Last night I let Jason pick up a new game from Best Buy. (I’m the money manager, so I dole the treats out. Heh.) Ever since we’ve been married, there’s been a little video game budget set aside for him. Every man has their bachelor hobby, and it usually gets relegated to the backburner when the wife and kids come into the picture. I consciously tried not to let that happen. I think it’s important to keep whatever activities make you happy and feel young. It eases the stress of parenthood and marriage. Plus, I know he secretly appreciates being able to keep up with the recent game titles (and keep current with all his single guy friends). He does so much for us. It’s the least I can do in return.
I said he could buy anything, but he picked ‘Alan Wake‘ over some of the newer first-person shooters. I’d never heard of ‘Alan Wake’– and I’ve heard about MOST things J wants. Unlike virtually all his other games, it’s not about future soldiers battling aliens or current soldiers battling terrorists. It’s a psychological thriller. Even the game title is telling.
Confession time: when Jason gets a video game, I usually just leave him to it. Our office is right next to the living room, so I leave the French doors open and listen to him five feet away while he blows things up. And I work. But this game hooked me. The back cover gives this synopsis: When the wife of best-selling writer Alan Wake disappears on their vacation, his search turns up pages from a thriller he doesn’t even remember writing. A dark presence stalks the small town of Bright Falls, pushing Wake to the brink of sanity in his fight to unravel the mystery and save the woman he loves. “I want to watch you play this,” I told him. “Can I?”
“Sure,” he answered. “I hope it’s good.”
Okay. SO.
Please go out and buy this game immediately.
I have walked past and stopped in front of the TV during literally a hundred of Jason’s video games, and nothing has creeped me out or held my attention like ‘Alan Wake’. The story opens with Alan talking about a nightmare he’s having (which, yes, you play) (yes, you start the game playing A NIGHTMARE). It has every single unsettling cliche imaginable, but it does every one of them Just Right. You begin on a winding, fog-filled dreamy road, where Alan hits a hitchhiker. In his dream, the man is dead. Alan is panicked. Then– of course– the man disappears, Alan walks down the road for help, and the man appears again– standing by Alan’s car, built of shadows and roaring threats in a voice that sounds like it’s formed of static radio transmissions. Of course this phantasm has an ax. Of course he wants to kill you. And of course all you want to do is get to the lighthouse in the far distance, one of the few spots of light in a purposely and sinisterly unlit coast.
That’s how you begin. The gameplay is interspersed with movie vignettes, reality intercut with dreams. Alan is a writer who hasn’t actually written a hit in two years. He’s arriving at Bright Falls with his wife for a vacation. Bright Falls is another pitch-perfect cliche: as soon as the ferry pulls up to the dock, your inner voice is screaming: RUN. It’s the idyllic, throwback lakeside town that would make Stephen King proud; teeming with locations that look pleasant enough during the day but turn skin-crawlingly evil at night. Diners. Logging sites. Hiking trails. Cabins. Old gas stations.
Of course, within the first hour there, things start going horribly wrong.
The attention to detail is phenomenal, as is the lighting. As events unfold (and they do, in quick succession), you find out that you’re combating these shadow people, and you need to hit them with light to exorcise them. One of your weapons is a flashlight, and lithium batteries are your ammo. J and I both thought it was clever. You need to blast them with light, THEN shoot, though– so it gets tricky; particularly when you’re swarmed by them in a seemingly abandoned location.
We played for over two hours straight last night, and reluctantly turned the console off at midnight. Well, he played. I just watched, with my hands covering my mouth. It was like watching a particularly eerie Halloween movie, and I HAD TO KNOW what was going on, and if Alan was crazy or sane, guilty or innocent. And what’s with all that lost time? The blackouts? The nightmares? The characters from his story coming to life? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Basically, if ‘The Twilight Zone’ and ‘Twin Peaks’ had a baby and then let Microsoft raise it, you would have ‘Alan Wake’.
This is not in any way a paid advertisement. I’m just that excited about it. Heh. If you’re a gamer, and you’re looking for something perfect to play this Halloween season, I would totally recommend this. I’ll add follow-up comments once we beat it, and let you know if it held up to the initial high.
I’m so sad I’m not in Toronto– I would be over the moon to do anything XBox with you and the other girls. Hope you all have a blast tonight!
That’s exactly what I was thinking… one of the few complaints people have had about it was that it feels sort of like a throwback, but that’s what I love about it. The environment is so rich and unsettling, too– yeah, very Silent Hill-ish.
We are going to an Xbox event tonight. I will definitely mention it! Sounds awesome.
I remember seeing a review of this on a local game show. It’s on my list of things to do when I have free time! It makes me think if awesomely scary old survival horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Back in the good days when every new game wasn’t just another FPS.
I can’t believe I forgot to mention that– pretty important piece of information! Heh. 😉 It’s a console game; the Xbox 360.
Looks great! Is this a PC or console game?