Exclusive to the Xbox 306, ‘Alan Wake’ is the highly anticipated game from Remedy Entertainment. Written by Sam Lake, who brought us the widely acclaimed Max Payne series, comes his latest work, an action thriller, that has been described as ‘something that plays as a game but has the impact of a movie…an experience bound to leave you thinking about it and wanting for days after its completion’ (Brian Crecente, Kotaku) Well if the above statement is anything to go by then we can’t wait to get our grubby, mystery loving, action thriller chasing paws on it but before we do, we’ll take a look at what we can expect from ‘Alan Wake’
Plot
Ok before we kick off the plot line you should probably be aware that some of this will sound familiar and in fact you will probably confuse ‘Alan Wake’ with a medley of games you’ve played down through the years of anti-social late Friday night gaming and if you can’t place it we will do our best to point out the similarities with the other games! The story is centred around a writer called Alan Wake and for some reason he has lost his flow of creativity and is unable to write anything new. His wife desperately trying to help her husband suggests they take a visit to the small little town of ‘Bright Falls’ where upon the woman vanishes (SILENT HILL) and Alan is left alone in the sleepy little town. Everything would be ok if Alan’s newest writings weren’t somehow coming to life at night and possessing the town and its inhabitants, turning the peaceful little town into a hellish nightmare (SILENT HILL) one which Alan must struggle to find his way through if he is ever to rescue his wife.
(Ok so it only really reminds us of Silent Hill but still…the similarities are there!)
Gameplay
The game will play out like many others that consider themselves psychological action thrillers – the player will have to interact with NPC’s and various other objects in order to the advance the story and gain hints about solving the complex puzzles. ‘Alan Wake’ will also feature a day/night cycle mode where during the day you will be able to question the townsfolk and at night you will be battling for survival against the monsters known as ‘the Taken’. Original plans indicated that the game would have a sandbox style environment, giving the player the option of exploring the vast town not unlike Prototype or the Grand Theft Auto series but that has since been scrapped.
Alan will have to use his trusty torch and various other sources of light if he wants to survive during the night and protect himself from the creatures that lurk in the shadows. The story will flow much like a television series according to the developers, every episode or chapter in the game is in itself a piece of the bigger plot revolving around the game.
Cool Stuff
If you are lucky enough to get your hands on a Limited Edition copy of the game then you can expect to find any and or all of the following inside it’s shiny casing: ‘The Alan Wake files’, a short story written by Alan himself detailing the events of Bright Falls, the soundtrack and score, a game Add-On token and an exclusive Xbox disc with special content including Alan Wake Xbox LIVE theme and Alan Wake Avatar for Xbox LIVE. So yeah you should probably try and get yourself that nifty little Limited Edition version. If like us you want to learn more about Bright Falls then you can check out the live-action movie of the same name – the movie is split into six pieces and can be seen on www.brightfalls.com
Alan Wake is released May 14th! Be sure to come back and see how we feel about the game after we’ve played it for a couple of hours!
