Review:
Alan Wake

Alan Wake is very nearly a masterpiece. Reviews aren’t supposed to start with such a bold claim, but then again, games aren’t supposed to be as gripping as novels. Alan Wake is one of those rare games that stands up and shouts, ‘look at me, I’m more than a game!’ And by God, you’d better be paying attention.

Alan Wake is a successful thriller novelist suffering from writer’s block, unable to put pen to paper for over two years. Travelling with his wife Alice for some much needed R&R to the remote town of Bright Falls, he hopes to get rested enough to feel better about his work. But when Alice reveals that she’s brought his typewriter along with them, Alan gets annoyed and leaves their cabin. That’s when all hell breaks loose. Alice screams in the cabin, Alan goes running, sees her under the water, dives in to save her, then-

BAM! Alan crashes his car in the woods. Dizzy, nauseas, confused, Alan discovers that not only is he missing an entire week, but in that time he’s written a whole novel staring himself in the desperate search for his wife. But something dark is after Alan and, using the pages of a book he doesn’t remember writing, he’s got to piece together the mystery of what happened and why.

Alan Wake is a storytelling triumph, easily on par with developer Remedy’s last work Max Payne 2, or even true classics like Silent Hill 2 and Eternal Darkness. What seems a horror game quickly unfolds into an action thriller, the scares forcing you to keep playing, to find out what happens next. This is, without a doubt, one of the most brilliantly crafted scripts in videogame history. In fact, without the script being at the expertly crafted level it is, Alan’s search for his wife would have no meaning. The player is forced to care for her almost as much as Alan does, adding a sense of genuine panic to the unfolding horror. Also, a thousand points to the character of Barry Wheeler, who manages to be both best friend and comic foil, without ever being annoying.