Alan Wake Review

Alan Wake Review

Review by EuroGamer 7/10

“It’s ready when it’s ready.” Developers must love being able to say that. It means they’re so rich and successful they don’t have to worry about trivialities like release dates. The publisher will wait patiently for them to hand over the finished product, and won’t dare bang on about seasonal purchasing trends in the meantime.

It suggests they’ve risen above the situation of most developers, who, on being asked when their game is out, must either lie or reply, “It’s ready when the publisher says it’s ready / when it’s cost so much money we can’t afford to buy toilet paper for the office / when the movie’s out, even if we haven’t finished the final level and none of the cars have wheels.”

Remedy Entertainment doesn’t fall into that category. Extensive research suggests the studio never used the phrase “when it’s ready” exactly, but all the same, it’s been five years since Alan Wake was announced, and you can bet development began some time before then. Remedy even had the luxury of nine months just for polishing.

Alan Wake Full Review

Review by Games Radar 8/10 Great

Alan Wake begins with a nightmare.

Chased by a ghostly hitchhiker he thought he’d just killed with his car, the titular protagonist is running and stumbling through the woods when suddenly, with a panicked start, he wakes. The writer is safe next to his loving wife, the sun is comfortingly bright and the two are on a relaxing vacation together in a peaceful rural town. Everything’s okay… okay, that is, until their cabin comes alive, the wife is swallowed by an evil lake and the writer wakes up again, dangling alone over the edge of a dark cliff and wondering desperately which, if any, of these experiences is real.

Playing Alan Wake, you’ll face the same confusion. The game’s greatest strength lies in masterfully blending truth with fiction, mixing darkness with light and shifting backwards and forwards through time until you don’t trust your own perception, let alone your hero’s. Sadly, the recurring nightmare metaphor can also be extended to how you’ll ultimately feel about the game; while half of Alan Wake is an original, compelling and brightly intelligent mystery story, the other half – which you’ll sink unwillingly into over and over – is a murky, mundane slog through repetitive settings and recycled enemies.

Alan Wake Full Review

Review by IGN 9.0/10 Outstanding

Remedy is back under the bright lights.

Last time we played a finished Remedy game Max Payne and Mona Sax were machine-gunning their way through hoodlums while exchanging whiskey-soaked comments dripping with an overblown Raymond Chandler wit. That was 2003, and in the years since the Finnish studio that gave us bullet time has been cobbling together Alan Wake. It moves away from the crime rings and nighttime streets of New York City to a fictional small town called Bright Falls with great results.

The protagonist, Alan Wake, isn’t initially an action hero. He’s a popular fiction writer attempting to escape the pressures of fame and creative expectation whose vacation in Bright Falls quickly turns Twin Peaks weird. His wife goes missing, and his search to find her is swiftly diverted into the realm of the paranormal, forcing him to pick up a gun and pull the trigger to stay alive. It’s an adventure heavily informed by television shows like X-Files and Twilight Zone and horror fiction from Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft. Presentation, character building, and plot twists take on just as big a role as the tightly wound action gameplay you’d expect from a Remedy title. The result is a swirling tale of fiction that’s endearingly self-aware, that occasionally sputters and stumbles, but offers enough scares, laughs, and thrills to keep you hooked.

Alan Wake Full Review

Alan Wake Video Review