Alan Wake Game Review – PC

Introduction

When this game first appeared around 2007,it was hugely anticipated due to its revolutionary graphics , narration and the fictional settings, add to all this the fact that it was a Rockstar published game.

This game was first released for Xbox 360 in 2010 and later for pc in 2012.

Developer	Remedy Entertainment
Publisher	Microsoft Game Studios(Xbox360),Remedy Entertainment(PC)
Writer	Sam Lake, Mikko Rautalahti
Platforms	MS Windows, Xbox360
Genre	Psychological Action TPS
Engine	MAX-FX 3.0, Havok and Umbra Occlusion Booster

Now let’s move on to the review section of this awesome nerve tantalizing creepy game.

Story and Presentation

We play as the protagonist “Alan Wake”. He is not our typical save the day action hero, but he is just a simple and successful fictional novel writer. Our story starts when our soon to be hero decides to escape the pressure and expectations of the world which constantly wants him to churn out one successful novel after another. His place of choice for a vacation turns out to be a simple yet beautiful town called “Bright Falls” in the state of Washington.

Alan wake thought of relaxing in this town but as it turns out, as soon as he and his wife step in the town strange things start to happen, and then before you know it, Alan Wake starts experiencing strange paranormal phenomena and his lovely wife is suddenly taken away and goes missing, and then Alan tries to follow her and all hell breaks loose. Alan Wake’s peaceful vacation and life turns into a nightmare which he has to endure every moment experiencing paranormal phenomena and forces of darkness.

As it happens Alan Wake comes to a strange revelation that most of what is happening around him is a part of a novel which apparently he did not write but was thinking to write in the coming months, and finding this strange fact makes him go haywire, reality lapse starts occurring, our hero now does not know whether all this is real or some kind of a joke or a freakish nightmare.

The only hope he has to get back his sanity and his wife is to endure through the novel uncovering one chapter after another, and all the while he has to fight the paranormal dark forces using flash light and guns at his disposal, and thus our writer becomes a fighter ever on the run and on the chase to understand what is going around him.

Now let’s move on to the presentation part, this game is divided into episodes just like how a television series is divided into episodes. Each episode involves certain NPCs and different setting/environment and each and every episode comes with its own set of plot twists, cliffhangers and interactions which feels fresh.

With such a tone and presentation the game feels like a thriller series/movie rather than a game, this fact is made even more concrete by the addition of cutscenes which blend in with the gameplay naturally and from point to point Alan Wake himself kind of narrates the story and introduces new phenomena and environment while we are playing, all this makes us feel as if we are the protagonist and this ain’t a game rather this is a thriller movie/series, this experience is just fantastic and not describable in words.

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.

Graphics and Audio

Graphics

To say that this game looks good, will be an understatement because this game looks absolutely fantastic for a game which was made a few years ago.

Alan Wake uses 3 separate engines to make it look and feel so awesome:

1. The Max FX 3.0 which powers the whole game.
2. Havok which allows the physics based effects like ragdoll appear so realistic and believable.
3. Umbra Occlusion Booster is like is mini postprocessing improving engine which basically makes the ambient occlusion effect look surreal.

Hats off to remedy for creating and using high resolution assets for the pc and improving the post-processing quality thereby making Alan Wake even better on pc compared to the Xbox variant.

The volumetric lighting based effect in this game looks especially awesome and the reflections and color tone make it look as real as it can for a video game.

Audio

Alan wake also does not disappoint in the audio department and we should remember we are dealing with remedy here, the same guys who made Max Payne series of games.

The audio in Alan Wake is subtle yet so effective, it complements the game’s setting and mood perfectly. The audio always has a mysterious tone in it as if something is coming up soon. The sound of wind blowing and tree leave and bushes making noises on a dark night really creeps you out.

The sound of bullets and machinery in game is also really well done, positional audio is really done well too, and anybody having a 5.1 channel set of speaker will really have fun while playing this game at night all alone.

PC Performance & Final Thoughts

Alan wake looks really marvelous and to think it would run at ultra settings on a mid-end gaming graphic card at 1080p is a bit too much to ask, in my personal experience the major performance killer here are the obvious ambient occlusion and anti-aliasing followed by shadow and light effects.

This game is not one of the most optimized games i have seen but it’s not the worst either. So we can say basically what you pay is what you get in this game’s case, if you have a gtx 570 series card then you should have absolutely no problem maxing it out with aa and af maxed out, but if you have a modest gpu like gtx 460 and below and then you might want to turn a few settings down a notch to play it smoothly on 1080p.

But still the fact that this game runs really well by just decreasing the anti-aliasing in my case proves that you can achieve good FPS without much graphic fidelity loss. This game rarely crashed or froze on me and had almost no noticeable bugs which is a huge benefit for pc gamers as less bugs=less headache.

Finally PROs and CONs :

PROs

1. One of the best narratives i have experienced.
2. It’s an adequately long game.
3. Graphics are simply mind blowing.
4. Costs very less for what it offers for the pc version.
5. Good Artificial Intelligence(AI).

CONs

1. Could have been more optimized.
2. Controls felt a bit off.
3. Could have been more creepy/scary.
4. Could have had more weapon types.

Review Rig :
Core i7 870 @ 3.00GHz
8GB Ripjaws-X @ 1600MHz
MSI GTX460 Hawk Talon Attack @ 811MHz
Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA 2 HDD @ 7200rpm
MS Windows 7 x64 SP1

Hope you guys like this review.
Over and Out ghost_z.