Alan Wake Preview

This game has the best spooky trees we've seen in some time.

As you might expect from the developer of Max Payne, the combat is encouragingly meaty when it does kick off. The “one man versus the masses” atmosphere is faintly reminiscent of Resident Evil 4/5, but the movement of your foes seems slower, more deliberate - and as a result, more terrifying. Once again, the use of light is a key ingredient, with monsters screeching as Alan targets them with his torch before unleashing a volley of deafening gun shots. The game looks even better when Alan fires up a flare: the action segues into slow-motion, with enemies flaking into ash-confetti under a murderous red glare. Unlike Max Payne’s bullet time, Alan Wake’s slo-mo will be a purely stylistic feature, triggered by the game during certain moments of action. Provided it’s not over-used, it should be a welcome touch.

While it's understandable that the shadow mechanics and innovative combat have been the main things to grab public attention, there are other neat little touches worthy of note. While your main objective in Wake is to find your wife, this task soon becomes aligned with a need to find the pages of your missing manuscript. As you come across pages in the game, Alan will read them aloud. As it turns out, they have a habit of describing really unpleasant things that are just about to happen. At one point in Remedy’s demo, Alan is searching for a cop named Randy - a guy who’d previously promised to help him out. On his way to the rendezvous, he finds a page that describes him wailing in terror as he is attacked by an unknown creature; immediately the player knows that something really bad is lying in wait for them. Again, it’s a fresh take on the classic survival horror formula.

While Remedy’s E3 presentations have clearly answered a few questions (not least the one about whether this project was even happening anymore), there is still a lot of mystery surrounding Alan Wake. There’s the car for one thing: it’s not clear whether you can jump in at any time or whether you’re limited to specific driving sections, but either way it’s hardly natural territory for a survival horror game. Has Remedy found a way to make driving scary? It sounds like a tall order, but it’s possible. It certainly seems unlikely that the driving is just in there to get you from A to be B.

One thing is already clear: Alan Wake has the potential to be one of the creepiest games of next year. Remedy’s demo wrapped up with a highly satisfying cliffhanger: having caught up with Randy (or what’s left of him), Alan is directed to a lighthouse on the edge of town where some of his pages can supposedly be found; Randy has hidden his part of the manuscript here, since its powerful beams will keep away the creatures of the night.

As Alan arrives at the lighthouse, he comments on how strange it is that such an isolated location should become a safe haven… and then suddenly the tower goes dark. It’s a trap. Alan is trapped on a narrow peninsula, in the middle of nowhere, in the gloom. And then something emerges from the forest - perhaps the same something that was tormenting Randy: a colossal tornado of darkness, bearing down on the lighthouse with unstoppable force. It’s a brilliant image for Remedy to leave with us, one that will skulk around in our memories until the day Alan’s story continues. May it arrive swiftly.

Alan Wake will be released on Xbox 360 and PC in the spring of 2010.