Alan Wake (Xbox 360/PC)

TL;DR Alan Wake is a great thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat and constantly enamoured by the many twists and turns the story takes.

The Horror genre as of late has gone under a drastic transformation from being the series that makes it so that you can't sleep at night to being the “series with the zombies in it”. Even game series that traditionally have nothing to with the horror genre have been trying to cash in by adding zombies to their typical formula. The results are understandably lackluster. An overabundance of zombies isn't the only problem though, the leaders of the horror genre have been losing their touch as they attempt to increase accessibility of their games to a wider audience.  Unfortunately accessibility has caused the games to forgo the creation of scenario's where you actually feel powerless. You know, the main basis for creating fear. Alan Wake is none of that. Remedy Entertainment knew that you can't have a scary game unless you are willing to make the player feel helpless.

There's no way I could ever hold out against all those undead!

Alan Wake is about a big-shot writer named (what else?) Alan Wake who's been dealing with a debilitating case of writers block and needs to unwind. Alan and his fiancée Alice decide to check out a small mountain town in Washington called Bright Falls to try and revitalize Alan's creative juices by having a change of pace. Upon arriving in Bright Falls Alan meets a strange old lady who gives him a key to a cabin in the middle of a lake on top of a dormant volcano. Everything seems to be going pretty well until the game drops the bomb that Alan's wife is afraid of the dark. Well as fate would have it the sun inevitably went down and the island in the middle of the lake wound up having unreliable power. The power goes out and Alice predictably flips out. After some shenanigans and dialogue Alan decides he needs to go for a walk to clear his head, but just as he walks out he hears Alice scream. Alice somehow managed to find herself coming down with a case of drowning and Alan leaps into the lake to find him, while he's in the water he swears he sees a strange old lady pulling Alice into the water. Alan Blacks Out. Fast-forward a week and Alan wakes up in his care dangling precariously off a cliff. Why did it take him a week to drive off a cliff? There are questions that need answering and this game answers them.

So basically the premise of the game is that Alan is trying to find his missing wife and wants to figure out where that week of his life went. Alan encounters many mildly interesting people (like Barry) and uncovers a plot that has been unraveling since the day he was born. In Alan Wake you balance solving puzzles with booking it away from murder monsters. What you don't like running away? Well you can defend yourself I guess. The many enemies you encounter throughout the game are the victims of the “Dark Presence” the titular omniscient villain of the game. As the name of the villain implies you use “light” to combat it. The light can be from anything from your trusty flashlight to a cars headlights. You are given a gun at a point but ammo is fairly limited so you really have to pick and choose your fights. The Flashlight most likely will be your main form of defense since you can use it to stun enemies. Unfortunately standing your ground isn't always easiest option, I more then once wound up cornered and out of ammo from trying to defeat every enemy I encountered.

Then again, who actually likes having a light shined in their eyes?

The game itself is broken up into multiple episodes each one containing an arc to the overall story. Because the game is broken up into these arcs the game is incredibly linear and only on a few scant occasions do you actually get the chance to revisit previous stages. Exploration is kind of out of the question. I guess as a way of making up for the linearity of the story there are multiple collectible items spread throughout the game that you will find strewn throughout the world like thermoses and copies of “Night Springs the Video Game” based on the hit TV series of the same name that you can find scattered throughout stages. You can also find signs and papers you can read to get more insight into the world and characters of Alan Wake which is pretty neat.

Puzzles can sometimes be pretty abstract in what they want you to do; frame of reference time, there will be a part where you have to fight a tornado full of cars and boats and stuff. Its not exactly easy figuring out how best to approach the problem with your puny flashlight and a handful of flares especially since at a point during your fight you have to start platforming while destroying buses and crows that come at your jugular. I'm kind of a sucker for events like this, it gets the blood pumping and forces you to make snap decisions.

Okay now, imagine for some reason you aren't already in love with the games premise and mechanics. Well maybe this guy will change your mind about the entire game.

I'm certain you've heard of him already that was Barry, Barry Wheeler. You want to deal with Alan Wake you have to go through him. He's Alan Wakes best friend and manager and adds humor to the game by being one of the normal people who's dragged into all of Alan Wakes problems. Barry is quite possibly the most relatable characters as he's so deliciously average in every way.

So whats the Verdict on Alan Wake? Buy it. I doubt it will disappoint you. Alan Wake is a thriller at its core and will easily keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the entire ride. The only major downside to Alan Wake is its lack of replayability thanks to the episodic nature of the game. Sure you can revisit episodes you've completed, but what reason would have to return to one besides obtaining any of the leftover collectibles? There is a DLC episode that you can download that expands upon the story and further answers questions that may have been left hanging by the ending . I'd recommend getting the DLC once you've beaten the game, or at least prioritize getting a version of the game that comes with the DLC.

Be warned, shit gets pretty weird in the DLC.

Of Ghostly Ghasts, and Video Gaming Specters

Full disclosure, I was very uncertain whether or not I would post this as it doesn’t directly involve video games. This is a true story as I did experience the following events and my parents and friends definitely know I complained about at least one of them while keeping the other one to myself for obvious reasons that involve staying out of the nut house. So in the spirit of it being Halloween I present to you the story of a potential ghost thing I encounter when I was young.

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Growing up the game room in my household was always the basement and to this day the game consoles are still placed in the basement at my parents homes. When I was nine my father brought home a PlayStation that had been given to him by my Uncle who never managed to hold onto games or game systems for very long. After bringing it home my dad and I went to the nearest Funcoland and picked up Gex and a few other games. That night we both sat down and played it but from then on it would just be me spending several hours a day in the basement playing the PlayStation or the NES that we had setup.
One day my parents had gone out taking my sister with them and I decided the best possible way of spending this time would be by huddling up near the TV and spending the entire time playing Rayman. One of the few things I remember most vividly from my childhood is this moment, in the middle of playing Rayman I began to hear my name whispered, “Michael… Michael… Michael…” It was a female voice that I didn’t particularly recognize. My first reaction was to look around the room to see if anyone was hiding like if my parents had come home and were trying to trick me (that’s a normal thing for parents to do, right?) I also knew the neighbors at the time and none of them were named Michael or any variation of that. For the record the way my house is setup in order to get from the basement to the first floor you have to pass the laundry room which you can see into from the hallway leading to the staircase. When I became fed up with searching for who may be hiding in the room I got up and began to make my way to the stairs as I looked in the direction of the laundry room for about a split-second I saw what appeared to be a person (but I didn’t get a good enough look to catch any discerning features), just staring at me, then as soon as I saw it it disappeared. I ran back into the basement and refused to go near the stairs until my mom came down to force me to eat dinner and for the first time in my young life I was more then happy to eat my damn vegetables.
When I was eleven a similar instance happened, I was spending time playing video games in the Basement and got so into my gaming session that I decided I’d sleep on the couch in order to maximize my gaming time. Around 11PM I passed out until I was awoken by the light of the TV’s static as somehow it had managed to turn itself on. So I tried shutting it off using the remote to no avail, I presumed the batteries were dead and went and tried repeatedly to use the power button on the television to turn it off this tactic failed just as much as the previous and I chose the most drastic option and unplugged the TV from the wall. It remained on. It was at this point I began to get a bit unnerved, as I backed away from the TV and went to gather my blanket and pillow under the impression that I would just get the hell out of there and hope everything went back to normal at a later date I heard it. I heard “Michael” whispered ever so softly. I just resigned myself at that point and buried myself under my blanket and in the cushions of the couch trying to fortify myself from whatever was doing this. I eventually fell asleep and when I woke up everything was back to the normal, the TV was off and unplugged and I was very much alive. I considered it a victory at the time.
Fast forward to when I’m sixteen, by this point I was forced to move into the basement armed with a with a PlayStation 2, GameCube, and NES and I made the best of a fairly shitty situation. One day during the summer the basement grew suddenly cold or more specifically the area around where my game systems and TV were. Even though every other part of the house was being kept at a nice 70-80 degrees that one spot far away from any vent but right next to a window which should have been oozing in heat into the house. I attempted to rectify the situation by opening the window and the backyard door but the spot remained quite cold while the rest of the room slowly grew warmer. This wouldn’t be an isolated incident and it would occur randomly throughout that summer, which led me to believe that it wasn’t just a place where all the cold air from the house was collecting. One night during early September this occurred and I initially thought nothing of it as I slowly grew accustomed to it over the summer but that night I heard something that sounded familiar. I heard my name whispered ever so softly, “Michael” only this time it was accompanied by a full sentence, “Michael where are you?”. I panicked and wondered if there was some sort of stalker in my house so I grabbed my crowbar that I kept under my bed (seemed like a pretty normal thing at the time to have at the time) then I heard it again only it sounded closer but I could make out that it was a woman's voice, one that I had never heard before. I was sitting on the couch facing the television and I thought I noticed movement behind the couch through the reflection of the television. I leapt up and looked behind the couch brandishing my crowbar ready to attack. There was nothing. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something white move towards the laundry room, I rushed towards the laundry room and just before I reached it I saw what looked like a womans’ head poke out from the side and stare at me then duck back in. I rushed into the room to face whomever was trying to scare me and was greeted with nothing but an some dirty laundry and cleaning supplies. At that point I abandoned all hope of understanding what had happened and simply moved on while remaining wary of any subtle changes in the basement.
I have never encountered these phenomenon since then. Once I graduated High School I moved out and never looked back until recently when I was forced to return due to financial reasons (read: I’m bad with money). It wasn’t until a week ago while I was sitting in the basement of the house I grew up in and just remembered all of the weirdness that occurred down here. As I’m writing this I feel slightly unnerved having experienced things that I can’t quite explain, I’d like to chalk it all up to psychosis but that doesn’t explain the physical situations like the TV or the cold spots. Maybe this is all in my head or maybe I’m just a pretty unlucky guy who happens to live in a room with an undead roommate who doesn’t understand common courtesy. I could probably market that idea.