Alan Wake (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

No time to waste, let’s jump into the story.

A Remembrance and a Kidnapping

It's good to remember what we're fighting for.

Chapter 2, "Taken", begins with a scene of happy days of yore in the Wake apartment, where Alan comforts his wide in her phobia of darkness during a power outage. He tells her how, as a child, he was given an item with a button on it, a “clicker”, that he could press to dispel the dark and its nightmares; he still has it as a keepsake.

Don't you think I have enough crap to deal with
at the moment? Like, a monster from beyond?

Cut to the present day: Alan Wake is checked by a doctor at Sheriff Sarah Breaker’s office. He wonders how to explain his situation without sounding like a complete lunatic; if he’s sent to the madhouse, there’s no saving Alice. He gets a call, within the office, from an unknown source. The caller presents himself as Alice’s kidnapper and instructs Alan to meet him at Lovers’ Peak, within Elderwood National Park. Then, just as he's about to leave, Alan meets Dr. Emil Hartman, the psychiatrist from Alice's book. Hartman admits to giving Alice the idea to bring her husband here for a couple’s retreat so that Alan could seek help for his writer’s block and Alan, always the hotheaded and impulsive guy, promptly serves the guy a knuckle sandwich.

...Alan’s kind of a dick, isn’t he?

It sounds crazy until you live it, Barry.

In walks Barry Wheeler, Alan’s literary agent and childhood friend, who’s usually there to pick up the pieces in his client’s… heh… wake. He has all the lines of the type of sleazy character he is, threatening lawsuits if anyone lays a hand on the thriller writer. He hasn’t heard from his buddy in a whole week, hence why he showed up to Bright Falls out of worry.

On suggestion from an agent at the station, Alan and Barry rent a cabin in Elderwood National Park from the park’s ranger/caretaker, Rusty, who was seen at the diner in Chapter 1. Barry still doubts his friend’s story, thinking he’s gone crazy. Even crazier are the writer’s plans to meet a supposed kidnapper in these woods in the middle of the night, when the so-called monsters are on the prowl!

Ironic, considering how Chapter 3 starts...

But Alan feels that he has to go, and alone. Barry stays behind, in the lit cabin. Equipped with a basic flashlight and a revolver, Alan behind walking but hears screams from the visitor center. It’s Rusty, attacked by the Taken. After beating these things, Alan’s short conversation with the ranger reveals that Rusty had found some manuscript pages, and knew that he was going to be killed by the shadowy monsters. Worse even; moments later, Alan has to fight Rusty, now an elite Taken. Geez, it’s early in the Chapter for a boss.

Help From the Kidnapper

No batteries, not enough bullets.
Yep, he's in trouble.

The next part is very tough, as resources are rare and, as a result, the player must carefully save their ammo and batteries, as running out of either is a genuine risk. The game encourages Alan to run towards the next safe haven instead of fighting the swarms head-on. This ends as Alan, while fleeing, trips and loses his gun while Taken are homing in. They’re about to strike when a red blast pushes them away and a hand reaches down to help the writer up. It’s Ben Mott, that suspicious guy from the ferry – and considering where they are, he’s most likely Alice’s kidnapper.

Mott doesn’t take risks; he never gives Wake a gun, only supplies him with flares. On top of the firearms, Alan can find other weapons to help him dispel the darkness around Taken, and sometimes kill them outright:

Against these monsters, flares can mean the
difference between life and death.

-Introduced here, flares (used by pressing the middle button of the mouse) create a blast of red light that hits every nearby Taken. Extremely useful against swarms, and will create a cinematic moment if you activate one while surrounded by 3+ Taken;

-Similarly, the flare gun (introduced earlier) will shoot flare-like bullet directly at your enemies, guaranteeing an instant kill on anything directly struck that isn’t a boss. The issue? Its ammo is rare and it can hold only one bullet at a time, forcing reloads.

-Last but not least, flashbang grenades are powerful explosives that dispel the dark and kill most Taken in their radius. Two issues: They explode a few seconds after being thrown, and since they’re so useful, they’re crazy rare.

Well, at least this asshole knows how to
deal with the monsters. If only he wasn't
also a kidnapper...

The two get to Lovers’ Peak and help each other against waves of Taken; Alan uses flares while Mott shoots. And, in all fairness, this NPC’s AI is smart enough to shoot the right Taken at the right time. It’s the impression I got, anyway. Once the danger has passed, Mott explains: He will free Alice in exchange for the complete manuscript of the story they’re currently living. For some reason, he knows that Alan Wake has written what’s currently going on, and thinks that the novel contains the solution to this clusterfuck.

YET AGAIN, Alan’s temper gets the better of him and they brawl, and Alan escapes with Mott’s gun while Mott repeats his ultimatum, setting their next meetup two days later at the coal mine. Two days to finish a manuscript? Asshole! Alan returns to his cabin, but that involves walking on a path covered in bear traps, going through a saw mill and fighting a Taken wielding a chainsaw. He can also dispel patches of liquid darkness on the floor with his flashlight, like Mario does to seas of goop with the FLUDD in Sunshine.

The road back is long, however, so Alan steals takes a car. While looking for the keys nearby, he views another recording of himself blabbing about plot holes and why he must avoid them at any cost, or else Alice will die. Once he has the keys, it’s time for some vehicular Takenslaughter. Alan can use the headlights of a car like a flashlight's beam, dispelling the Taken's darkness before running them over. Very fun… if you can drive well.

"Vehicular Takenslaughter" is one of the best
phrases I ever came up with on this blog.

Humans aren't the only ones to fear here...

Alan gets to the cabin and Barry calls him. The cabin is attacked by birds, re-enacting one of Hitchcock’s greats! Alan, assaulted by flocks of crows, can thankfully deal with them like any other enemy. The flashlight's beam can kill single birds and, with the beam hitting them long enough, entire murders. Alan enters the cabin to meet a converted Barry; the agent has seen enough weird shit this night to believe his client. On the following day, Alan attempts (and fails) to write, while Barry investigates Mott and why he would have kidnapped Alice; however, Barry gets a call from Rose, the waitress, who claims she has found Alan’s manuscript…

The Drunk Arm of the Law

Nice monotone, Rose.

Chapter 3, "Ransom", begins in the afternoon, with the two heading to Rose’s trailer to get the pages. Barry explains that he found records of a writer named Thomas Zane, who disappeared in Cauldron Lake in 1970, a week after his girlfriend Barbara Jagger drowned in it. Everything he has read about Zane and Jagger was written by the same person: Cynthia Weaver, the woman in the diner who was obsessed with lightbulbs. They walk into Rose’s trailer and chat with the girl. There’s a weird air to her, a lack of life behind these eyes, but she’s nice enough to serve them coffee.

Spiked with sleeping pills. Alan and Barry fall. While asleep, Alan dreams of the light with a voice, the being that helped him during the tutorial. It says that the darkness lives within his love Barbara. Gee, good thing we just heard that name five minutes ago, makes it easy to connect the dots. He wakes up six hours later, the entire day wasted, and no manuscript to hand over.

And flashbacks on air.

This guy is a walking, talking argument
for the ACAB movement.

What’s worse, an FBI agent has arrived on the scene, ready to arrest Wake for… for what, exactly? It’s never said. The agent, Robert Nightingale, has unclear reasons: seems to think that the writer was the one to drug Rose, but that would not warrant intervention from something a big as the FBI. The multiple disappearances and turmoil caused by the Dark Presence in Bright Falls? There’s no way one can pin this on Alan without invoking paranormal activity, so they wouldn’t have a case! Conspiracy to murder him, based solely on the parts of the manuscript that he has found? Why the fuck would an author write about his crime before committing it? Nobody's that stupid! I’ll be honest, his inclusion in the plot feels extraneous. To top it off, Nightingale is a drunk, trigger-happy asshole who will endanger civilians as he attempts to capture the writer. He seems to be here for only two reasons: He was written into Alan’s story, and the Dark Presence has already impacted his life in major ways (which we don’t learn about outside of bonus media).

I am not going anywhere near THAT light!

Nightingale fires at his target while innocents are in the way, and Alan escapes. No gun and no flashlight at sundown, hunted by the FBI, all he can do is flee. The Dark Presence doesn’t discriminate, and goes after his assailants too. Bad news: This means new Taken to take out. Good news: In the abandoned cop cars, Alan finds plenty of flashbang grenades.

I’ll admit, while it can be annoying at times, I actually quite enjoy the “gameplay roulette” here: Alan’s arsenal changes frequently, sometimes to make the next part harder, and sometimes to provide unique challenges or scenes. The flare-only escort mission in Chapter 2 is a great example. The flashbang-only part here is another. It makes sections of a chapter feel distinct, and brings variety to what would otherwise feel repetitive.

Poltergeist

Lights in the distance. The radio station. He’ll be safe there. However, there's a new obstacle. Say hello to another type of enemy: Poltergeists, objects possessed by the darkness, harmful to Alan on contact. Their saving grace is that you don’t need to shoot at them; just disperse their darkness entirely and they vanish. Without a flashlight, Alan uses a nearby spotlight to break the Poltergeist gate. Alan gets to the radio station in time and gets to chat with Pat Maine, the host of the all-night program. But Nightingale is quick to find him, and is also quick to FUCKING SHOOT, the maniac.

Everything in Alan's face here screams
"I don't wanna."

Stay away from me, you goddamn steel beam!

Alan flees again, and that’s when he finally gets firearms. From there, he crosses a railway bridge, leading into the first real fight against Poltergeists – steel beams and barrels. Non-stationary items possessed by the darkness like to rise from the ground and then fly at Alan’s head, making them very dangerous in large numbers. Thankfully, they also tend to fly in a straight line, so Alan can hide behind a column to be protected. The AI of floating Poltergeists is... not that great. Past this point, the hero finds a stronger flashlight. And he’ll need it, as the next fight past a warehouse is a battle against a Poltergeist bulldozer. Yep, large vehicles can be possessed too. In fact, they make for excellent bosses.

Pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen, but
since it did, I'm not going to complain.

(Although, in my case, the fight wound up anticlimactic. The bulldozer is huge, drives around, and Taken spawn during the fight, but I defeated the vehicle after it flipped and got stuck on its back like an upside-down turtle. Hey, gotta take advantage of glitches when they happen.)

Alan reaches a functional car and drives off as the sun rises. Short night, that one. Instead gathering or finishing the manuscript, he heads directly to the meeting point and waits for the kidnapper. All afternoon. Into nightfall. And that’s when he gets a call from Mott, saying that there’s been a change of plans. Mew meeting point: Mirror Peak, mountainous area next to Cauldron Lake. This will require more nighttime hiking in the Taken-infested woods. Yaaaaaay.

The Long Walk

My time playing GTA has served me well.

After a stroll in a wagon graveyard, Alan has to defeat Taken and Poltergeists while driving a car. I didn’t say it in Chapter 2, but cars are troublesome to drive. They tend to drift a lot, which makes killing enemies tricky, and are a pain to steer properly. Cars can withstand a finite amount of damage before they break, which may cause Alan to continue on foot a fight in which he’s outmatched.

The writer goes through the woods, then crosses a “ghost town”. Literally; Poltergeists everywhere. Throughout, he realizes that there’s something abnormal in him constantly finding batteries and ammunition. He also sees recordings of him that talk about writing a novel, taking inspiration from papers he has found that were written by the mysterious Thomas Zane. Alan has written everything he’s living right now, and the Eldritch horror within Cauldron Lake is making it happen.

Shit's getting meta.

Am I gonna have to walk over every single
fucking square foot of Bright Falls?

Our hero does an unexpected detour through the coal mine, then rides a cable car, then crosses a wooden bridge, then goes through ruins on top of the mountain… are we there yet? Almost, almost. The folks at Remedy tried to have their cake and eat it too, by featuring as many landscapes and situations as they could fit, but considering how long the chapters already are, I can’t help but feel that some of these scenes are padding, no matter how challenging or interesting the end result is.

Alan is now near Cauldron Lake and hears, in the distance, Mott talking to the darkness, swearing he never actually had Alice. He was bullshitting Alan throughout so he could have the manuscript and hand it over to… his boss? Great. Someone else is involved. As Alan approaches, Mott is lifted by a tornado and killed. Before the same fate befalls him, the writer cracks open a flare, and the Presence drops him in the lake, where he is rescued from drowning by a mysterious hand…

The light... the dark... The never-ending struggle...

Let’s continue in Part 3, which will go through Chapters 4 and 5.

Alan Wake (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Spooky season is coming. It’s a bit early… Okay, fine, very early, this is September. I’m gearing up for the next set of Quick Reviews. There’s a handful of titles in the selection this time that are horror titles, including the sequel to this game. I figured it would make sense to cover the original Alan Wake first, before I go into Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. That one, along with other horror games from the list, will be covered throughout October.

Alan Wake was developed and published by Remedy Studios, and released first on Xbox 360 on May 18th, 2010, and to Steam on February 16th, 2012. At its core, it’s a loving tribute to several horror- and supernatural-based media, be it a big chunk of Stephen King’s bibliography or the classic seasons of Twin Peaks, with some Twilight Zone and Cthulhu Mythos sprinkled in. I actually remember purchasing this game, along with its 'sequel', at a time where the license to some of the music featured in the soundtrack was expiring, in May 2017. They were sold at a huge discount due to that issue. The game has since returned to digital storefronts, with the licensing issue resolved. A remaster of the game will also be released this fall to the Epic Games Store and for PS4/PS5 and XBox Series S/X, including the DLC episodes

It contains elements of horror, action, adventure and thriller, set within an episodic storyline delivered through a third-person shooter setup. I’d say more, but I’d be getting ahead of myself, and any good writer knows not to reveal their hand too soon. Let’s just say, shit gets weird.

Although, if you're waiting for the Remastered to experience this game for the first time, be warned: I reveal most spoilers in te review, so skip my articles if you want to keep some surprises fresh.

Fear of the Dark

The story begins as Alan Wake recalls a bizarre nightmare he’s had. It begins with him driving hurriedly towards a lighthouse, only to hit a hitchhiker on the road. He inspects the corpse, but the surrounding lights turn off for a moment and, when they’re back on, the body is gone. Alan thus goes exploring, by foot.

Cutting the pictures for this review is going to
be a tough job. It's all so dark!

"The blade of the axe glimmered in the rare shine
of the night." Damn, I should put that in a book.

This is a tutorial explaining the controls; move the camera with the mouse, walk with WASD, run with Shift. Get far enough, and Alan realizes that the body is back and standing, covered in a shadowy aura. The player can choose to Focus, using the F key, at precise moments of the story, in order to see plot-relevant scenes that may be just out of the player’s sight. Further down the path towards the lighthouse, Alan confronts the undead guy, and has to dodge an axe swing, using Shift and a movement key. This creates a short scene of Alan escaping in the nick of time. Similar actions from Alan will move the camera around and/or create a slow-motion effect. There is a very cinematic feel to this game, and the people at Remedy wanted this to show in gameplay. Does it lead to issues at times? A few. For one, you don’t always have control of the camera. Also, dodging and running both use the Shift key, so when Alan runs from enemies, he’ll first stumble about before actually taking off.

The writer recalls the hitchhiker as a character from a story he’s working on. He is led into the safety of a shack, only to become trapped. Alan hopelessly looks for a way to escape, until a blast of light breaks a wall open and, through a beaming voice, instructs him to go towards it. This benevolent presence resumes the tutorial. As Alan’s health decreases, the colors fade on the screen, almost to black and white. Alan’s health regenerates slowly, but it’s restored quickly if he stands in a “safe haven”, a patch of light in the darkness (usually a light pole with a lit bulb). These havens also repel the monsters, so Alan can run to one of them for protection. The light being manipulates the world to create a staircase, allowing the writer to move forward.

Refill your inventory at every chance you get.

He soon meets the hitchhiker again, but is told by the light how to defeat this monster, and every other one that will follow: A light must be shone on them in order to dispel the darkness that shields them; after which, they are weak to bullets. A flashlight and a gun: These will be your best friends. I feel like a security guard on graveyard shift!

The shrinking circles are the closest this
game gets to using health bars.

The flashlight shines brighter by holding down the right-click button, but this will empty its battery faster; like Alan’s health, it recharges slowly, so it will be usually less dangerous to put in a new battery with the Q key. Careful, though; you’ll have to make do with however many you’ll find. The flashlight’s beam also serves as a crosshair for the gun, allowing you to shoot with decent accuracy. You will find ammunition scattered around (don’t ask why just yet) for the weapons you have at the moment. Reloading is done by holding the R key, but tapping will let Alan reload more quickly.

The author goes through the woods and defeats more enemies, but a tornado strikes as he gets close to the lighthouse. He runs to the supposed safe haven, but after getting inside, the light vanishes and something attacks from above.

Welcome To Bright Falls

Alan awakens from his nightmare, with his wife Alice by his side reassuring him; they’re on the ferry headed to Bright Falls, where the two hope to spend a couple's vacation together. There’s other folks on the ferry, like Ben Mott, a hunter (I think?), but most notably Pat Maine, host of a nighttime radio show in the area. He explains that the town is preparing for the yearly Deerfest, which will take place in two weeks. There’s an air of mystery and secrets to this town. Bright Falls: The Pacific Northwest’s answer to Derry, Maine.

 Some characters, like Pat Maine here, are so
lifelike that you'd think they're live-action...

...others, like Alice Wake (ironically), veer so
often into Uncanny Valley territory that you'd
think they're androids wearing masks of flesh.

There's only one I'd like to have a conversation
with in this diner, and it's the cardboard cutout.

Our protagonist, now on land, has to meet Carl Stucky, the landlord of the cabin they rented, to obtain the key. He walks into the local Diner and immediately meets Rose, the waitress… a huge fan of his books. She better not go full Wilkes on him. She even has a life-sized cardboard cutout of him in the diner; it’s like wherever he goes, this damn promotional thing follows him. He sees that grinning face in his nightmares. His agent Barry Wheeler would be happy to see it here, though. Also at the Diner are Rusty, a park ranger; Odin and Tor Anderson, aged rock stars who no longer seem all there (which rockstar would listen to the Coconut song willingly?), mistaking Alan for some Tom guy; and Cynthia Weaver, an elderly woman strangely obsessed with the broken lights in the dark hall that leads to the diner’s bathrooms. Stucky’s over there, so Alan heads down the corridor.

Instead, outside the washrooms, he meets a widow all dressed in black, who hands him the key to a lodge on Diver's Isle over Cauldron Lake. She claims that Stucky asked her to hand the key over for him. This has all the markings of a trap, yet Alan takes the key anyway. And so he and Alice drive off, with Carl Stucky hurrying out of the diner, too late, with the key to the actual lodge. The darkness’s plan has been set in motion.

Well, at least one person here is having fun.

There’s a reason I’m name-dropping everyone we meet in this “introduction”. This scene is a prime example of conservation of detail: There’s not a single NPC who appears in this sequence who isn’t relevant at a later point of the story. It’s explained by the sheer amount of work necessary for even a single one of these characters, from sculpting, animating, scripting and voice-acting, but I also think it’s great that we’re shown the folks in a way that feels genuine and, most importantly, innocuous. Before encountering these folks during playthrough, I didn’t think they would have greater roles.

There’s also something very… “Stephen King”-esque to this sequence. It’s an impression that I get while reading a King novel; characters tend to be introduced in a manner that isn’t pleasant. Some are fools, some are jerks, some are obnoxious, and some are just odd. Very few, if any, give a decent first impression. The descriptions, while the world is still ‘normal’, follow that sentiment, sounding full of disdain and spite towards each one of them. This changes as the chips come down. The tone in the description of King’s characters differs noticeably and moves to being more positive once horror strikes. I’m getting that exact kind of vibe here.

So beautiful, it's like straight out of a dream.

The couple reaches Bird’s Log Cabin and explores. Alice has a fear of darkness, so Alan goes in first and has to turn the cabin’s lights on. It’s not long afterwards that he finds a typewriter sitting on a desk, and realizes that this couple’s retreat has turned into an attempt from her to break through his writer’s block… On the one time he doesn’t want to think about work, his own wife wants him to sit down and type! The impulsive writer goes to the pier to mope, but turns on hearing her scream. He runs back to the cabin but Alice has fallen into the water. She’s deep down. Alan instantly dives into the lake, intent on saving his dear…

Colony of Birchmen

That's a face that will look better with a
bandage over the bridge of the nose.

No, Alan can't take a shortcut by scaling down
the mountain. He's the sort to break his
leg stepping off the goddamn sidewalk, FFS.

…and wakes up, dazed with a head injury, at the wheel of a car crashed into a guardrail by a cliff, with no clue of how he got there or how much time passed. In the trunk is a book by a Dr. Emil Hartman, a psychologist who specializes in helping artists through uncreative times. Far away in the distance is Stucky’s gas station, as marked by the light of the Gasoline sign. Alan’s cell is dead, too, so his only chance to call for help is a phone over there. Merely a few steps into this trip, he sees the dangling car fall into the abyss.

Further on the path, after a blast of light, the writer sees a solitary sheet of paper fall to his feet. Even though he doesn’t remember writing any of it, the text is his; and it describes an attack by an axe murderer. Manuscript pages can be found scattered around the chapters of the game, sometimes a little off the beaten path; most will be on Alan’s path. Some of these will foreshadow future events, so it’s good to give them a read through the menu that opens by pressing F5. Of note, some pages can only be found on Nightmare difficulty. This is the most notable collection quest in the game, as it’s plot-relevant. The other collection quests are extras.

For the record: I will usually cut out the text
so as to focus on the cutscenes, whenever there's
one going on. Just showing here both the
scene and the text beneath it.

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Stucky!"

The author comes across a logging area and sneaks in over a tree found fallen over the fence. He walks among the piles, seeking someone to help him. Hey, is that… is that Stucky over there? What’s he doing here, shrouded in darkness… wielding an axe? ...Oh, shit. Alan flees towards a construction cabin that has its lights on inside, and hides in, avoiding by inches a swing of an axe through the door. Ah, they couldn’t help themselves slapping a little homage to The Shining here, huh? Stucky has cut the cabin’s phone line, but our protagonist finds something better: A flashlight, a revolver, batteries and ammo.

He can fight back now.

Or rather, he could, were it not for a bulldozer now pushing that cabin into a pit. He runs out and meets some workers who are also shrouded in darkness. Thankfully, he remembers that nightmare that sounded oddly like a tutorial, and battles. These “Taken” must all be defeated the same way: Focus the flashlight on them to disperse the darkness that makes them invincible, then shoot till they’re destroyed. There are multiple types of Taken, but here are the main three:

Once the Eldritch invincibility is gone,
it's time to shoot.

-Flankers, speedy little fuckers who love to sneak up behind Alan to get some cheap hits in. Thankfully, they go down in only two bullets of the revolver;

-Tossers, with average speed and health (three bullets to kill). They use their axes as projectile weapons, so you must be wary of them especially at a distance;

-And the tough Taken, which are very slow and require six bullets to go down, but will damage Alan badly if they reach him. They also have a mean ramming attack.

When teh world is gone to black and white,
it's time to worry.

To top it all off, your weapon loadout will frequently change due to events happening in cutscenes, so you must always be careful of what you do. Don’t waste ammo; there are several situations in which every bullet will matter. So will every battery you'll get your hands on, really. No extra batteries left? I hope you can survive long enough…

A weakened Wake flees into the forest, running towards the station. Among the things he sees, some strange words and arrows painted yellow on the walls, visible only when he points his flashlight at them; that paint is also used to indicate secret stashes of batteries and ammunition. Someone is helping him.

While the game is mostly a horror adventure, there’s always a bit of exploration that’s encouraged by the environments as well as a portion of puzzle. There are several moments where Alan has to flip switches or start a generator (that last one involves a quick-time event), either to create a safe haven or make a path towards his current goal.

The Twilight Zone

Man, I love when the stuff on TV serves as
commentary to what I'm going through.

In another cabin, Alan finds more items as well as a functional TV. There are televisions scattered around the game, and on which we can watch episodes of “Night Springs”, this world’s “Twilight Zone”. It’s part of a number of extra content that can be viewed. Also a fun creative decision: The clips we see on TV are done in live-action. What else is in here? Oh, just a shotgun that deals double the damage of a revolver, at the cost of holding only two bullets at once. The shotgun will often be swapped for similar weapons, like a pump action shotgun or a hunting rifle, which both hold more bullets.

We find this at the right time, too, as our hero is ambushed by multiple Taken, with Stucky at their helm. This first “boss” of the game, Stucky the Elite Taken, has a much stronger shield of darkness that takes longer to disperse, and he takes a lot more bullets before going down. Elites also run around the stage, leaving a blur in their passage, and can flee after being struck by the light, so they’re a pain to fight. They can be flashed whenever they try to sneak a hit on Alan.

See that weid blur? Yeah, that's what you're
supposed to flash. Good luck.

Alan sees himself in live-action.
I did say that shit would get weird.

With this obstacle defeated, Alan makes it to the gas station. He finds a working phone, which he uses to call the Sheriff’s department. A TV attracts his eye, however, showing… himself? In live-action??!? He sees this Alan of the past in Bird’s Log Cabin, sitting down to the typewriter and choosing to write a story in which he rescues Alice. This is interrupted by Sheriff Sarah Breaker’s arrival on the scene, who takes Alan into her car. The writer tries to explain what’s going on, the cabin, the Taken, the island on the lake, but she insists that there is no island on Cauldron Lake. To hammer her point further, she drives by the lake on the way to her office.

No cabin; in fact, not an island in sight.

There's a lot of story beats to every chapter of this game; chapters are quite lengthy and busy. I'll try my best not to do a complete play-by-play. I'll still need 5 parts for this. How lengthy are the chapters? Past the second, you'll need roughly two to three hours to finish one. To go through one chapter start-to-finish, book yourself a free evening.

See you in Part 2.

Update and plans for the remainder of the year

Hey there! I haven't been posting much lately. I needed a break after Paper Mario, and only found time to publish another review since. But don't worry - if all goes wel, I should have plenty of content ready for the rest of the year.

I'm juggling my free time and my current job, for which I have more hours per week, so it's a bit tricky to do everything that I'd want to do, but I try my best.

What I hope to achieve before the end of 2021 is fairly simple on paper, but might be trickier to do in practice. As discussed in prior articles, I have plans to do a second set of Quick Reviews, and I hope to finish it at the end of December. Howeve, the very first game in that new set (which I create based on the 'average length' of the games I own, something I check through HowLongToBeat) is Alan Wake's American Nightmare, a sequel to... well... Alan Wake. I've owned both games since 2017, and I had played Alan Wake up to a point, so I figured it would be a good idea to cover the first Alan Wake before jumping into Quick Reviews.

Of course I didn't take into account just how much there would be to say! To the point where it'll be another long review (4-5 parts, again).

This new set also contains a pretty good handful of horror games as well, which I hope to cover throughout October. Halloween and all that.

The schedule:

-September: Alan Wake (I hope to publish Part 1 this Friday)

-October: Quick Reviews, horror edition (will include roughly 5 to 6 articles; I might also add in a longer post depending on how much I have to say on some games).

-November and December: The remainder of the list. Exceptions will be made for games that I hope to review during this event, but for which I realize I need a full-length review instead. That has happened before (an example from earlier this year would be NiGHTS Into Dreams...).

If all goes well, see you this Friday for Part 1 of Alan Wake!

World of Zoo

Gonna keep some surprises here...

I’m preparing the list of games for my next set of Quick Reviews. Yes, I do plan these things in advance. And most titles on those lists tend to be fairly short, requiring less than 5 hours to finish… at least, according to HowLongToBeat, not a perfectly accurate tool to properly judge the length of a game, but still one of the better tools we have. In this field, it’s impossible to have hard data anyway, as several factors can influence the amount of time it takes any player to finish a game. Not every game has that data; the site has many games without any recorded length, either from lack of submissions or being multiplayer-driven. I still tend to jumble a few of those in the lists for Quick Reviews, just in case I only need a short article to cover them. Well – today’s game is on that list, and was supposed to be a Quick Review, but I’m expanding it to a full article today.

I’ve covered simulators and tycoons before on this blog, and have quite a few in my Steam collection. A Venn diagram of these two genres would have some overlap, but wouldn’t form a perfect circle; far from it, actually. I believe I purchased today’s game thinking it would be a tycoon title. Instead, what I got was a simulator. ….Hey, why not. It’s going to change the tone of the review, but that may be for the better. Instead of talking about managerial decisions, I’m gonna talk about how funny it is to scare lions.

Is it a big zoo? I have no clue, we never see
anything beyond the enclosures.

Welcome to World of Zoo, made by THQ and released on October 30th, 2009. It’s not a world; it’s not a place you can visit at your leisure to complete tasks and help. All we really get to see is the animal exhibits: One regular and one nursery for each. However, I’m also not sure we can call it a zoo. Wouldn’t the word “zoo” imply that the animals are on display for the public? Not to get into a debate on semantics, but if you, the player, are the only audience… And in fact, you’re not even an audience, you’re technically the caretaker.

So is this closer to a wildlife preservation center, then? Man, I can’t think of a title with those words that would sound anywhere as  marketable as World of Zoo, so let’s keep that. Besides, I feel like this is a game more geared towards children, with its focus being less on taking care of an entire park, and more on taking care of the animals… which we can do in pretty fun ways. It feels closer to a virtual pet game.

Movie Review: Free Guy

Well... crap. This is it, the search is over. I think we have it. It appears to me that we have the video game movie that's closest to possible perfection to exist. So far, at the very least.

The promotional material

Before I cover the plot of the film (in which I'll do my best to not spoil anything, because I want people to see this film), I think I need to explain something else: The marketing campaign for this film is absolutely genius. It's got regular movie posters, but it also has posters that parody some of the most famous video games of all time, and some of recent years. Here, have a quick gallery.

When I saw these posters, I immediately had a hunch that the people behind this movie legitimately knew what they were doing. Okay, let's be completely fair, the marketing department actually had a lot of time to came up with these; the film was originally planned for released in July of 2020... which was no time for movie releases. And these posters actually show the current release date, which makes me think they were thought up after the movie's release was delayed. This was only a sign that this film was going to do things right.

The story

Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is probably the most average person ever. Every single day of his life, he wakes up with a big smile on his face, says hello to his goldfish Goldie, suits up and heads out to work as a bank teller on this island known as Free City. He stops for a coffee on the way, greets his friend Buddy the security guard (Lil Rel Howery) on arriving, and gets in place, ready to face the daily challenges: Stamping documents, allowing loans, and the inevitable attack by sunglass-wearing weirdos pulling a heist and stealing all the money. Every day.

You see, Guy is not a real person: He's an NPC, a basic programmed A.I. tasked with doing these mundane things. The world of Free City is actually a multiplayer action/crime game developed by Soonami, a large game development studio in the real world. Free City is inspired by Grand Theft Auto Online, but has shades of other similar games as well. It's also incredibly popular, with lots of gamers and streamers taking part in the various criminal missions made available.

In spite of that, Guy was also programmed with aspirations: He dreams of meeting the perfect woman for him. And one day, as he comes back from work with Buddy, he does: A sexy woman (Jodie Comer) in sunglasses walking past him, mouthing off everything he's about to say, like she knows him. There's just a little problem: He's an NPC, and in Free City, those who wear sunglasses are player characters... This chance encounter causes Guy to put into question everything, including his daily routine. Until one day, where he gets his hands on a pair of sunglasses and puts them on, revealing to him the gamers' HUB displays all over the place, and the artificial nature of his world. He sets out to find the mysterious woman again and, perhaps, change his world for the better with this newfound knowledge.

In the real world, Soonami Games also employs Walter McKeys (Joe Keery), who used to co-own an indie studio with his friend Millie (also Jodie Comer). Their greatest project, before getting bought out and incorporated into Soonami, was a game in which the A.I. of NPCs evolves and improves over time. Unfortunately, the hotheaded director of Soonami, Antwan (Taika Waititi), is in a rush to release Free City 2. This, however, would mean shutting down the servers of the original Free City, meaning the end of Guy's world...

The review

I kept thinking about this movie on the ride home, wondering if there was anything negative I could actually find to say about this film. The only things I could think of were spoiler-based, and I am trying to avoid spoilers as much as possible for this review (most of what I say in the synopsis here was already covered in the trailers). Aside from a tiny handful of things regarding games as escapism, I don't actually know if there's anything I can actually mention.

The shining point of this film, and I've already brought it up earlier, is how it feels like it understands, and attempts to properly portray, every category of people that it features in some way, shape or form. I felt a deep sense of respect towards all parties involved, and that was actually really good. The groups of people that got represented quite well, in my opinion, are:

-Gamers, obviously;

-Game developers, be they programmers, coders or 'moderators' of online communities;

-Geeks in general;

-Millenials (you'd think that goes hand-in-hand with some of the previous categories, but there's that edge of social commentary to the film where the Millennial-aged characters can't help but reflect on the crappier elements of their world, showing social conscience);

-And people who make video game-related content (YouTubers, Twitch streamers, etc.; some famous content creators on both platforms even make cameos).

While less respectful but still 100% on-the-nose, the film also represents game directors and studio heads: Taika Waititi is hilarious as Antwan, perfectly representing the kind of asshole we kind of imagine big-name studio directors to be nowadays. Have a reminder that this movie was filmed before the massive controversies about Ubisoft and Activision/Blizzard made the news.

Free City itself is, as I mentioned, heavily inspired by GTA Online, but it also has references to Fortnite and likely makes nods to other games (some of which I won't spoil, but let's just say: They friggin' get their references right). It's also unabashedly, proudly geeky. Lastly, I felt like there were a LOT of jokes about coding, programming, and the various steps of designing a game, which is normal seeing as it's a movie about the inner workings of a video game. So, when something isn't quite right (like a character who isn't able to do something, or one who's missing lines of dialogue), it's doubly hilarious all while making complete sense.

Yes, this is, quite possibly, the best video game movie to exist at the moment. I do not make that statement lightly; I spent the last 7 years basically studying the evolution of video game films through this blog, and no other film that came before this one compares. I don't know whether we'll ever get anything better than this when it comes to using video games as the core of a movie. I strongly recommend it. Go see it in theaters, put a mask on (this pandemic may be on its last legs, but it's still around), and check this film out. It's money well-spent, an awesome two hours.