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It is funny to look at the long journey that Alan Wake has travelled from concept to final product.  Originally announced in the pages of Computer Gaming World in 2005, Remedy soon went dark, and little to no news came out on the project for four long years.  With the delays and lack of news for so long, one had to worry if Alan Wake would ever make it to the Xbox 360 and if it did, would it be any good.  Well, rest assured, because Alan Wake is finally here, and it was well worth the wait.

Alan Wake follows the troubled consciousness of the main character, aptly named, Alan Wake.  He is a writer that has apparently hit the skids with a serious case of writer’s block, and has not had a hit novel in a couple of years.  Looking to be his muse, his wife, Alice, has planned a vacation to the small lakeside community of Bright Falls, in a hope to spur his imagination for a new horror novel.  But after his arrival, Alan notices that all is not as it seems in the quiet community, as it has been consumed by cancerous dark forces that are looking to feed upon the world.  Faced with the disappearance of his wife, and pages from a manuscript he never remembers writing, he ventures into the heart of the dark beast, looking to vanquish it with one weapon: light.

The story on its surface seems a bit generic, but there is a surprising amount of depth in Alan’s travels.  Many times, you start to ask the question of whether Alan Wake is really witnessing the events that unfold during the game, or if it is some elaboration concocted in his mind.  The immediate comparison to me in another media form is not so much Twin Peaks as some have stated, but more like Total Recall.  Not so much the science fiction aspect, but more along the lines of never knowing if you are living the adventure, or if it is all part of your imagination.  Adding to that whole aspect are the manuscript pages which tell you not only of events that you have experienced in the game, but foreshadow events you have yet to experience, adding to the equation of sanity or madness.

Alan Wake also manages to capture a sense of tension that has been lacking in games since Silent Hill.  Every turn and every door will leave you wondering what is waiting for you on the other side.  Half of the time, it was not a Taken (the name of the creatures) that was scaring me, but it was my mind making me thing that something was going to get me.  Once I let my guard down, the game seemed to instinctively know and would send something that would have me jumping out of my seat.  It was not uncommon for me to have to take a break from Alan Wake due to it frazzling my nerves.

While you do have several weapons at your disposal in Alan Wake, it is not a shooter per se.  Each of the creatures you encounter are real people from the city, but all of them have been enveloped by the darkness, effectively acting as a shield against all conventional weapons, bringing the main game mechanic of light into the equation.  Be it your flashlight, or a flashbang, you will always need light to defeat the enemies of Bright Falls, and it is the light mechanic that is used in impressive ways.  Sometimes, you can just use your Energizer powered flashlight to burn off the shield of an incoming enemy, then finishing him off with a pistol.  At other points, you might be surrounded by enemies, requiring you to use more strategy, like flares and flashbangs.  There is no greater feeling than being overwhelmed by several Taken, only to drop a flashbang down and watching it incinerate all of them in a blinding burst of light.

Yes, the lighting effects are amazing in Alan Wake.  Most of the game is played in near darkness, and your light peers through the veil, giving you a small field of vision.  But the lighting looks absolutely amazing in this contrasted picture.  Many times, you will be off on a vista, looking down at a glowing destination, beckoning out from the darkness, and it just looks fantastic.  Part of the fun of walking in these dark environments is watching the light and shadows play out, showing off the little details of the world.  It is a testament to Remedy that they can still pull off such a dazzling array of light mechanics with a piece of hardware that some have said is reaching its peak five years after launch.

While the lighting effects are spectacular, the same cannot be said of the characters in Alan Wake.  It is not that they are terrible looking, but many times, they seem plastic in nature, never really giving me any sense of emotion outside of Alan Wake himself.  Many times, I would find myself enraptured by how wonderful the city and wilderness of Bright Falls looked, and then seeing how the characters never reached that same level of graphical fidelity.  The character models are good, but never feel alive, or display any sense of emotion from the predicament at hand.  The environment that they all inhabit however, looks amazing.  Walking around the city, even while it falls into chaos and destruction, I felt it could have been sliced right out of Small Town, USA.  The buildings all looked unique and held all kinds of little details.  I never felt that the scenery of the town or its outskirts was reused several times over.

While the characters were not impressive, the voices behind each and every one of them seemed to be completely into the roles that they were playing.  Most of the emotion that came from the characters came from the performances by the voice actors.  While the actor portraying Alan Wake did a great job portraying a man troubled by his visions and predicament, it was the man behind the character Barry that stood out the most for me.  He was quick to deliver humor, terror and curiosity, while most of the time never being on screen.   Ambient sounds were great as well, with simple actions like walking over forest landscapes sounding real.  Again, with each step, the sound was different, as if Remedy recorded Foley artists walking over several different areas of the outdoors to capture un-repetitive sounds.   And if you do not feel like going out to purchase the soundtrack for Alan Wake after listening to it at the end of each episode, there might be something wrong with you.  Each musical track was perfectly coordinated to the theme of each episode, encapsulating what had happened in some strange way.

I mention episodes, because Alan Wake plays out like a television show.  Each chapter is presented in a format very similar to an evening drama.  You play through a chapter, and at the end, you get a quick cut to an event, followed by credits and a musical track.  The next chapter starts with the words, “Previously, on Alan Wake” and you get a short highlight clip of the important events leading into the current chapter.  This presentation style gives Alan Wake a slick media look to it, but also facilitates the addition of more chapters down the road via DLC.  And yes, we have already been promised more content in the near future.

Beyond the characters on screen, I did have one or two bumpy areas in the game that took me out of the immersive nature of Alan Wake.  While it only happened in the first chapter, I had two small segments where the frame rate dropped dramatically.  It was for two five to ten second segments, and it was in areas that I would not have considered technically difficult to render, making it stranger to comprehend.  It never happened after that, but it seems like something Remedy should have caught during the final shakedown.  Also, while battling the Taken was a lot of fun, some segments seemed to be above the difficulty level that I had selected.  It added some frustration to dying and having to go back a little bit and play through again.  Like I said, these events did not kill the experience, but just added a little tarnish to an otherwise fantastic experience.

Alan Wake offers a tense and suspenseful storyline that is fused together with excellent lighting effects and unique battle mechanics.  Very few titles manage to create a palpable sense of fright and tension but Alan Wake does so with a vengeance.  A few frame rate hiccups and difficultly balances knock Alan Wake back a step, but it is never a huge detriment to the game.  Alan Wake gets 4.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.