Geek4ever

The long awaited psychological thriller Alan Wake is as scary as they say on the box. :-)

Alan Wake is a story about a person who is trying to find his wife as a story he doesn't remember writing starts coming to life around him.

Alan Wake uses a core concept of light vs dark with light being your only defence against the darkness. Enemies will not follow you into the light and you need to shine your flashlight on the enemies for a few hair raising seconds as they walk towards you before you can do them any harm. Make that multiple enemies and the tension starts to rise. :-)

This core concept of light vs dark is leveraged to maximum effect throughout Alan Wake and at times, it can feel like you are running out of air as you are surrounded by darkness. Seeing a light in the distance I sometimes held my breath as I ran for it.

Alan Wake also treats the game levels like episodes from a TV show and has a 'previously on Alan Wake' recap at the start of each level. There are a lot of great touches throughout the game that make Alan Wake stand out, though if I was to change anything it would be the length of the game, I just feel they needed to be a bit more aggressive in trimming things down and perhaps adding in more frequent checkpoints.

Overall:

Despite the length issues, Alan Wake was a great game and really does something from a narrative perspective that I haven't seen in other games. There were many times when my heart was racing despite the fact I wasn't engaged in combat, I was just on edge waiting to be attacked. :-)