Gameplay
The view in this game is third person over the shoulder type, and although not being exactly perfect gets the job done and the players can get accustomed to it after a few hours in. The developers have made sure that adequate pc optimizations are done such as mouse and keyboard support and easy switching between weapons by middle mouse button.
The gameplay in Alan Wake heavily emphasizes on 2 elements namely light and darkness where you are vulnerable in darkness and all the darkness imbued anomalies can harm you and even kill you if you stay in the dark doing nothing long enough. But while in light you are practically invincible the anomalies won’t be able to come into light and will cease to exist if a light source of sufficient intensity is unleashed upon them.
Whole game these light sources like street lamps projection lights etc. will guide you to safe havens and towards your objective and unless you follow them your doom is inevitable. This light and dark dynamics add to a sense of horror and safety, while in the dark you will always be on edge, while in the light you be absolutely carefree.
The action part of the gameplay consists of using weapons and surrounding lights/generators and portable light sources like flashlight, flare guns and simple flares etc. to fight off the darkness. The darkness anomalies possess actual human beings and they can only be killed once you weaken their darkness by focusing you flashlight or any light source on them and then putting a few bullets in them, and fighting them is really challenging because they are smart they will outflank you, try to attack from different sides and try to corner you, combined with this we also have to fight boss level creatures which are harder to weaken and harder to kill and can kill you in a single or double blow depending upon the difficulty level.
The supplies are scarce in this game and this insists the player to use the ammo and supplies judiciously, this makes the game feel even more creepy when you sometimes run out of ammo and your only option is to sprint towards that next light source shining far away like the only pillar of hope in the whole world, that feeling is really hard to shake off.
This game also has some puzzling parts where you have to activate generators and other equipment to sometimes find your way to the next checkpoints. The puzzle are easy but does add to the variation in gameplay. Then there are collectibles and novel pages lying around in all the places between checkpoints and collecting them mostly tells you what is going to happen in a few moments without being too descriptive to take the element of surprise away.
Alan Wake game is more or less pretty linear game but it allows limited freedom between checkpoints by providing large open areas and jungle to explore and find collectibles and some radios and televisions which have some interesting contents to which you can listen and see. Overall it’s a really good experience.
