Never Too Old To Play™

Originally intended as an Xbox 360 launch title when it was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2005, Alan Wake finally arrived in May of this year to hordes of anxious fans. Okay… well… not hordes of fans, or even very many at all (less than 750,000 copies of the title have been sold worldwide in nearly 5 months on the market).

However, just because the general gaming public didn’t take to the game doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t… depending on the type of gamer you are. While Alan Wake employs a fair amount of combat, it’s not really an action game at its core. The game has a more psychological feel to it with a rather eerie atmosphere, much more reminiscent of Silent Hill (another game series that hasn’t done very well at retail) than the blockbuster Resident Evil series.

In Alan Wake, you take on the role of the titular character who is a former best selling novelist looking for some inspiration to get past his two year writer’s block in the quaint Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls, Washington. As expected, Alan’s life is turned upside down when his wife, Alice, disappears from the remote lake island cabin they rented and he is blamed. Strange, nightmarish things start happening, leading Alan to believe that there’s much more going on than a simple kidnapping, and he must work with his agent and the local sheriff to stop an evil from engulfing the whole town.

It’s an interesting premise that is superbly realized on the screen by a combination of clever writing and beautiful art direction as well as some engaging game play elements that fit perfectly with the game’s decidedly dark atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the more cerebral nature of the plot probably dooms the game to a lifetime of abstinence from the more trigger happy segment of the gaming market looking only for the next Call of Duty or Gears of War title to grace store shelves. It’s understandable that they would be turned off by the more slow paced game play and fantastical elements of the story when all they really want to do is frag their buddies in online deathmatches.

I’m sure the lengthy development process also turned off a lot of gamers who may have been truly excited for the game back when it was first announced or when it was “coming soon” for the first several years of the Xbox 360′s life. The game does look like it was developed earlier in the generation: the art direction is wonderful, but the graphics technology is obviously dated. Great graphics don’t inherently lead to a great game, but it’s entirely understandable that some people have trouble ignoring the visual wonders of titles like Uncharted 2 and Red Dead Redemption when looking at the preview stills from Alan Wake plastered all over gaming websites.

Nevertheless, gamers who decide to pass over this title in favor of the next frag fest or action extravaganza are most certainly doing themselves a disservice as Alan Wake offers a unique game play experience coupled with a disturbing yet enthralling story line all wrapped up in a chilling atmosphere that would make Stephen King proud. Indeed, playing Alan Wake is likely the closest thing to playing a good video game adaptation of a King novel, complete with the accompanying paranoia and week long aversion to walking down into the basement by yourself.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

This is not a game for children. There are some mature themes in play during the course of the game, and the gamer is required to engage in quite a lot of violence against enemies that are essentially representations of the townsfolk they meet early on.  The dark and supernatural aspects of the experience certainly don’t help. Enjoy the game yourself, but spare your kids the nightmares.

Experience this for yourself!

• Alan Wake (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Alan Wake: Limited Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)