Alan Wake Remastered Review (Xbox Series X)

Hey Alan, buddy, can you maybe write out some enemies so we don’t get swarmed.
Publisher: Epic Games Publishing
It’s only natural that I didn’t really know about Alan Wake, nor cared that much about it, considering I am mainly a Nintendo and Playstation player. I heard about it, especially when the sequel was announced, but I didn’t go about to really learn what the game was about (though I do have a vague memory of watching a live stream of it for a few minutes). The only thing I knew about Alan Wake is that it’s the game with the flashlight. Fast forward to now and honestly that was the best thing I could have happened.
The game follows a man by the name of Alan Wake, a bestselling author who recently finished his book series and is ready to start on a new story. Well, if you count 2 years ago as recent and the terrible instance of developing writer’s block once you finally get the chance to write something entirely new. Worried for Alan, his wife Alice decides to set up a vacation to a small town called Bright Falls. Alice rented out a cozy cabin in the middle of Cauldron Lake, and getting the keys leads to Alan meeting a gushing fan of his, a strange lady obsessed with light, and a creepy old lady dressed in morning attire who gives him the cabin keys. Well, there goes the vacation being peaceful out the window right from the get go.
The vacation goes even more downhill as Alice shows Alan that she set up his typewriter so he can write while there. Sorry Alice, but this was to get away from writing, not to have a different scenery to write. Alan storms out and during that time, the power goes out in the cabin, Alice somehow falls into Cauldron Lake, and Alan jumps in after her. And then, suddenly, Alan wakes up to find himself in his car shortly after a car accident at night, where he learns that not only has he lost a week, but manuscript pages he seemingly wrote are coming true and he’s being pursued by a Dark Presence that possesses people to do its bidding. Which, right now, is to attack and kill Alan.
For the whole game, Alan tries to figure out what exactly his happening, tries to convince others what he’s going through (which helps that the darkness eventually brings others into the conflict), figure out a way to hopefully fend off the Dark Presence and rescue Alice, and try to stay alive throughout it all.
While there are some daytime sections throughout the six episodes, you will mainly be playing during the night when the Dark Presence is the strongest. And that means having to deal with the enemies it possesses to attack you, or The Taken. Luckily, Alan can defend himself against The Taken. Usually, this means your guns, but for Alan Wake it’s light. After all, The Taken are surrounded by shadows that protects them, and what’s darkness’ weakness other than light. You are equipped with a flashlight which will chip away at a Taken’s shadow, with focusing the flashlight will have them recoil and their shadow shield being diminished even more so. Focusing your flashlight will drain its power, but you will find batteries and it does charge slowly overtime.
Once the shadows shield is destroyed, it’s time to lay it into them with your gun, which will either be your trusty revolver or another hard-hitting gun like a shotgun. Though, you do need to keep an eye on how loaded your gun is, as Alan reloads one bullet at a time, which you can speed up by mashing the reload button on your end. You’ll also be able to find flares to make Taken give you space, while also taking light damage to their shields, flare guns to shoot a bright flare at enemies to quickly take them out (or at least their shields), and flash bangs which are my personal favorite and sets off a bright light to instantly burn their shield and may even kill them as well. As you can tell, the combat focuses on using light to your advantage.
There are multiple different enemy types you’ll come across as well. The main batch you’ll encounter are The Taken, which often what they’re wearing changes depending on where you are and what happened in the story. The differences usually account for what weapon they wield, how fast they attack, and how much health they have. There is a particular one that takes two fast swipes at you that annoyed me the most as they easily stunlock you. There are also ravens which group up to attack you and can only be taken out by light, but they have the habit of swooping in to attack and flying just out of your flashlight range. And lastly, poltergeists which uses objects to attack by “throwing” itself at you. These are sturdier and difficult to dodge depending on what item it is, with the size determining how much light you need to shine on it before it can burn away.
You can dodge enemies, but the dodge doesn’t feel as reliable or consistent as it should be. It often felt like it was a 50-50 chance of Alan not getting hit. Plus for ravens and big poltergeist objects, it can even just be useless as they cover more ground than Alan’s dodge turn/duck.
Assuming this isn’t your first third-person shooter, you might have the habit of saving ammo and any other limited resources. In Alan Wake, you need to (temporarily) unlearn it as it cam hamper how much you’ll enjoy the game. Alan Wake gives you so many batteries, ammo, and other weapons to pick up that you don’t really have to worry other than two instances where you don’t have much for a short period of time. And even then, nothing carries over between episodes so stockpiling ammo won’t matter. This is heartbreaking later on as you’ll encounter other, better flashlights, but it really opens you up to using everything and anything at your disposal. Sure you can do the good ‘ole shine the flashlight and shoot, but throwing flashbangs or shooting the flare gun is so fun. Once I realized it myself, I really liked how the game tries to push you to use other tactics to fend against The Taken. Letting you go ham on your enemies without worrying about conserving things for a possible difficult encounter in the future.
Other than fighting, you will be exploring and traveling to your next destination. There are actually a couple things to look out for, with some just being collectibles and others being helpful. Scattered all around the place are coffee thermoses which are purely just a collectible and manuscript pages which Alan will read aloud. The manuscript pages can give more insight to what’s happening and even what you’ll be up against soon. Though, some pages can only be found on Nightmare difficulty. And lastly, there are secret caches hidden around. These are actually very helpful, often containing flares, flashbangs, and/or flare guns, so I definitely would recommend going down paths that don’t look like it’s on the way to your next objective. It also helps that their location is pointed out by paint that is only visible when light shines on it.
Oh and other than that, you can find can pyramids you can knock down, radio shows to listen into to get some more info on Bright Falls and what’s happening that you can’t see, and find TVs showing the Night Falls tv show which are weird, but an interesting watch. While there are a few that I found boring, I did overall enjoy listening and watching them, even seeking them out. I did encounter one time where no subtitles popped up and it was hard to hear the Night Falls episodes, but it may have been because I didn’t find it when it was still the calm before the storm.
Playing on Normal difficulty, I only had trouble in two instances (funnily enough in the same chapter), and one of them was mainly because you don’t have much to work with (and you could label it as a boss fight). I didn’t find Alan Wake particularly hard, but I did enjoy the encounters you get into.
Honestly, when I first playing I wasn’t at all sure about Alan Wake Remaster. I was on the line of wondering why a lot of people enjoyed the game and possibly chalking it up to it being a 2010 game. Well, I played more and the game definitely grew on me until I came to love it. Alan Wake is 100% written as a pretentious writer and it doesn’t help that he narrates throughout the game, but he really grows on you. Barry grows on you too as you see how much of a friend he is and he became one of my favorite characters by the end of the game. And, like I mentioned a bit before, I came to like the combat once I realized the game wanted you to use everything at your disposal without worrying about saving it up. I also really liked the story and especially how creepy it is and some of the cliffhangers the game will leave you on at the end of episodes.
The Remaster also includes the two DLC chapters, The Signal and The Writer. If you’ve been wondering if they are worth playing, like I did, I would say yes it’s worth it as it continues Alan Wake’s story. Both DLCs take place shortly after the ending of the main campaign and Alan is trapped in The Dark Place. The Signal starts out as a deja-vu sequence that feels off until Zane comes along to help Alan from sinking deeper into The Dark Place. However, while you play a part of Alan, there’s also a part of him in the cabin struggling with reality and making your life worse as you progress and try to reach him. And then The Writer follows this as Alan, now in sync with himself and aware of his circumstances, tries to take steps in hopefully escaping The Dark Place. This time around though, he is accompanied by Barry…or an imaginary version of Barry. But hey, more Barry makes me happy.
However, The Signal is weirdly harder than the main campaign and The Writer. I’m not sure what happened, but The Signal is so much harder, to the point where I wondered if they accidentally made Normal difficulty into Nightmare difficulty. I feel this is mainly because the game throws so many enemies at you at once, both in cramped spaces and in open areas, you deal with multiple enemy types in every (open area) encounter, and the game often employs cheap tactics. It also doesn’t help that the dodge doesn’t feel all that good still and Alan doesn’t have that much stamina to run away from what I’m guessing are the infinite spawning areas (which I swear there are more here than in the main campaign).
I do get the thematic reasoning for why The Signal is harder, as Alan is in the one place the darkness is the strongest and he’s fighting against himself at the same time, but you can still make it fair.
The Signal and The Writer have its own collectibles. The Signal has you collect alarm clocks and cardboard standees of not Alan, but the other characters you met in the main campaign along with some flavor text about them. The Writer has you collect video games, which sadly only seem to be a game on the in-game tv show Night Falls.
Verdict
While Alan Wake Remaster is still a game from 2010 in its core and I encountered some weird grass textures, a moment where subtitles didn’t pop up for a Night Falls episode, and The Signal was way harder than it should have been, I really enjoyed Alan Wake. I really enjoyed the story (once it gets going, it gets really good), I liked the characters, I really enjoyed the combat, and I really liked how the game encourages you to use everything at your disposal without worrying about saving it up for the next episode. If you haven’t played Alan Wake, I definitely recommend trying it out.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I can’t wait until Alan Wake 2 releases.
Recent Comments