Alan Wake

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Alan Wake is a third-person shooter psychological thriller action game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The story follows bestselling thriller novelist Alan Wake, as he tries to uncover the mystery behind his wife's disappearance during a vacation in the small (fictional) town of Bright Falls, Washington. All while experiencing events from the plot in his latest novel, which he cannot remember writing, coming to life.

In its pacing and structure, Alan Wake is similar to a thriller television series, with episodes that contain plot twists and cliffhangers. The game itself consists of six episodes, and the fiction is continued by two special episodes, titled "The Signal" and "The Writer", that were made available as downloadable content (DLC) within the same year of the game's release, released for free with the PC's Collector's Edition. Together, they make the first season of a possibly longer story. Additionally, a six-episode live-action web series called Bright Falls acts as a prequel to the game, and a number of related books also expand upon the Alan Wake story.

Chiefly written by Sam Lake, Alan Wake took over five years to create; an unusually long development time in the game industry. The game received positive reviews from critics, and is often revered for its narrative, pacing, and atmosphere. Alan Wake has been awarded the first spot in Time magazine's list of the top 10 video games of 2010.[7]

Alan Wake's American Nightmare, a full stand-alone title, released in February 2012 on the Xbox Live Arcade service.[8] The game will not constitute a direct sequel to Alan Wake, and no plans have been announced for a sequel (or "season two") for the original game. Remedy have stated, however, that they are not yet done with Alan Wake

Alan Wake is a third-person shooter, described by its developers as a combination of "the mind of a psychological thriller", and "the body of a cinematic action game".[10][11][12] In interviews, the game's creators hold that the game does not belong squarely in the survival horror video game genre.[12][13] The game is primarily set in the fictional idyllic small town of Bright Falls, Washington. The main gameplay happens in various areas of Bright Falls – such as the forest, a national park, or a farm – during the nighttime; these are punctuated by calmer, non-combative sequences set during the day. The player controls the eponymous protagonist, Alan Wake.

In the game, a "darkness" is taking over humans, animals and objects. Humans possessed by the darkness, called the "Taken", are murderous enemies that attack Wake, wielding weapons of their own, such as mallets and chainsaws. They vary by speed, size, and the amount of damage they can take, and some can even teleport between short distances.[14] Besides the Taken, the player has to combat flocks of ravens, and animated poltergeist objects.

As the enemies are protected by a shield of darkness, light plays a significant role in fighting them, while controlling the protagonist in the dark. For example, Taken are initially impervious to attack, and can only be killed or injured with a firearm when exposed to light, which burns away the darkness. Therefore, there is significant emphasis on flashlights and other hand-held lights being used in conjunction with conventional weapons, such as a revolver or a shotgun. The beam of these lights acts as a reticle.[14] Such hand-held lights can be boosted, which destroys the darkness faster, but also reduces the battery level of the light. Therefore, besides the conventional shooter gameplay need for reloading ammunition, the player also has to insert fresh batteries into the flashlight when they run out, or wait for it to recharge slowly. The strength of the darkness protecting an enemy can vary between Taken. The amount of darkness remaining is represented by a corona of light that appears when aiming at an enemy, and a stronger darkness may recharge over time.[14] When a Taken is finally destroyed, it disappears.

The player is also often encouraged to take advantage of environmental light sources and placing, and to use other light-based weapons and accessories, such as flare guns, hand-held flares and flashbangs. Wake can also use searchlights to take out massive waves of possessed enemies. Streetlights and other light stands can provide a "Safe Haven", which the Taken cannot enter, and will regenerate the character's health very rapidly. Otherwise, health regenerates slowly with time, when not taking any damage.[14] In certain sections of the game, it is possible to use a car to traverse between locations in Bright Falls. When in a car, the player can run down Taken on the road, or boost the vehicle's headlights to destroy them.

A major element of gameplay is the optional discovery and collection of manuscript pages from Alan Wake's latest "novel"—Departure. Wake does not remember writing this book, but it seems that its storyline is coming to life around him. These readable manuscript pages are scattered around the game world, out of chronological order; therefore, they often describe scenes that have yet to occur and act as warning and instructions for proceeding through upcoming challenges. Other optional collectibles include coffee thermoses scattered around the game world (100 in all), as well as discovering television sets which show different episodes of the fictional Night Springs series, radios airing talk and music from Bright Falls' local radio station, and textual signs around the town. The radio shows and signs provide a deeper understanding of the town's history and culture. The game's DLC episodes introduce other collectibles, such as alarm clocks, and video game boxes

Main game

Bestselling thriller writer Alan Wake, suffering from a two-year long stretch of writer's block, travels with his wife Alice to the small idyllic town of Bright Falls, Washington, for a short vacation. While Alice shops for groceries, Alan goes to obtain the keys and directions to the cabin they will be staying in from its owner, Carl Stucky, at the local diner; an older woman, claiming that Stucky fell ill, hands them to Alan instead. Alan and Alice arrive at Cauldron Lake, where their cabin sits on an island within it. As they unpack, Alan discovers Alice has set up a typewriter, hoping Alan will try writing on the vacation. Angry, Alan sets off for a brief walk alone, but races back to the cabin when he hears Alice's screams. He arrives too late as some entity drags Alice into the lake's water, and without a moment's hesitation, jumps in after her, but shortly blacks out.[citation needed]

Alan comes to a week later, crashed after his car went off the side of the road outside of town. As he travels back to town, supernatural events occurring in his wake such as human figures shrouded in darkness that can only be defeated with light, and an ethereal figure wearing a deep-sea diving suit. When he meets Sheriff Sarah Breaker and reports Alice's abduction, the sheriff notes that there had not been an island in Cauldron Lake for nearly 30 years, sunk by an earthquake. Alan becomes the primary suspect in his wife's disappearance, attracting the FBI's attention. Barry, Alan's agent and friend, comes to Bright Falls to help Alan recount events and understand what happened.[citation needed]

Alan comes to learn that Cauldron Lake is possessed by an entity called the Dark Presence, and has the ability to turn fiction into reality. The Dark Presence is trapped within the lake, but is able to exert its influence on the local area and convert humans into the darkness-possessed "Taken". The diving suit figure is the consciousness of former writer Thomas Zane, who had owned the cabin and drowned during the earthquake; Zane is attempting to prevent the Dark Presence from escaping, and has provided Alan with pages of a typewritten manuscript entitled Departure, a work Alan recognizes as his own but that he was unaware of writing and which foretells of upcoming events. After one night of heavy drinking, Alan begins to recall the events of the missing week: once he dived into the lake he was taken by the Dark Presence, and was forced to write Departure as a means to lay the path for the Dark Presence's escape using the lake's mysterious power, but Zane was able to influence Alan's subconsciousness to write in the means for Alan's own escape and means to defeat the Dark Presence.[citation needed]

As the Dark Presence becomes more and more powerful, ravaging Bright Falls, Alan and Barry discover several clues that point them to a hermit, Cynthia Weaver, that knows the path to "The Well-Lit Room" where a weapon against the Dark Presence can be found. They locate Cynthia, having protected herself in a power plant, and she takes them to the Room, where Alan finds a simple light switch unit called "the Clicker", part of the fiction that Zane helped Alan to create. Alan leaves his allies safely behind and returns to the lake, successfully using the Clicker to destroy the Dark Presence. Despite its defeat, Alice does not yet emerge from the lake, and Alan realizes that balance must be maintained; he willingly throws himself into the lake waters; Alice soon reappears.[15] Within the depths of the lake, Alan finds himself in the cabin, and realizes that Departure is not yet finished, and turns back to the typewriter to continue the story and write his own means to be free of the lake. He comments to himself that "It's not a lake—it's an ocean

OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7

Processor: 2.4 GHz dual core

Memory: 1.5 GB RAM (Windows XP) / 2 GB (Windows Vista and Windows 7)

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8000 series or ATI Radeon HD 2000 series or better

DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c

Hard Drive: 10 GB

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