darkness drained and bosses. The bosses vary from big and quick ones to waves of birds and more. Normally, if you need to fight them there is plenty of ammo around to use though.

Anyways, after taking an enemy’s darkness down, you can then kill them with one of the guns found throughout the game. A revolver and flare gun can be held, along with a bigger gun (shotgun, hunting rifle, etc.). Each of these can be reloaded with X, but tapping the button will reload faster, which is helpful in many of the tight situations you’ll be in.

Later in the game, you’ll also be able to pick up usable items, like flares and flashbang grenades. Flares can quickly drain the darkness for any Taken around it, while flashbangs can kill them.

Light is used in the game for more than just damaging enemies though. The Flashlight can reveal hidden arrows that point you in the direction of hidden crates with items to pick up, or reveals text that adds to the story.

The flashlight can also be used to get rid of black goo that appears in some areas that can damage you. Also, a heavy duty flashlight with a longer life can be picked up later in the game.

In some areas, there will be pre-lit areas that are Safe Havens that will instantly heal you and destroy any Taken chasing you. You heal slowly over time as well, but this was nice to find when I started getting swarmed.

Some of these Safe Havens must first be started by a generator. These are normally activated by performing a short quick time event of pressing A when it is in the green zone.

To get to the Safe Havens, normally the dodge was helpful to get around the Taken that are coming after you. In fact, dodging is key to survive in this game.

Finally, the light normally lets you know which way to go in the game. Overall, the light/dark mechanic is done extremely well in the game, and even adds to the story.

The story is also done nicely. Besides the multiple twists and suspense, the story is broken up into individual episodes. The episodes are decent sized, and normally ended how an actual TV show would, with a cliffhanger followed by ending music. To keep this feel up, the next episode starts by telling what happened in the last episode before starting off slow with no fighting. The intro normally just gave background as to what would be happening during the episode. Also, guns and the flashlight are normally lost at the beginning of each episode, but you get them back a short ways in.

As you go through the game, various things can be collected or listened to, such as can pyramids, coffee thermos, radio shows, TV shows (which are a parody of Twilight Zone) and manuscripts. The ones that are interesting are the manuscripts, which help give back story and foreshadowing over what is happening. One thing to note is that some of the pages can only be found in Nightmare difficulty.

Another thing to note in the game is that you can Drive a vehicle at certain times. The vehicles that can be driven are often marked by lights or have their lights on. Like the flashlight, the headlights can be boosted. However, draining the battery in the car just dims the headlights until the battery recharges. The car can be used to run enemies over, but not until they have lost their darkness. Also, the car can be damaged, but there is no health bar to give an exact measurement on how bad the damage is.

Graphically, the game looks great. The light and darkness adds a lot to the graphics with various effects. Plus, Bright Falls and the surrounding area has a lot of detail and is great to explore. While it may not be open world, you can still get off the beaten trailer and wander around to see the area while you get to the next area.

The sound is just as good. The narration that Alan gives will keep you entertained and involved with the story, and each character’s dialogue is done just as well. Plus, the soundtracks at the end of the episodes and that play on the Radio give a good break from the rest of the game.