I just beat Alan Wake today, so time for a review. And much like my review of FF13, a good bit is going to be devoted to answering the most common complaints people seem to have about it, so you have been warned.
First of all, I'll just say that I was actually very, very happy with the game--and I'm one that's been following it for several years now, so. I only have two complaints, which I'll get to in a moment. Let's break it down.
Graphics: The funny thing is that the graphics are one of the things the haters actually LIKE about the game. Me? They're one of my only two complaints. Now, it's very possible that I'm just spoiled because it hasn't been that long since I played FF13, but to me, Alan Wake's graphics are nothing to write home about. I can recall seeing shitty textures and even some actual pixelization in several parts, and the characters are a little Uncanny Valley. They're not terrible graphics, mind. It looks nice enough, it's just...not mind-blowing or anything.
Gameplay: Okay, so this is people's biggest complaint. "It's repetitive! It's linear!" First of all, yes, it is linear. If you want to know my thoughts about that, refer to FF13. All games are linear, some just hide it better than others. Alan Wake doesn't hide it very well. So what? It's also a very story-driven game. Story-driven games usually work BETTER the more linear they are, particularly a thriller like Alan Wake, because keeping it linear helps keep a feeling of intensity going. Speaking of, to all the people complaining about it not being scary--it's supposed to be a thriller more than horror. And it does that very well. Very intense, very atmospheric, very amazing.
Now, on to the repetitiveness. Yes, maybe it would have been nice to see a little bit more variety in the enemy types thrown at you, but it's not that big a deal. For one thing, the game is only about 10-12 hours long, so it's not like it has time to get that annoying. And believe it or not, there's actually a good bit of strategy available to use in the combat. Personally, I wasn't annoyed by the gameplay at all.
Of course, one thing people don't seem to grasp is that this is a STORY-DRIVEN GAME. Yes, they could have had more variety in the settings, but that's not what the storyline called for. If they HAD started throwing in different settings randomly, this game would have been absolute shit. And for people bitching about Alan's inability to run far without getting winded? Yes, it's annoying, but dude. He's a WRITER. He's Stephen King, not Chris Redfield. It's this little thing we like to call "realism," and in this case, it adds to the intensity of the story. Same thing with Alan constantly losing his weapons. There's always a good reason for it storyline-wise (SPOILER:
for instance, YOU try keeping a bunch of guns on you when you get thrown into jail). Which leads me to...
Story: Obviously the most important part, as I repeatedly stressed above. And personally, I think it has a very good storyline. It keeps you involved and makes you want to keep playing. There's a lot of references to pop culture and various horror stories, which I enjoyed. And it's also a very ambiguous mindfuck, which is the kind of story I enjoy (I'm an Evangelion fan, for fucks' sake). Although, considering the amount of times I've seen professional reviewers describe the game as being rather literary, I kind of wonder if maybe a lot of the backlash against the game is coming from the 99% of the American population that might as well be illiterate because they don't bother to read. Or maybe it's just the ADD kids that can't stand story-driven games because they lose interest when ten minutes go by and nothing has exploded. Or maybe it's both. Who knows.
However, I do have one big complaint. I mentioned above that the game is only 10-12 hours long. Granted, action-type games are usually much shorter than, say, your average RPG. But even for an action game, 10-12 hours is very, very short. The reason for this--as well as, I suspect, for the ambiguous ending--is because the developers decided they're going to keep the game going with additional episodes that will be available to buy as DLC. Now, I would have nothing against this--IF the game felt like it was a complete game as is, and the DLC episodes were really just extra content. Problem is, they basically gave us an incomplete game, slapped on a vague ending, and decided to release the rest as DLC to get more money out of us. Personally, I have a problem with that. I would much rather they had taken as many extra years as they needed to in order to give us a complete game. Of course...it was five years ago that it was first talked about, and I understand they didn't want to fall into the trap of having a game that got delayed so many times that people just lost interest and forgot about it. So it may not have been entirely a money-based decision. But regardless of the reasoning, I'm still not happy with it.
That is, however, my single biggest complaint. All in all, I'm actually very happy with the game, and enjoyed playing it a lot. I enjoyed it enough that I'll doubtless be buying the extra episodes, even though I wish they'd been included in the game as they should have been.
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