review: alan wake

As I've just spent literally all night playing this game to finish it, I think it's time for a review. Let me point out that any review you'll ever read is bound to have some, even if they're tiny, spoilers, so if you haven't played the game and you're worried one single nanosecond will be spoiled, you've been warned.

Now.

When Alan Wake was originally announced, I must admit - it looked fucking awesome. It was like a crazy mix of Twin Peaks and Silent Hill, which, while I'm not the biggest SH fan, I am a huge Peaks fan, and it seemed to lean more towards Lynch-esque crazy. If I'm a fan of anything, it's Lynch-esque crazy. So I downloaded the special webisodes, and damn, they looked even better. It made the entirety of Bright Falls looks like it was going to be the greatest mindfuckery of this year (and quite possibly the next). I was so prepared for this game to live up to all the hype.

And then I played it.

And now, here we are, and I have to say: I regret spending so much money on this game.

First: ADS. ADS ADS ADS. I've never seen so much stupid product placement in my life. A game should not be a commercial for Verizon Wireless, TiVo and Energizer. THIS IS NOT HOW WE DO THINGS.

The first half of the game was a slog. Literally, that's what it felt like. For the first 3 chapters, it felt like I was wading through waist-deep water in a dark basement and armed with stupid controls. The entirety of the game has stupid controls. I kept throwing flashbangs - not good to just waste, might I add, for those who haven't played - and flares left and right instead of picking up anything or running or doing something generally more useful than wasting all my ammo. To reload faster you had to mash the reload button, but this usually just ended in Alan getting his ass shanked while he had a little reloading seizure, jerking physically up and down in place. The driving portions were so ridiculously involved that it didn't make sense - the left trigger was break/back-up, the right trigger was forward, and then there was a button to juice the lights (and kill the battery) and and and... I'll admit, the controls, while ridiculous, didn't make the game unplayable, but that they were ridiculous to begin with is a mark down.

Now, I don't mind spoilers, personally. I usually go looking for them, as a matter of fact. But the single most obnoxious thing about this game was that it spoils itself, and not just a few seconds before it happens - it spoiled up to an hour of gameplay later. This is especially obnoxious in a game that is supposed to be a thriller. It tells you exactly what's going to happen - how is this supposed to bring about thrills? How is this supposed to scare you? Within twenty minutes I'd stopped even caring about the manuscript, preferring the unimpressive plot twists to play out as they should.

Which, the idea of a manuscript being found detailing what's happening is nice in theory, but detailing it to the point of spoiling the gamer an hour before the shocking thing is supposed to happen? That's too far.

And the plot twists ARE unimpressive. At one point there's a fake twist ending, meant to throw off the audience and create a sense of total confusion. I don't know if it's just my penchant for watching/reading psychological thrillers/horror, but it seemed really obvious from the start. I wasn't even surprised when it wasn't the real ending - the manuscript had made sure of that. Not to mention the televisions that turned on every once in a while to show Alan talking crazy talk (which didn't interest me until the fake ending, when he got really close to the camera and genuinely started to show more than just run of the mill "omg I'm writing a story and I'm trapped in this room and the story's coming to life" crazy.

Speaking of Alan, I know he's a writer and all? But there's no fucking need to narrate every little bit internally. "I KNEW BARRY WOULD BE OKAY AS LONG AS I LEFT HIM WITH A FLASHLIGHT. IT STILL DIDN'T STOP ME FROM WORRYING ABOUT HIM" is completely unnecessary while he's busy running for his life from Taken. I don't care about Barry. I don't care about Alice. I'm trying to get you to fucking survive, man. Do me a service and shut up. Not to mention his mind-blowing stupidity. "I'm in a tunnel where no one can possibly hurt me, let me run outside to check if someone's okay even though the plan is to meet up at the other side and since I'M the one in control of everything happening there's no way I could've written my best friend into a firey crash despite the warnings of the woman I've just spent three chapters searching for and could possibly just have doomed to a horrible death" = mind-blowing stupidity.

My last biggest beef with the game (besides everything) is the absolute lack of learning curve. I'm not a new gamer. I'm not a stranger to impossible situations in games. I love hard games, don't get me wrong. I prefer a challenge. But there's a difference between "difficult but fun" and "absolutely no fucking hope in the world to get out of this alive". In the end, when you're running for sweet life from about 1000 super-powered Taken with nothing but a flare and three pistol bullets? We've swiftly moved from "this is difficult but fun" to "if I can just make it past this one level I'll never curse again". The game ranges from moderately easy to mind-blowingly difficult, and switches from either difficulty without any warning.

This makes it very, VERY difficult to care about finishing, let me tell you.

All told, this game is nowhere near as fantastic as everyone says. It's got a lot of good ideas but it just fumbles every bit of the story-telling - ironic, considering it's about a story and a writer. While I didn't like it, I will admit it's an interesting little number to fuck around with, but after a while it gets repetitive, ridiculous and absolutely unbelievable. I didn't hate it enough to not play it again - but I've always been one to play things purely to underline the hate, so hey.

Overall, wait until it's used, if you get it at all. Seriously. It's a fun time-waster (after the first three chapters) but everything in-between the fun is too much to consider it a decent game.