Alan Wake Review

Alan Wake treads ground familiar to dark psychological thrillers. Wake, a stymied horror writer, travels to the Pacific Northwest to get away from it all. Instead, he finds himself plunged into what seems to be one of his own novels: a story in which his wife disappears, he's lost a week of memory, and he must struggle through a nightmarish version of the world he to save her. Alan Wake makes no bones about its references to Twin Peaks and Stephen King; it hopes for recognition of these connections. Embracing them as a shared vocabulary for the genre, Alan Wake creates a frantic, intense, and never-quite-clear-what's-going-on tale all its own, worthy of the cult following of its peers.

Of course, being a game, the big difference is that you don't watch what happens to Wake; you control him. Alan Wake does a superb job taking advantage of that direct involvement to make the gameplay an equal partner in the tension of every moment; a feat few games have duplicated. Nervously scanning the darkness with a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other, not a step goes by without wondering what might happen the next. The designers strike the right balance, recognizing the build-up of the imagined threat and precision when to unleash it for the maximum effect.

Panic surges when the shades do emerge from the shadows. An inky darkness shrouds the possessed residents of Bright Falls. Only by burning it away with the concentrated light of a flashlight or other source can they be made vulnerable. Beset by groups of all manner of disturbing foresters and townspeople, chaos quickly ensues. Trying to elude attacks while putting enough light on each enemy to get a shot to take them down is challenging. It's a fast, fluid dance and, in perfect keeping with the game, often disorienting. Light-based weapons like flares and flashbang grenades make the increasingly overwhelming fights manageable, if only barely. Even on the default normal difficulty there are patches some will consider frustrating.

It could easily have devolved into an off-putting chaotic mess were it not for the story successfully orchestrating it all. Questions build throughout the game, pushing you on as you form theories, rule them out, come up with new ones, and repeat the process trying to make it all fit into place. Has Wake gone insane? Is he somehow living out pages of his own writing? Has some dark supernatural force awakened in the hills? A cast of endearing, solid characters provide comforting faces along the way. Interacting with them helps open the story up to being more than just the introverted mental landscape of Wake's imagination. But they too come with questions -- which can be trusted? Who will help? You're sure to welcome breaks along the road to answers but no sooner will you catch your breath then you'll be compelled to hop back in and see what happens next. A videogame page-turner, Alan Wake weaves action, story, and characters together with the skill worthy of a best-seller.

Alan Wake will be released on May 18 for the Xbox 360.