Alan Wake (XBOX 360)

From Remedy Entertainment, best known for there Max Payne series, comes Alan Wake, is a game revolving around the life of… Alan Wake. You begin the game basically having a break away from everything as he is suffering from writers block, they goto a remote place called Bright Falls which is based in Washington, US. Bright Falls is a typical rural place and is basically set in a national park, there are many trees.

After eventually arriving at Bright Falls via boat, You pick up the keys to the cabin where you will be staying for your break, it’s only then at night the power goes and you start to hear your wife screaming, and she’s dragged to the bottom of a lake, you dive in after her – Lose Consciousness, And then you wake up in a car crash, Your wife is still missing and you don’t know where you are – In the distance you see a light, and you head towards it.

Welcome to Alan Wake.

Yes, Sounds really weird but the game is full of plot twists and keeps you entertained, it’s one scary fucker too – I wouldn’t play it alone. Alan wake is a third person action / psychological / mind fuck / thriller, The setting for Alan wake in Bright Falls is fitting, Tons of Trees and landscape for you to explore / Drive / and run, you will be doing alot of this, The graphics are really nice too, nothing special but they do the game justice.

You’ll soon find out that Alan is playing out a Book he WAS going to write, he kind of knows whats happening but strange things start to happen, the cabin where he was staying apparently hasn’t been there for around 30 years and with the confusion, where is his wife?.

The game sort of plays in a sandbox mode where your left to simply explore, you will be given basic guidance such as ‘Reach the Gas Station’ as a marker, but how you get there is upto you. While your playing, every so often the world begins to change before you, the surroundings start to turn dark, trees start to sway and things get a little hectic, then you see the ‘Darkness’ coming at you from all angles, your weapon is a Flashlight and guns you find around Bright Falls.

Darkness are basically townsfolk who have some strange energy around them, they are ‘Zombie’ like so to speak but they run at you, the only thing there scared of is the light and the aim of the game to get through these events is to shine your light at them, weaken them then blow there fucking heads off, if you cant and become outnumbered you have to run for your life to the nearest light, this is normally in the form of a lamppost nearby and these act as checkpoints, some of the ‘Checkpoints’ are powered by generators and you have to get it working for the power to come on while things are chasing you, this is fucking terrifying.

Then all becomes normal again. Alan Wake’s story is set out like a TV Series, You play episodes, complete tasks in that episode then your treated to cut scenes, after you complete 5 or 6 episodes, the season is completed then plays out all of the cut-scenes and highlights of whats happened so you can begin to piece things together.

If Working things out, Shooting, Exploring, Something Different, is your thing – You really cant go wrong with Alan Wake.