Alan Wake (incl. DLC "The Signal" and "The Writer") - Full Playthrough
2Alan Wake is a controversial game, but highly praised by most people who played it according to player reviews. It was a very ambitious game for the Xbox 360 era with impressive graphics for the time that still look fine. There is a remaster with higher polygon character models, which look worse in my opinion, and higher resolution textures. The version on Steam, however, has not been upgraded to the remaster so I played the original version.
So, what is this? In my opinion it is a cinematic thriller. You need the right expectations to enjoy this game because if you play it like an adventure, first-person shooter or survival horror game, you may hate it. Why? Because there is very little to explore and there is nothing to interact with except for a few switches. Oh, and combat is also terrible, but the game makes up for it in atmosphere and story-telling, also the environmental kind of storytelling which is my favorite. This is why I suggest you play the game as if it was a movie where you move the plot forward as fast as possible. This is what I did for this playthrough. Firstly, in order to keep it under 12 hours so it's one video for youtube and secondly so it is watchable despite its length.
You are Alan Wake, a bestseller author who is suffering from writer's block and hasn't written anything in two years. Alan and his wife Alice visit a small town named Bright Springs in the Northwest of the US for a vacation to recharge his batteries, pun intended. Of course, things go wrong and you tumble into a story that is very confusing for the first three episodes (out of six), but then it starts to make sense and becomes quite interesting. The thing is that, most likely, you will miss a lot of the story on the first playthrough. You will have a general idea of what happened, but the more subtle hints in the environment and dialogues will not get noticed. Even on my third exposition to the game when watching the playthrough, I notice new things. There are also two episodes that were added as DLC which continue the story. They are ok, but I find it questionable if the story really had to be continued after the original ending. It does add a better understanding of what is going on, but it doesn't resolve anything in addition to the original ending.
Graphics and sound still hold up and the voice acting as well as the character animations during dialogues are excellent. Barry Wheeler, Alan's agent, is just such a funny guy and everyone else fits really well too. Controls are fine, but the combat is mega boring. I applaud them for trying something interesting, but combat just doesn't have enough variety. You have very few weapons and in order to kill anything, you need to shine light on it to remove their darkness armor or shroud.
There is also a spinoff game named "American Nightmare" which is much more action focused, but I haven't played it. To my knowledge, it doesn't really add to the story of the original. And there is a proper sequel about to be released (based on the time of this upload). Supposedly, it's more survival horror oriented, but it's going to be an EPIC store exclusive for some time so that's a "nope" from me.
So, even though the video is almost 11 hours long, I think the story is worth experiencing. Just consider it a very long movie. :-)
00:00 - Start
00:08 - Episode 1 (Nightmare)
1:02:36 - Episode 2 (Taken)
2:16:24 - Episode 3 (Ransom)
3:57:28 - Episode 4 (The Truth)
5:35:03 - Episode 5 (The Clicker)
7:14:16 - Episode 6 (Departure)
8:31:40 - Special 1 / Ep. 7 (The Signal)
9:35:52 - Special 2 / Ep. 8 (The Writer)