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I know when trying to set yourself up as a political commentator its important to review at least one video game, well last night I bought “Alan Wake,” the tale of a great writer who is suffering a bad case of writers block. The title character, and his wife are going on vacation in Washington state. Given the Twilight saga, this story of demons emerging from the shadows of night to torment an average guy is the least diabolically evil story to take place in Washington state to come from recent history.

Controls and Graphics
The game, during the daylight scene is housed in a truly beautiful setting, it makes me want to buy a HD T.V. The beauty gives way to seriously tense scenes of deep shadows, the flashlight's physics are amazing, and the shadows it throws have a chance to increase the heart rate. The games controls are easy to get the hang of, thats not to say its perfect, in my humble opinion I think the combat controls are a little cluttered, the left stick moves the character while the right aims, standard fare. The left bumper is dodge/run, which may cause some trouble if you need to run from a fight but not too much. Left trigger focuses the flashlight and drains the batteries. Right trigger fires the gun,both the gun and flashlight are aimed together, combat requires you to aim the flashlight at an enemy to weaken them, fire your gun to finish them off, while dodging other enemies, while reloading the gun, and batteries, it has potential to get busy, but is a fun combat system.

Characters
So far I've only made it to the second episode, but the characters are well suited for the feel of the scene in which they appear, entertaining when they need to, nervous and fidgety when the scene is dark and tense. Alan himself is a writer, but avoid the cliche of the alcoholic writer, he does drink a ton of coffee though. His wife is a photographer, foremost in her character is the fear of the dark, I think she will be better developed later on. Barry reminds me of Wendell from Frisky Dingo. I haven;t come across anyone noticeably one dimensional yet.

Story
The story is told at a very well measured pace, it gets a little confusing at times, which is to be expected for a story like this one, they do a good job in the foreshadowing department, over the course of the game Alan discovers pages of a !! he “wrote” sometimes the pages detail something that has already happened, sometimes they describe something that will happen later in the game, from later episodes, to a few steps north. Though I get the feeling that most questions will never be answered I'm satisfied with the story so far.

Let me know what you think of my review of the game so far, maybe I'll write more if people like it. Any questions or comments are welcome.

-Nik