Alan Wake - Collector's Edition Review

Let me begin by reiterating, for those who aren't aware, that I've had an off and on excitement for this game for the better part of five years. I previously wrote about these things, and you're welcome to catch up on that first. Also, feel free to check out the Collector’s Edition perk list and pictures.

Five years is a long time to wait for most things, but it's not entirely unheard of. Especially in the media world, video games, movies, and books have been known to carry ludicrously long development cycles.

Now that I own the game the biggest question is, of course: Was it worth the wait?

The short answer is: Yes.

Please note that the short answer does not feature the all telling exclamation mark. There are elements to this game that I find amazing, and others by which I'm not completely blown away. Finally, there are some elements that I would normally consider abhorrent, yet I can't fault Remedy too much as the ends seem to justify the means.

I'll start with a list of things I like, and we’ll call it The Great:

• The graphics are amazing. There are some elements I think could have been a bit better, but when you consider how many lighting effects are in place, how much fog, and the incredible draw distances that are being presented to the player as well as the implementation of the Havok Engine for the physics, it’s just incredible.
• The controls are comfortable. They’re not too tight, not too loose, but like Goldilocks says, “They’re just right.” As you make your way about the world, everything feels fluidic and natural, and you never feel like you’re trying to fight with the control scheme to make Alan do what you intend for him to do.
• Along with the controls how great the combat is. The combat, as you’ll know if you’ve seen any of the trailers, involves a two step process of basically using light to peel back a protective shield of darkness and then a weapon to deliver the actually death blows. It’s a very satisfying process when facing multiple enemies when you’re trying to keep track of who has no darkness, who takes more hits to kill all while strafing around and using flares and your flashlight to keep them where you can handle them. On top of that, there’s a very intuitive dodging system built into the game that, once learned, can keep you from death in a very wonderful way.
• There is an incredible amount of world to see and explore, and it pays off to do so if you want to be more immersed in the story. There are pick-ups aplenty, and it’s a lot of fun to track them down.
• This is one of those games that has a soundtrack that’s amazing. After playing through the game, I was happy to actually have the soundtrack that came with the collector’s edition. It is, of course, only original music created for the game, and not any of the licensed material that you get to enjoy as you track down radios throughout the game. There is an option under the menu, however, that not only allows you to watch all of the cinematics and re-read the manuscript pages you’ve picked up along the way, but also listen to the soundtrack, and it’s everything that’s in the game that isn’t meant for background noise and includes David Bowie, Poe, Poets of the Fall, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds among many others.
• The story. This is tricky because you’ll see it listed in the next section. What I love about the story is that it’s very well woven and interconnected, it’s fantastically detailed, and with the collectors edition you’re able to dive so much deeper into it with the companion book The Alan Wake Files, which is fairly well written and long enough to feel that’s it more than just a cheap piece of gimmick while printed on excellent paper in full color with a beautiful binding job. The idea behind the story is excellent, and as the story is peeled away, and more and more is revealed, it all feels very solid and well built. However…

Next I’ll cover things I like, but didn’t blow my hair back, called The Good:

• The story. Some of the the story elements feel a little cheesy and gimmicky.
• The voiceover narrative from Wake feels a little tired and sometimes more like it belongs more back in Max Payne, or perhaps Sin City.
• The voice acting is ok. At times even a little rough, but it’s not bad enough to ruin anything, or even be considered bad.
• The difficulty curve is pretty low. Normal is basically a cake-walk, Hard is a cake-walk with more shooting, and Nightmare is more like a Restless Daydream. I have admit that I was expecting more when loading up the Nightmare mode, and after playing through Nightmare I found I’d only had one area where I felt I’d struggled, even slightly.
• Ammo isn’t persistent. This is a tough one to classify because in some ways I love it and it other ways I don’t. As you play through the game, unlike most other ‘survival horror’ type games, you’re given a pretty reasonable amount of ammo to survive (as long as you don’t linger too long in infinite respawn areas), and if you push yourself to conserve your ammo your only reward is to lose it all between sections and episodes. So, when you’re in a section and feeling pressure because you don’t have ammo to fight enemies, it’s because the game developers manufactured that pressure, not because you failed in your quest to keep your bullets in your bandolier.

Finally, I’ll run through the things I’m going to call Not So Good.

• Advertisements. This is frustrating, to say the least. It sickens me that there are five gamer points to be had at one point during the game simply for turning on a TV that shows you an (old) Verizon Wireless commercial. There are also Verizon Billboards, a very well rendered Verizon Logo on Alan Wake’s cell phone, and you spend the entire game picking up Energizer batteries. Also, you drive into town in a Lincoln MKX, which, believe it or not, had Microsoft Sync, you also get to walk by a very pretty Ford Flex, though you don’t get to drive it.  Penny Arcade’s comic on the subject amused me. The only reason I have trouble faulting them, however, is that the ends somewhat justify the means. I have to imagine that money has been tight for Remedy over the last five years, and I have to assume that they only chose to defecate all over their beautiful game landscape because without that money there’d never have been a beautiful game landscape.
• The story. Here, again, the story appears on this list again as though it were somehow hiding among the landscape like experienced guerilla fighters. There are some flaws with the story and writing to be worth putting on all three lists. Being a Finnish developer, a game written by a Fin (who also wrote everything Max Payne), and starring a plethora of Finnish voice actors, I think there are a few things that are lost in the translation. Beyond that, there are some other issues, but to specifically describe the problems I have would cause spoilers, and for that reason I’ll  leave it as a simple shred of statement: Plot holes and untied threads. (And, yes, I understand that additional episodes are forthcoming and thus might cause me to re-evaluate this point.)
• Mo-cap gone wrong. I’m a huge fan of motion capture for helping create a more complete and immersive experience. From time to time, however, there are some issues. In this case I’m frustrating by the way that NPC’s tend to miss their marks when doing things like unlocking doors, or flipping switches. Also, there’s something missing in their facial expressions, especially during dialog sequences.
• Stopping on stairs. This is just silly, and it’s not completely uncommon in games, but for some reason you can send Alan up a set of stairs at a full run and he’ll occasionally just stop dead, even with your thumb still pushing forward and finger on the run trigger, he’ll just stand there. After a moment he’ll begin his idle animations, swinging his arms and looking quite bored. Sometimes he’ll do it in one spot, but on a later play-through he’ll run right through like there isn’t some sort of issue with space-time on the stairs.
• Items fall down. This is a problem that occurs in a lot of games, when you enter a room or round a corner, items are meant to drop into place. They are being drawn, as if by magic from somewhere beyond the veil and they mean only to exist now that you approach. Occasionally, though, these items to be completely surprised by Mr. Wake’s arrival, and thus fall into place while you’re looking at them. Even worse, occasionally items that aren’t meant to shock or surprise will roll in front of you looking silly and forlorn.
• Hitting and kicking. I understand that there’s a lot that goes into every controllable action your character can perform. I understand that building an interaction between the character and an object can be quite tough, but I do not quite follow the logic of Alan Wake wandering around Bright Falls hitting and kicking everything to make them work. Jukeboxes, doors, wooden decks and even transformer boxes all fall before his mighty whacking and kicking. It’s a minor irritant, but it remains anyway.

So, to sum things up, I loved this game. I have played through it twice, and have started my third tonight. The first time I played in Normal mode, collecting items and enjoying as much of the story as I could take in, the second time I played through on  Nightmare mode, now unlocked, and found items I missed. The final play through I’ve begun will be to watch the video commentary that’s included in the Collector’s Edition, and having started this, I can tell it will be a little tricky to try to understand everything those crazy Fins are trying to tell me.

This is the first game for the Xbox 360 that I’ve ever completed with 100% of achievements and collectibles, and I have to admit that I’m really pleased that I’ve done it. Admittedly, they weren’t much of a challenge, but still provide me with a good sense of accomplishment.

Are there problems with this game? Of course there are. No game is perfect, though, and I have to admit that there’s nothing so much wrong with this game that it ruins or even really leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It’s a ton of fun to play, lasts just long enough to keep your attention and entertain but not so long as to feel drawn out, and it’s not so short that you reach the end and feel as though you’ve been ripped off, rather you’re simply left wanting more.

Buying on launch day means that the first DLC episode, due out in July, will be mine for free. I can’t begin to explain how excited I am to experience this, as well as the second episode that’s slated for release though not yet dated. I was a little bothered by the idea of paying $10 for each episode, but after reflection, that’s actually the basic cost of the game new (there are six episodes in a game that costs you $60). I suppose time will tell whether these add-ons will be worth the cost and time, but for not, I’ve got my fingers crossed. As long as each episode contain an amount of gameplay on par with a middling episode from the main game, it should be well worth the money-dollars. 

So, in closing, go purchase your own copy of Alan Wake. If you can, do yourself a favor and give your game shop the extra $20 for the Collector’s Edition. The extra goods are worth the cost, and the money goes to a good cause, i.e. not Activision.