IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE
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At the bottom of the lake your wife Alice awaits, trapped, frightened and alone. Darkness drew her there, and it is your mission, as distinguished
horror author Alan Wake, to set her free. The pair of you came here, to
the wooded, small town of Bright Falls, for recreation. It was meant to cure
Alan's writer's block by allowing him to relax in a secluded cabin in the middle of the scenic Cauldron Lake. But
the entire place seems to be haunted by dark magic that makes Alan's fictional
universe come to life.
Some malevolent force dragged her beneath the waves, and you dove in after her. Then things
got dark. When you next awaken you find yourself in the wreck of a car, crashed next to a road on the town's outskirts. You're missing a week, completely erased from your memory. Now, armed with a few weapons and a
flashlight, you must search the town and its surroundings. Seeking aid from its eccentric
residents to find out exactly what happened, you strive to set your crooked writing
straight and release your wife from her watery prison.
Split into six episodes, like a TV-series, you pursue lead after lead, all the
while going down a rabbit hole that you might not get out of alive. Behind
every tree trunk, bush and boulder along the dark forest paths an enemy could lurk,
desperate to bring you down. This sounds exciting and scary, but sounds can be
deceiving.
Alan is no athlete, he's just a writer. His combat performance is dragged down
by his lack of athleticism. He suffers from what Swedish people like to call
"ping-pong lungs", which is another way of saying he can't sprint for more than a few yards before running out of breath. It creates a nightmarish tension
whenever he gets attacked. You need to make every move count, remove the
darkness protecting the enemy, dodge their different attacks and quickly
dispose of vulnerable ones to dwindle their numbers down.
In other words, Alan's just an author playing the action part, gun and
flashlight in hand. Well, aren't we all? I dug this setup at first, but the
game insisted on being a borderline action game, with too many ammo pick-ups to register as survival-horror. The only variation comes with a few, very simple
puzzles, and a story section at the start of each chapter.
Neither the hero nor the
controls are suited for this style of gameplay, and it's so prevalent it makes
the game tedious. You shine your light at the enemies until their armor of darkness is gone and you can hurt them with gunfire. Alan's lack of combat options results in the same few
repetitive combat scenarios that hardly changes over the entire length of the
game.
A few different enemy types exist, all controlled by the darkness, but they're not
enough to sustain much variation. Human enemies of different physiques are the
only ones you need to shoot to kill. Inanimate objects like vehicles, tires
and fuel drums can come alive, too, but you only need to illuminate their
darkness for long enough to make them go away. The same goes for the flocks
of crows that attack you in open spaces every once in awhile.
You cannot withstand more than two or three hits before dying, unless you give the auto-heal enough time to kick in. But you can
dodge most attacks, and if you feel lucky, try to sprint towards the nearest
beacon of light where you're safe. That's basically it, in terms of defense. A
few human enemies are more resilient, but that's what the more powerful
weapons, like rifles and shotguns, are for. You can also find better
flashlights with long-lasting batteries or a stronger beam. Larger crowds you
can quickly dispose of with rarer weapons like flashbangs and flare guns,
without the need of flashlighting them first.
Something feels off with Alan's controls and his position in relation to the
camera. The flashlight's beam, which serves as a makeshift crosshair,
doesn't quite point to the center of the screen, turning movement into an ungraceful
drunken stumble. I keep aiming the light to were I expect to run, but always
end up hitting the fence, tree trunk, boulder or whatever is slightly to the
right of the light beam's edge.
No, screw the tedious gameplay. I'm more in it for the story. Alan Wake is
deeply inspired by both Stephen King and the 90:s TV-show
Twin Peaks, combining the two universes into a weird horror sitcom
landscape. It portrays this small town of lumberyards, diners, gas stations
and cheap motels all separated by long, winding roads through dense forests.
You often find yourself running along narrow forest paths at night trying to
reach some illuminated building on a faraway mountain peak.
Throughout the game it becomes apparent that Alan wrote a story during the missing week, where he tried to fix his mistakes. I like that you find individual pages of the finished script, scattered all over the town and its outskirts, that function as foreshadowing and exposition. It raises the tension a little, as new enemy types and boss creatures get introduced ahead of your first encounter with them.
I also like the ambition to mix horror with comedy and drama, which Twin Peaks did
so masterfully. One problem is that Alan Wake is not a particularly scary game, in
spite of horror being the number one driving force behind the game's emotional
landscape. It just comes off a bit too eccentric and goofy to establish a frightening mood.
The creators
(Remedy) often attempt to squeeze it all into one scene - for instance,
enemies that deliver sitcom lines as they try to cleave your
skull with their axe - whereas Twin Peaks always deliberately kept the different emotions
separate from scene to scene. A horrifying scene was devoid of all comedy, and
a drama scene had all the attention focused on the inner turmoil of the
characters. When Alan Wake tries to be both funny and scary, one feeling
interferes with the other, confusing the hell out of your amygdala.
The storyline is nevertheless clever, mysterious and keeps me entertained. And
towards the end I find it a little touching. The light and darkness are real,
tangible forces in this universe, but the story that takes shape around them
exists on so many levels they could be metaphorical as well. What is real,
what is imagined? What have you written, and why? I get the feeling Alan
uses his story - the comedy and horror of it all - as a sort of defense
mechanism, shielding himself against the truth behind some horrible things he
might've done in the real world.
As usual, I can't say I got many questions regarding plot points straightened
out, but that's what replays are for. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to
happen, simply because the gameplay was not good enough for me. I couldn't
bear running through another long, winding forest path, fondling my
'WASD'-keys and twitching the mouse aim back and forth just for some clarity.
Besides, as the Stephen King quote said in the beginning of the game, and I
paraphrase: "Explanations are for losers." I'll just give Alan Wake an average
score and eventually move on to the sequel, Alan Wake II, which was
just released.
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