Alan Wake Review - The Pun Says It All

There's something about puns, there funny and ironic, and always make you smile and go 'Oh yeeeeaaahh!'. Other news sites have probably used this but... Alan Wake is keeping me A.Wake. This is a pun. Not only is it a pun, it's a descripition. Because you'll try to stay A.Wake to play it.

If you played Alone In The Dark, you'll be familiar with how Alan Wake works, where each segment is split up into 6 episodes, with each episode starting with 'Previously on Alan Wake' along with a quick recap, just like a T.V series. But unlike a T.V series you interact with it, because y'know it's a game... but Alan Wake mixes presentation with gameplay, a good example would be where you fight the Taken (people possessed by the darkness), and just before the hit you with an axe press the left bumper. This creates a short Slo-mo bullet time-esque sequence, which looks really cool yet fits the gameplay & the story very well.

Now I wont spoil the story, as it will ruin your experience with the game, but just introduce you to it. The game follows Alan Wake, a famous writer that has been experiencing writers block for 2 years. His wife, Alice, convinces him to go Bright Falls for a vacation, but things soon go outta control.

But this is where it gets ironic - Remedy (the developer behind Alan Wake) hired a company to do the voice acting for the game, but they had finished the voice acting before the game was finished - so they had to implement it in. Unfortunately, this doesn't do well for Alan Wake.Now you may think I'm exaggerating but, the voice acting in Alan Wake is THE worst I have ever seen in a video game. Sometimes it looks like a ventreloquist puppet - its that bad. Another Downer is the collectables: I enjoy collectables, but collectables are a sort of love/hate relationship - some people like them (me), some people dont, and for the people that dont like collectables - there are 206 collectables.

Which, quite conveniently brings me to my next point. Alan Wake was originally planned as a free-roam, sandbox game; But Remedy then decided to change it to make the story better, yet when you play the levels it feels alot like a free-roam game, with multiple paths and triple-digit collectables. Yet you do treat it like a free-roam as Bright Falls looks so beautiful and gorgeous when your fighting the darkness, it really heightens the tension.

Despite Alan Wake's faults, when you finish Alan Wake, and watch the final cut scene, you'll sit back and replay it again in your head and go "Oh yeeeeaaahh!", "Man that was cool!" or even just silence as you put The Signal DLC in your download queue and wait until it's downloaded. Because you'll want to go back to Bright Falls for your vacation honeymoon - 'cus you'll want to marry it afterwards.

Now seen as this is 360joypad's first review
I have divised a clever scoring system for our reviews. Each game will get a mark out of 7 for how many days a week you should play this. Simple.

7/7

Amazing