I have been waiting a long time for Alan Wake, the latest game from Remedy, the same Finnish studio that developed Max Payne a few years ago. The game was announced with great fanfare in 2005, when the first screenshots came out, revealing very good graphic quality and an environment reminiscent of Twin Peaks. Has it been worth so much waiting? Absolutely yes.
I am not going to reveal any spoilers throughout this analysis-opinion because I intend to help those who are undecided who are hesitating whether to buy it or not to make a decision about it. At the end of the day that is what I would look for in a review.
Alan Wake is a full-fledged psychological thriller, in which supernatural and police overtones intermingle. The creators themselves admit to having been inspired by Twin Peaks to write the script and also by Lost, so if we add this to Max Payne’s script you can get a better idea of where the shots are going.
Alan Wake is a renowned writer who decides to go to a small town in the American West called Bright Falls, a perfect prototype of a town in the deep United States. Upon arriving in town, everything seems to be normal, you could even say boring, but everything changes when Alan’s wife, Alice, disappears under strange circumstances and Wake decides to find her by any means necessary.
The narrative style of Alan Wake becomes vitally important when it comes to telling the story, since each chapter of the game is as if it were a television series, including the typical summaries at the beginning of each chapter (“Previously in Alan Wake”) and always cutting with some cliffhanger that makes it really difficult to let go of the console controller. And I mean it totally seriously. I’m not one of those who usually binge watch the console, but I played the game almost in one sitting (it took me about 7 +1 hours). No game that I remember has hooked me so much, so I think it’s fair to recognize the care that Remedy has taken to create such an enveloping and well-rounded script.
And although the script is in my opinion the best thing about Alan Wake, none of the other elements are left behind. The sound is good, it does its job correctly (as an Arvirago sound manager said in a presentation, if the sound of a game doesn’t catch your attention it’s because it’s good) and the soundtrack is simply ideal for the game. In addition, it has a spectacular dubbing that helps to immerse yourself further in the gloomy atmosphere of the game, in which the entire dubbing team, headed by Lorenzo Beteta (dubber for Frank Moody in Californication or Jack Shepard in Lost) does a more than excellent job.
And what about the graphics? Have I not talked about them because they are bad? Not at all. The game has spectacular graphics that are very reminiscent of Max Payne 2. The expressions are sometimes too artificial (plastic appearance) but not always, and the mix between real image videos mixed with computer generated videos produces a quite attractive mix that gives the game more immersion.
Of course, the game is by no means perfect and has its flaws. To begin with, the development of the game is completely linear and the actions can be quite repetitive. It lacks a multiplayer mode which would have been a lot of fun, like the last screens of the game and it is also presumed very little replayable (although I would like to play it again, honestly).
In short, Alan Wake is a game to take into account that, despite my high expectations, has not disappointed me in the slightest, which is why I highly recommend it to all gamers, especially fans of mystery and suspense adventures.