replace.me: Alan Wake – PC (UK Import) : Video Games

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Part action game, part psychological thriller, Alan Wake is a pulse-pounding thrill ride. When the wife of the best-selling writer Alan Wake disappears on. Think of Alan Wake as a story that really wants to be told in a movie, but is instead transplanted into a computer game. While I found the story it tells. Alan Wake is an action-adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios, released for the.
 
 

 

Alan wake pc game

 

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Rated: Teen. Enhance your purchase. About this item A Psychological Action Thriller With the body of an action game and the mind of a psychological thriller, Alan Wake is a pulse pounding thrill ride.

Would you like to tell us about a lower price? Customer reviews. How customer reviews and ratings work Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them. Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon. Top reviews Most recent Top reviews. Top reviews from the United States. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Verified Purchase. Well known as a pretty dang good game; horror and mystery well-mixed.

That said, this game actually installas from and runs from Steam Also, effective this week, the music on the soundtrack will be electronically replaced with non-original. This shouldn\’t affect gameplay, but be aware of these two issues. Works perfectly.. Very good game if you like survival horror thriller! Alan Wake is a successful novelist suffering from writer\’s block. He and his wife, Alice, take a holiday to Bright Falls, Washington, and rent a cabin on an island in the middle of a volcanic lake.

When Alice \’surprises\’ Alan with a typewriter, hoping he\’ll feel inspired to start writing again, Alan becomes angry and storms out. He hears his wife screaming, only to find the cabin and the island have disappeared. Apparently the island was destroyed in a volcanic eruption in Wake discovers he has somehow lost a week, and keeps finding pages from a new novel he\’s been writing called Departure in which he himself is the protagonist. As shadowy creatures attack him and TV shows seem to reflect his state of mind, Wake must discover whether he has gone insane and attempt to track down his missing wife.

Alan Wake is the creation of Finnish developers Remedy, best-known for their superlative work on the first two Max Payne games. Like the Max Payne games, Alan Wake is strongly based around a central protagonist and emphasises his character development throughout the game, giving the player more of a connection to their character and his fate. Unlike Max Payne, Alan Wake is not purely an action game.

It also employs elements of survival-horror, adventure games and exploration to create something that is hard to classify. This gives the game a unique mood and feel to it, but also makes it hard to market and resulted in initially disappointing sales although, thanks to the highly successful PC version, the game has now sold more than 2 million copies and a sequel is likely.

The game is divided into six distinct episodes with two more included with the PC version and available to optionally download for the X-Box and structured like a TV mini-series.

Each episode opens with Alan recapping the story so far and ends with a different song, usually on a cliffhanger. Each episode is usually divided into two sections, a daytime one where Alan investigates what\’s going on by talking to people and exploring the backstory, and a night section when Alan has to achieve some goal whilst under attack by the \’dark presence\’, a shadowy force which can animate objects and possess people using clouds of darkness.

The daytime sections are, disappointingly, free of choice. You can\’t choose Alan\’s dialogue and are on rails for most of these sections as people talk to you and explain what\’s going on or not, in most cases. You can move around and sometimes find bonus items for use later, but there\’s a limit to your freedom in these sections.

For those who become hooked by the game\’s intriguing, Twin Peaks-lite storyline, this will be fine. For those itching to get to the actual gameplay sections, these parts of the game may feel tedious although they\’re usually pretty short, and we get to the action relatively quickly.

The bulk of each episode is the section set at night, during which time Alan has to fight off enemies. Flashlight beams act as a reticle. Besides the conventional shooter gameplay need for reloading ammunition , the player must also 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 among the Taken.

The amount of darkness \”shield\” remaining on an enemy is represented by a corona of light that appears when aiming at an enemy. Instead of traditional health bars, this shield is represented by a circle that decreases in diameter as it weakens. A stronger darkness may recharge over time. The player is 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 use searchlights to take out massive waves of Taken. Streetlights and other light stands can provide a safe haven, which the Taken cannot enter, and will regenerate the character\’s health faster. Otherwise, health regenerates slowly with time, when not taking any damage.

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. Although Wake does not remember writing this book, its storyline seems to be becoming real around him. These readable manuscript pages are scattered around the game world, out of chronological order; they often describe scenes that have yet to occur and act as warning and instructions for proceeding through upcoming challenges.

The game\’s downloadable content episodes introduce other collectibles such as alarm clocks. Alan Wake voiced by Matthew Porretta is a bestselling crime fiction author suffering from a two-year stretch of writer\’s block. He and his wife Alice travel to the small mountain town of Bright Falls, Washington for a short vacation on the advice of Alice and Alan\’s friend and agent Barry Wheeler. Before their arrival, Alan has a nightmare about shadowy figures who try to kill him, before an ethereal figure interrupts the dream and teaches him how to utilize the light to fend off the shadows.

Upon arrival in Bright Falls, Alan goes to retrieve the keys and map to their rented cabin from Carl Stucky, the cabin\’s landlord, but encounters a mysterious old woman, who tells him that Stucky had fallen ill and she was entrusted to give Alan the keys.

The woman directs Alan and Alice to a cabin on an island in the middle of Cauldron Lake, a volcanic crater lake. As they unpack, Alice reveals to Alan that the real purpose of their trip is to help break his writer\’s block by arranging for him to see a famous Bright Falls psychologist named Dr. Emil Hartman and leaving a typewriter in one of the cabin\’s rooms for him to work on his next book.

Alan is infuriated and storms out of the cabin, but rushes back when he hears Alice crying for help. Alan returns to the cabin just as Alice is being dragged into the lake\’s waters by a mysterious force. Alan dives into the water after her, blacking out as he submerges. Alan regains consciousness a week later, apparently having driven his car off the road, but with no memory of how he got there.

He attempts to reach a nearby gas station, but his progress is hampered by murderous, shadowy figures resembling those in his dream. While fighting the shadows with light, Alan repeatedly encounters an ethereal figure in a diving suit similar to the one from his dream, which leaves behind pages of a manuscript entitled Departure , ostensibly written by Alan, which he has no memory of writing. Alan soon discovers that the events of the manuscript are coming true, and that the shadowy figures, or \”Taken,\” are townsfolk possessed by a dark force.

After killing a possessed Carl Stucky and reaching the gas station, Alan tries to alert Sheriff Sarah Breaker of his wife\’s disappearance, but Sarah states that there has been no island or cabin in Cauldron Lake for years after it sank following a volcanic eruption years prior. Alan is taken to the police station, and Barry arrives in Bright Falls in search of him. Alan receives a call from a man purporting to be Alice\’s kidnapper, demanding the pages of Departure in exchange for her.

Meeting at a nearby national park, Alan witnesses the kidnapper at the mercy of the mysterious old woman, confessing that he never actually had Alice. Alan and the kidnapper are then attacked by a dark tornado, which hurls Alan into Cauldron Lake. He awakens in the lodge overlooking Cauldron Lake under the care of Hartman, who claims that Alan is suffering a psychotic break , with the supernatural phenomena being fabrications of his imagination. Alan attempts to escape the lodge as the shadowy force starts to attack it, learning in the process that the fake kidnapper was employed by Hartman to lure Alan to him.

Hartman tries to stop Alan from escaping, and gives the impression that he is aware of the supernatural events surrounding the lake. Barry helps Alan to escape the lodge before the shadow subsumes it and all those inside. Alan and Barry gradually begin to learn the truth about Cauldron Lake from the other townsfolk. An entity known as the Dark Presence taking the form of the old woman, Barbara Jagger is trapped within the lake, attempting to escape by using the lake\’s power to turn fiction into reality.

It had previously tried this with a poet named Thomas Zane — the figure in the diving suit — but Zane was able to resist its will and used his writings to cause the volcanic eruption that sank the island, stranding himself within the lake. The Dark Presence has grown strong enough to start to influence the townspeople and create the forces that have pursued Alan.

That night, as Alan and Barry take shelter, they get drunk on moonshine , and Alan starts to recall memories of being forced to write Departure during the prior week, realizing that the Dark Presence is now trying to use his writings to escape, and is holding Alice within the lake in order to coerce him. Alan and Barry are arrested by an FBI agent, but the Taken assault the police station and drag the agent away.

Sarah, now convinced of the Dark Presence\’s existence, helps Alan and Barry reach Cynthia Weaver, a hermit who knew Thomas Zane and prepared countermeasures for the Dark Presence\’s return. She leads them to the \”Well-Lit Room,\” containing a light switch known as the Clicker, which, through the power of Alan\’s writings, possesses the narrative ability to destroy the Dark Presence.

Alan returns to Cauldron Lake alone and dives in, finding himself in a surreal alternate dimension known as the Dark Place, where thoughts and ideas become reality. Alan encounters Jagger and destroys her with the Clicker; realizing he must maintain balance in the story, Alan completes Departure by freeing Alice, but strands himself in the Dark Place in the process.

Finishing Departure, Alan writes the final line – \”It\’s not a lake, it\’s an ocean. Continuing from the end of the main game, Alan finds himself in a surreal version of Bright Falls and realizes he is still trapped in the Dark Place. Zane directs Alan to follow a signal through a cell phone in order to \”focus\” and guide himself through the Dark Place. While navigating the realm\’s shifting, dreamlike topography, Alan encounters television screens depicting a more maniacal version of himself, who uses the power of the Dark Place to narrate circumstances that plunge Alan into danger, sending hordes of Taken after him.

Alan also encounters an ethereal version of Barry, a figment of his subconsciousness, who helps guide Alan safely across the abstract landscape. Zane eventually reveals that Alan himself is the cause of his current circumstance; the maniacal version of Alan on the television screens is an irrational aspect of Alan consumed by fear, his frenzied thoughts affecting the subjective world of the Dark Place. Alan encounters a monstrous conglomeration of televisions, through which the irrational Alan tries to kill him.

Alan defeats the televisions, but wakes up back in the cabin again, and realizes he is still trapped. Still trapped in the Dark Place, Alan regains consciousness and accepts that he is the cause of the insanity he is experiencing, regaining his memories in the process. Zane tells him that the \”irrational Alan\” is still inside the cabin, controlling the Dark Place; the \”rational Alan\” must regain control in order to have any chance of escaping the Dark Place.

Zane directs Alan to a lighthouse across the increasingly surreal landscape of the Dark Place, while the irrational Alan attempts to stop him by creating delusions of Alice, manipulating the landscape, and sending armies of Taken after him.

Alan eventually outwits his other self and reaches the lighthouse, passing through it to reach the cabin. As Alan nears the cabin, the imaginary Barry reappears and tells Alan that he will have to reject all the illusions before he can face off against the insane version of Alan, including the apparition of Barry.

Alan is forced to confront Taken versions of Barry and the other townsfolk, defeating them all and reentering the cabin. The irrational Alan is in a paranoid state on the cabin floor; when Alan touches him, the two are made whole again.

Alan realizes that he cannot let himself fall into a delusional state again for fear of never being able to escape, and returns to the typewriter to start a new story— \” Return \”. After shipping Max Payne 2 , Remedy Entertainment spent some time \”recovering from the crunch \”, [10] and started coming up with different concepts for a new project. Among these was the concept for Alan Wake. The basic elements of the narrative were set early on: Alan Wake as a successful writer finds himself in the small town of Bright Falls where due to supernatural events his writings have come to life to attack him.

To further distance this next game from the linear style of Max Payne , Remedy planned Bright Falls as a free-roaming, sandbox-style open world city, similar to those seen in the Grand Theft Auto series.

For example, this tool allowed them to path a road across the game world, upon which the tool would make sure no vegetation would appear near the road though added sprout of grass near its edges, and would add approach ditches and other features along the sides of the roads to simplify the world creation. The game would have been more like a survival game ; during daylight hours the player would collect resources, such as gasoline to run portable generators to run lights, as to protect and defend the player-character at night.

For example, Lake said one idea was based on the supernatural events tied to the no-longer dormant volcano under Cauldron Lake, which would have led to the evacuation of Bright Falls and left Alan dealing only with the supernatural forces. The game, still designed around this open-world approach, was announced at E3 in June for \”the next generation of consoles and PCs \”, and was shown to the press behind closed doors in the form of a tech demo.

Remedy also used this demo to gain publisher interest. Remedy still continued to struggle with merging the open-world survival gameplay and story, now further complicated with Microsoft\’s involvement and suggestions for improvement, which Lake compared to a \” too many cooks \” situation.

Roughly three years into development, the team recognized they needed to stop and refocus on what the core elements of the gameplay was to be. This allowed some levels to be used for daytime that would be used to advance the story, letting the player talk to NPCs and explore the area, and others for the night levels that were predominately action-based, and even with some levels having both daytime and nighttime versions.

This change better supported the thriller narrative as well. Other key gameplay ideas that came out from this period were the ideas for the Taken and how the player would fight them, how these enemies would appear and the in-game signals the player would see and hear to prepare, and the use of lit safe havens between combat. The first screenshots depicted the character of Alan Wake in much different attire, as well as a different layout for the town of Bright Falls, compared to the released game.

While Max was a cop and thus suited to an action game, Remedy wanted Alan to be atypical of an action hero, making him a writer, partially influenced by King, [12] that became involved in the events and forced into action.

The game\’s enemies were designed by drawing concept art and then pouring water over them to make them feel \”Just a bit off\”. After four years of having repeatedly demonstrated the Microsoft Windows version, in , Remedy confirmed that at that point the game was being developed exclusively for the Xbox and the decision to make a PC version was in Microsoft\’s hands.

After the game\’s release in , Remedy said that bringing the game to the PC was \”not on the cards at the moment. Alan Wake was influenced by and often alludes to certain films, TV shows, and books, as well as paying homage to a number of artists and works. Remedy has explained the shared themes and ideas between the game and other existing works of popular culture as \”taking something familiar to people as an element, and building something of your own, and hopefully something [that is] unique in games, but still familiar from other forms of entertainment.

Bestselling author Stephen King was a major inspiration for Alan Wake. The main character as a writer whose work is coming true is a theme that has been explored by King in a number of his works. King himself was asked for permission to use his quote.

He also received copies of the game as a \”thank you\”, but was unable to try them out because he does not own an Xbox. Danielewski \’s House of Leaves.

In the game there are a number of television sets that can be found around the town in different places. They can be switched on and a short episode of the fictional series Night Springs will be played, which is influenced by the television series The Twilight Zone , created by Rod Serling in the late s.

The game\’s setting, Bright Falls, draws much inspiration from the early s TV show Twin Peaks , which was set in the titular town; both fictional small towns in the state of Washington.

In its structure, the story of Alan Wake plays out similarly to a mystery television program, where each episode brings another piece of the puzzle to the main ongoing story, yet have a distinct plot of their own. A prominent borrowing from television is the \”Previously on Alan Wake The main game itself is divided up into six episodes.

The main game is designed to have a satisfactory ending with the main character reaching his goal, while the DLCs form a two-part special that further expands on the game\’s story by \”[continuing] the fiction and [serving] as a bridge between seasons. Remedy Entertainment chose the TV series storytelling format to establish a certain stylisation and pacing. The developers felt that watching episodes of certain TV shows — such as the heavily serialised series Lost — in the form of released box sets , at the viewers\’ pace, was a \”natural way of \’consuming media\’\”, and that this episodic format was a better fit for a long game.

While Remedy had wanted to use the episodic release format , with each of the above episodes released digitally over time, Microsoft instead pushed Remedy to release the main game as a full product on retail disc.

Phil Spencer , head of Xbox Game Studios , said in that at the time, Microsoft was concerned about if the episode format would work and its revenue potentials, projecting there would be declining sales with each successive episode, and instead believed a single release was likely more profitable. Spencer said that since then, they recognized this was likely a bad decision as it forced them into a certain way of thinking with respect to monetization.

A number of real-life brands and products appear in Alan Wake. The developers said that they tried to \”be very conservative and attentive towards gamers\” with their use of product placement , and that they aimed \”to make the world feel more real rather than put ads in-your-face.

Examples of such marketing include collectable Energizer batteries and lithium batteries to insert into the player\’s hand-held lights. The phone service provider Verizon Wireless is another prominent brand in Alan Wake : besides Verizon branded mobile phones appearing on screen, there is a second Verizon commercial viewable on one of the game\’s interactive TVs, as well as an allusion to the company\’s famous advertising line \”Can you hear me now?

Additionally, billboards around Bright Falls advertise both Energizer and Verizon. Ford and Lincoln automobiles are also featured in the game. Several Microsoft related brands also appear in the game. Alan and Alice Wake\’s car shows that it has the Microsoft-powered Ford Sync in-vehicle entertainment system.

An Xbox console can be seen in one section of the game, with the box of the fictional Night Springs video game next to it, which are collectibles in \”The Writer\” DLC episode. In multiple sections of the game, Microsoft Tag bar codes can be seen; these can be scanned in real life by the user with the appropriate software on their mobile device.

When scanned, these tags redirect players to a phone number with the voicemail from one of the game\’s characters, or to a Verizon-sponsored web site where users gain access to exclusive Alan Wake extras for their console.

The product placement has been removed in the remastered version. The game\’s score is composed by Petri Alanko. Sam Lake said that the song \” On 20 July , an official soundtrack consisting of 18 tracks was released. In addition to the original soundtrack and these songs, Alan Wake includes several licensed songs used typically at the closing of each episode or elsewhere.

Due to expiration of these music licenses, all digital and retail versions of Alan Wake were pulled from purchase from the various storefronts as of 15 May , though Remedy offered a large discount for the title in the days prior to removal. The removal does not affect those who already own the game, nor does it impact the availability of Alan Wake\’s American Nightmare , though that title will likely be affected similarly when its own licensing deals expire.

Alan Wake was first released exclusively for the Xbox video game console. When the game went gold on 7 April , the European release date was moved up a week. Therefore, the game was released in Europe first, on 14 May , and then in North America on 18 May, as originally scheduled.

Alan Wake was also released in a limited collector\’s edition, packaged in a case resembling a hardcover book. It also features a developer commentary , and lends access to virtual items for Xbox , such as themes and Avatar clothes.