Alan Wake Preview

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Alan Wake - Preview

Alan Wake is definitely one of the biggest titles of 2010, as well as this new decade in video game history. Remedy have been developing this ‘Psychological Action Thriller’ for over 5 years now, during that time we’ve got a new Prime Minister, and the US got a new President…ok slightly off topic, I know, but 5 years is still a long wait. We can happily say it’s been a wait worth waiting… and it’s now time to Wake up!

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Details

Released: 14 May 2010
Category: Arcade/Action Adventure
Age: BBFC rated 15 Years and above
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Remedy

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Welcome to Bright Falls

Our Preview of the game consisted of a good 1.5hr gameplay preview taken from the start of the game. Alan begins his story with a car crash scene, running down a midnight bum and feeling really guilty (It’s only a bum! “Get over it” some may say) here you learn all the basic tutorial motives of how to look around and walk around like a clever human being. It’s not long though until stuff starts to go weird, very weird.

Like ever horror movie everything suddenly goes dark, the car has turned into a school run nightmare and has broken down. Now Alan is left to just wander off and walk down a beaten path, like every action hero does. To Alan’s surprise the bum that he ran down has somehow disappeared, adding to a worrying atmosphere where most people would think “leg it!”.

The zombie ends up getting ‘dark-a-fide’ (Alan Wake’s take on Zombies). To fight these horrible cretins you must use light against them. During the tutorial a godly light shining presence from the sky tells you all the things you need to know, the light also sends you down a ‘Energizer’ torch with 4′AA batteries ready to lock and load. You then go about shining light on your enemies to remove their darkness and then blasting their heads off with a shotgun moments later.

The game’s tutorial turns out to be a strange dream, as Alan wakes up once you finish the mission. Turns out they’ve been travelling to a coastal town called ‘Bright Falls’, a quaint little town where everyone knows each other and it’s illegal to not smile 24/7. It’s a holiday so Alan can take his mind off things.

We visited a cafe to go and pick up the keys to our lovely lodge in which Alan plans to stay in to fix his writing problems. We end up speaking to an excitable lady who turns out to be a massive fan of Alan’s former writing, It sure is great to meet the fans! This scene really did show off the character styles that are going to be present throughout the game. Everyone inside the cafe had an interesting dialogue tree to listen to and they were all of varying ages, lovely to meet as well, very considerate.

"You Must Fight Darkness with Light"

We can totally talk about the main gameplay aspects however. Firstly we can happily announce worldwide that this game plays amazingly. The environments pull you into this dark dream world which definitely could get your heart pulsing so fast that it ends up ripping through your chest. This may just be because we experienced it in full volume 5.1 surround sound, which totally changed the games experience. With that it mind we are a little worried for the average gamer who may not end up getting the full experience of the title. For those of you out there who don’t have a loud speaker system, you may just have to get one, or borrow one of your mates’ boom box.

‘You must fight dark with light’, so imagine as a massive spotlight being a Gatling gun and Flash bangs being the most dangerous grenade on earth. Flares also play a big part on fighting darkness, although we weren’t to sure on their exact use we still got a chance to set a few of them off and go a little mental. With your torch being the equivalent of a weapon which has to be reloaded with ammunition\batteries (I must say those batteries really don’t last very long, I thought Energizers were supposed to out-run a bunch of rabbits?). Luckily though you’ll get a beefy upgrade at some point in the game to one of those torches which could easily shine a Batman symbol onto the Moon.

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A little bit of horror?

Weird moment number 2: apparently the man with the keys to our getaway lodge is in a room at the back of the building. You walk towards the back of the cafe and find some crazy old women peering into a dark corridor which has had a lighting power fault, she tells you that “bad things can happen in the dark”, crazy old bag. We hero’d our way into the darkness and gave a knock on the appropriate door, no-one was home.

Then a cut-scene has some mysterious old women appear next to you whispering in your ear, adding even more to the ‘WTF Element’. We were already a little freaked out and we’d only played the game for 30mins!

More Spook

Once you’ve been told some spooky details from this crazy women you head off to your cabin on ‘generic amazing backdrop island’, which does look amazing! It turns out that the power isn’t on inside the house. So being the handyman that you are you ask for advice off a daytime D.I.Y program electrician who tells you to find the generator and power it back up. The actual process is 10x easier that in real-life, Alan Wake has a Quick time event for these sort of ambitious physical dilemmas, just simply press ‘A’ when the circle is in the green.

Power is back on and annoyingly once more the house get’s plunged into darkness as soon as night falls.

Possible Horde Mode?

After playing through the 1st episode\chapter\level of the game we were then taken to another part in the game. We weren’t told how far into the game it was but it seemed to be around the half way point (We had received quite a few weapon upgrades). We were placed on the middle of a stage while fending off countless waves of enemies – this sequence played a lot like the end-game in Left 4 Dead 2’s Dark Carnival level.

It was a hell of a lot of fun to play and we’d definitely enjoy it if we could play that sort of thing with a bunch of friends, maybe some sort of Horde mode via DLC…if that is possible hmmm?

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Overall then:

Alan Wake is definitely the title that we have been waiting for all this time, for those who have survived the 5 year wait you will be happy to know that it’s time to Wake up. We just can’t wait to finally get our hands on the game May 18th 2010!