Even after all these years Alan Wake holds up as an excellent game. It has a great formula to it where you have to break down an enemies shield with light before you can actually harm them as well as you being able to be healed by areas of bright light. It seems simple but it works well and there are a variety of weapons to use as well as different light sources to use. The game does a great job of introducing various weapons and game play mechanics in a natural way. The story is top notch as is the voice acting and music. Remedy has always been fantastic at these elements and even if I didn’t know they made Alan Wake I would have guessed based on the music choices and voice acting talents used as they have Remedy’s finger prints all over them. The game has a great flow to it, trying to mimic a TV show with great success. The game also delivers side plot detail in creative ways such as TV shows being displayed on TV’s; finding pages of the manuscript you have written and listening to radio shows. There are driving segments and luckily they are pretty decent which, given that Remedy had never done any driving game play before, should be praised. The graphics are overall above average for it’s time but isn’t without fault. Object details in the world; water; lighting; trees and fog are all great. Clothing detail is a mixed bag. Face and car detail is decent. Ground detail is mediocre. Fire detail is poor. Remedy has always done little details well. In Max Payne they had footprints in the snow and shell casings on the ground where here in Alan Wake they have things such as used flares being on the ground after which is a nice little touch. There are a couple segments where you are alongside an AI companion while they fight off the “taken” coming after you and overall the segments aren’t bad but the aim of your companions sure are. One other bit I found odd was that when the dark presence controls somebody they speak in a very strange way almost as if they were in a drug induced haze but nobody in the game seems to notice this strange behaviour. There are some awesome moments of game play in Alan Wake that were very memorable. I’ll single one out: having to survive a swarm of taken on a music stage with rock music blaring as your buddy works the pyro effects and lights was simply awesome. The difficulty curve is handled well, often being challenging but never feeling sadistic.
I played Alan Wake on Linux using Valve’s Proton. It crashed on me one time during game play. There are 3 AA settings; 4 AF settings; 2 SSAO settings; a v-sync toggle and 7 other graphics options. There is an FOV slider but there are no numbers on it. Performance was overall very good but there were a few dips below 60 at times. You can pause cut scenes but not skip them. Alt-Tab works. The game uses checkpoint saves. For the most part the spacing between them aren’t too bad but near the end some of them get annoying. Manual saves would have been my preference.
Disk Space Used: 11.25 GB
Game Version Played: 1.07.33.72514
Settings Used: 8x AA; 16x AF; All High; max draw distance @ 1080P; v-sync on
GPU Usage: 5-100 %
VRAM Usage: 1127-1613 MB
CPU Usage: 3-28 %
RAM Usage: 2.9-3.7 GB
Frame Rate: 47-144 FPS
I thoroughly recommend Alan Wake. If you enjoyed the Max Payne games; Twin peaks; horror novels; or just enjoy a good mystery game then there is something here for you. I finished the game on normal difficulty in 11 hours and 19 minutes and the game doesn’t drag or rush. I paid $14.99 CAD for it years ago on GOG and paid $4.39 CAD for it on Steam. It is easily worth it’s current price tag of $17.49 CAD.
My Score: 9/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.0.3 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 21.0.3 | Mate 1.24.1 | Kernel 5.12.1-2-MANJARO | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz | Proton 6.3-4