On Alan Wake

"Blinded by the light!/Revved up like a Deuce,/Another runner in the night"

 Blinded By The Light by Manfred Mann

Alan Wake. For those of you who don't know about it, it is a game about a writer who goes on vacation with his wife to the remote town of Bright Falls. They are only there a few hours before a living darkness kidnaps his wife.  He wakes up a week later in a crashed car, and is quickly set upon by locals possessed by this living darkness.

Let's get the good stuff out of the way. The writing is superb. You want to find out about what is tormenting Bright Falls. You care about the supporting cast, like the comic relief/Alan's sidekick/agent/best friend. You care about the sheriff and sympathize with her desire to protect her town from the darkness. You're charmed by the Anderson brothers, who half-believe that they're the Viking gods Odin and Thor. Despite wanting to punch the FBI Agent, you are curious why he's chasing after Alan, and what he knows. Also, the "light up monsters to kill them" mechanic is really cool, and the graphics (especially the lighting) is amazing.

Now, the bad stuff. And the bad stuff ranges from just weird to manipulative. Throughout the game, everything makes sense. Unt Complete and perfect sense. Then you drown (I guess,) meet a weird double who exudes an air of craziness, and have to get to the cabin by shining your flashlight on weird glowing words.to form objects. To quote the Nostalgia Critic: "What the fuck am I looking at?"

Also, the game's camera and controls are just weird. At random points in the game, you will be looking over Alan's left shoulder, his right shoulder, or you will be centered perfectly. It was just a strange design choice, like the choice of having the dodge button be the same as the sprint button. This caused dodging to be more a matter of chance then anything else.

Another problem is that the game just isn't scary! The story's great, but at no time was I ever truly scared. Their weak attempts at creeping you out with the monsters mumbling were just not creepy. The jump scares just didn't seem to be scary. Okay, maybe I was creeped out one or two times. But they missed every opportunity to actually scare me.

But the opportunities that weren't missed were the attempts to sell things. Remedy used every single skinner box technique to sell you batteries. Seriously, those batteries for you flashlight? Energizer Bunny logo visible on them. Also, some of the TVs play Verizon commercials instead of snippets of story. But you will mind the ending.

The boss fight is anti-climatic. Then Alan writes the end of his story. And it is just an opportunity to sell you fifteen dollar DLC. Then it ends with David Bowie's Space Oddity. No. I am sorry. I was going to buy your DLC. You only had one item of DLC for me to buy. Then you pull this crap on me. I am sorry, but the very least you could have done was end with Manfred Mann.

And people complain about Mass Effect 3's ending.