Alan Wake -- Initial Impression.

Another belated initial impression as I've been playing Alan Wake for the last two nights. Alan Wake was developed by the Finnish company Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Game Studios. Remedy initially had the idea for Alan Wake in 2001. It's been a long time coming. It was originally announced at E3 in 2005 via what amounts to a tech demo. It showed up again at E3 2006 and then sort went dark to the point where people were sure it had become vaporware. Over the years it transformed from an entirely open world survival horror title to a more restricted path format. The reasoning being they wanted to control the pacing and that the sandbox format worked against the story they wanted to tell. In fact the cover art on the box describes the title as a psychological action thriller. I've played through the first two chapters thus far and it's clear that this is a great looking game. It's graphically dense. There is a lot going on. Especially at night in the woods. The game also sounds amazing. From the voice work to the music to the sound effects everything works. The combat is surprisingly effective as it forces you to dance with the enemies before killing them. The basic plot has you fighting people that have been taken by the darkness and therefore have a shield of darkness that must be burned off with light before they can be killed by conventional weaponry. It's not a problem when you're dealing with one or two enemies but it can quickly become intense when there are multiple enemies. Especially when they're all throwing weapons at you. The best part of the game so far is in how the premise is really working. Alan Wake is a best selling author suffering from writer's block. He and his wife have come to Bright Falls in rural Washington state to get away from it all. Alan loses a week and finds his wife missing and he's also finding pages of a manuscript he's apparently written that seems to be coming true around him. The game has impressive characters. I've really liked almost every single one I've interacted with. I'm genuinely intrigued by the story. And in a survival horror title, that's a really big plus. The game feels really smart initially. Who knows, maybe it could all go to hell at some point. But it feels early on like they had a smart story and built a potentially great game around it. The game seems inspired by Stephen King's The Dark Half with some Twin Peaks thrown in. I'm really liking this one early on and I hope it stays on track.