A ̶l̶o̶n̶e̶̶ Lame In The Dark
Alan Wake: a reluctant review.
Reluctant because, as I said, I didn’t want to write a review of an almost ten-year old game in the first place but, also, because to do so means reliving the whole miserable experience (and it was bad enough the first time).
But, the left-handed mutant SouthpawPoet was angling for one, it’s fresh in my mind and I have the urge to vent my spleen in public about my First World problems — no, I have neither a sense of shame nor one of proportion.
So, without further ado …
Stevie Crye ¹ vs The Evil Dead, with in-your-face signposting to Twin Peaks, The Twilight Zone, Poltergeist … it is so overburdened with cliché, I’d be reluctant to take a copy of it with me on an airplane due to the astronomical fee charged for the excess weight.
Replete with chapter/episode recaps at the beginning of each new one (presumably for those players who not only don’t simply skip the three to five minutes of music at the end of the previous one but, furthermore, restrict themselves to playing one per week), it’s almost as if the development team were led by a film studies hopeful, making a pilot in a pitch for their dream role of directing straight-to-video bargain-bin rejects (or a 1980s TV series relegated to daytime viewing on a cable channel in the 1990s).
And, what’s worse, they even take the sledgehammer of self-deprecating ‘irony’ to their own work by having a dying bit-part NPC refer to events as a poor sequel to a bad movie and ask (predictably, with their final breath) “Who wrote this crap anyway?” — I laughed until I stopped.
It has long since been observed that certain movie/TV tropes are utterly unrealistic (like someone only becoming aware of the presence of someone else after falling over and finding themselves at eye-level with the not-exactly-a-newcomer’s shoes) but they are accepted as an almost-but-not-quite fourth wall breaking technique that closes the divide between the protagonist and the viewer. Here, however, there is too much of this at a meta level in the game; instead of the starting scene involving the player driving along when, suddenly, a pedestrian appears in front of the vehicle, leaving no time to avoid collision, there is a cut-scene the player watches (about which Wake subsequently sololoquises, naturally).
And so it continues — it seems the idea of making an interactive gaming experience … well, interactive, to be pedantic … never occurred to the development team.
As for Night Springs segments Wake can watch on the random TV sets scattered around the place, if ever there were a candidate for cut-scene placement in appropriate circumstances (like in a motel room between ‘chapters’/‘episodes’ of the tale, or as dreams) that has to be it but, bizarrely, whilst wandering dark forests, on the run from both the FBI and the shadowy denizens of a B-movie Deliverance … or frantically trying to escape a building (full of the mentally unstable) in the grips of a dark and malevolent force creating a fairground ride with the furniture … desperately seeking replacement batteries for his flashlight or, more importantly, ammunition for his weapons … whilst equally desperately trying to find and save his abducted wife … Wake stops to watch a sub Twilight Zone offering that anyone playing on a monitor smaller than a home cinema screen will struggle to make out.
Not only that but, unlike the aforementioned trope of closing the gap between the protagonist and the viewer by showing it to us with the immediacy of a first person perspective, we watch it over Wake’s shoulder (watching him watch it) which places us at a remove from his experience; an equally ham-fisted metaphorical perspective of Wake’s experience of watching himself at the same remove — we get it, now just let us watch it, for goodness sake; don’t labour the point! It makes even less sense than the musical interludes between chapters/episodes that lead me to wonder whether Lynch weren’t inspired by this very game to do the same in the execrable third season of Twin Peaks.
I won’t bother to comment on the thirty seconds long product placement for Verizon on one of those TVs save to remark that whoever on the production and/or executive team thought any of the game was subtly clever has, in any case, a sense of the aesthetic that’s almost-but-not-quite as subtle as a brick in the face, so, really, there’s nothing to say about it (not even ‘facepalm’)
With the ineluctable logic of the genre, you are encouraged to leave the beaten track in search of flasks of coffee that don’t play any part in the game mechanics (don’t add to your stamina, alertness or anything) but, hey, you want that Twin Peaks reference achievement, right? Of course you do; find 25 of them to earn the ‘Damn Good Cup Of Coffee’ achievement (did I mention how subtle the game’s humour is?). Waste the time and ammunition required to locate all 100 of them and you’ll get the ‘Hypercaffeinated’ achievement coveted by discerning AD/HD sufferers everywhere.
And, inevitably there are keys to locked doors to locate on the other side of the building, power generators to turn on in cellars and outhouses … which is why, later in the game, like any good horror movie hero, you take every opportunity to separate yourself from your companions and wander off alone, into unknown territory, in the dark rather than suggest they accompany you for safety’s sake.
Naturally, when … racing to reach a helicopter … the town sheriff runs through the back door into the street, you take a detour to the upstairs of the darkened bookshop rather than chase after her and help save the town from unspeakable evil at the earliest opportunity … because it’s narratively imperative (play it right and, for your troubles, you might even return with two of the ten shotgun shells you find there too).
And it doesn’t stop there … there are gaming tropes aplenty too.
There’s the grim predictability with which every act of even minor significance is followed with an attack by The Taken. Major plot advancement? Expect an imminent, if not immediate, attack. Entered a new area? Expect an attack. Found something useful? Expect an attack. Spotted a pool of light a few metres away? There’s a chainsaw welding maniac behind you. Flock of birds? They’ll be mobbing you momentarily. Done nothing new, just walked a few steps on from where you were? Yep, you guessed it, you’re about to be attacked by multiple opponents. Found an industrial lamp or floodlight in the middle of a field, with an invitation to turn it on? You better believe that’s a sign of an imminent mass attack. Found a double-barrelled shotgun, pump-action shotgun and hunting rifle all in the same place, each with between a mere two and five rounds to its name? You’d better practice squealing like a pig (especially if they’re in a burnt out building situated too far from the aforementioned lamp/floodlight to make running back to swap out your, now empty, first choice anything other than suicide, even if you weren’t panicking, disorientated and could locate the building again in the dark after being blinded by an industrial lamp/floodlight to start with).
Not that your death means anything; unless you are unlucky enough to find yourself unarmed, surrounded by The Taken … with nowhere close enough to run to before you run out of breath and they catch up with you … no matter how often you die and respawn, there are no consequences of failure, you’ll eventually prevail (and, given the amount of munitions stashes, you’d have to be a spectacularly poor shot and utterly unversed in the use of cover and higher ground to find yourself with no weapon of any kind and/or no ammunition about your person).
So 99.9% of the time there’s no sense of urgency, merely exasperation at worst.
Apart from the weapon and munitions stashes lying around for you to find, there’s the limit on how many weapons you can carry.
Now look, I know that movies aren’t real and real guns are heavier than Arnie makes them look but …whilst I’m no beefcake and would certainly notice the weight … come the day I find myself fighting the forces of evil in the dark, unlike Wake, I will not be restricting myself to a handgun and either a shotgun or a hunting rifle but not both; to Hell with the encumbrance, I’ll be slinging the rifle over my shoulder and carrying the shotgun in my hands. And neither will I be tossing any of them away when I run out of ammo, I’ll hang on to them for when I find some, because … you know … ̶f̶o̶r̶e̶w̶a̶r̶n̶e̶d̶ forearmed is forearmed and all that.
Nor will I make do with a mere twenty flashlight batteries and a handful of rounds/shells for each — I’ll be getting the largest rucksack I can find and filling it with as many of each as I can carry and still run to the nearest suitable safe spot in time (in Life you can never be too wealthy, too good looking or too well armed).
Then there’s the classic confiscation of your weapons at certain points (always at the beginning of a new chapter/episode, but some other occasions as well) … which is the only time you should find yourself less than over-equipped for the coming confrontation that is the sole reason for their being denied you in the first place … increasing the challenge not by way of an internally consistent progression of events leading to a logical conclusion hut by arbitrary use of game mechanics (what was that talk about breaking the fourth wall?).
And, whilst we’re examining these matters, you’ll recall your brief sojourn in the bookshop … when you left the sheriff to save the World on her own … well, to no-one’s surprise, you did so in order to seek out any weapons/munitions that might be found and upon subsequently finally rejoining your erstwhile companion in the street, run up and down its length, rummaging in trash cans in case anyone inadvertently threw a flash-grenade or a flaregun in one of them earlier in the day (or even long ago in the case of a deliberate stashing of munitions in a public place likely to be emptied of them and put under surveillance long before anyone recovers them) — I don’t know about anyone else, but my sense of disbelief hasn’t been suspended, it’s been fired without notice or severance pay.
Neither do the ham-fisted direction and directions aid things.
Every time anything interesting happens, Wake comments on it and kills the mood deader than your grandparents’ sex lives.
Did a corpse just disappear before your very eyes? Wake observes it aloud on your behalf (presumably, in case you had gone to the bathroom when it happened). Is a bridge out? Wake comments woodenly upon that fact. Being chased by a driverless bulldozer? Wake saves you the trouble of exclaiming in surprise by beating you to the punch. Espy an empty car in your vicinity and Wake, clumsily changing from the previously used past tense to the present tense (did nobody do any continuity checking?) informs you that he is still far from his destination and will need a car if he is to reach it any time soon. As the game pauses to focus your attention on a vehicle (heading in the same direction as Wake) on the road far below, he observes aloud that there is a vehicle, on the road far below, heading in the same direction and if its destination should happen to be identical he will find that out when he arrives there himself — no shit, Sherlock.
With a palette of actions limited to aim, shoot, run, dodge, jump, pick up, interact and die, there are no brain-teasing puzzles, merely a series of all too easily circumvented obstacles, with the method by which to do so quite literally written on them in glow-in-the dark lettering, if not announced out loud by Wake (doubtless, for the benefit of blind gamers).
Do you need to kick in a locked door? An icon appears signposting which button to press in order to kick in the door before you’ve even tried the handle. Is there a wooden beam you could knock over a seemingly untraversable gap in the floor, creating a path forward? Press the red button on your controller now to knock a wooden beam over a seemingly untraversable gap in the floor, creating a path forward. Do you need to use the logging crane to create a walkway? Wake asks himself aloud if the logging crane might be useful in his current predicament. Is your way blocked by a gate shrouded in living darkness and the nearby lamp you’ve pointed at it won’t turn on? Wake narrates his need to find a generator to … wait for it … provide power to the light. And just in case your goldfish has a longer attention span than you, ten paces from where you and another character discussed the need to find a way to the rooftop, the game prompts you to focus and, when you do, points out the rooftop as Wake vocalises your need to find a way to it.
As an homage to The Twilight Zone it is a not altogether terrible pastiche, but you have to ask yourself if the director weren’t trying too hard to break the mould by not only showing but telling as well — ha … that’ll subvert the “show, don’t tell” orthodoxy alright (we can only hope that’s the reason and that it isn’t a conceptual pun based on the concept of “show and tell” as well).
The only relief from the didacticism is the fact that Wake doesn’t have a constant companion who summarises his every remark (“Wait … so, you’re saying the corpse just disappeared before your very eyes?”)
It’s not that it doesn’t have its moments.
There is some humour: as you (on the wrong side of the gate) fight off the dark hordes whilst he maintains a running commentary on his ongoing failure to locate the key in his possession, Barry’s observation that “oh … no, that’s a twig” induces a moment of genuine (quite literally hysterical) mirth under pressure.
Wake’s observation that “there’s no way going through the crypt could be a bad idea” is similarly a moment of knowing humour in circumstances that are, for many reasons, otherwise not remotely amusing — not least the dire inevitability of the cliché about to land in your lap with all the grace of a rugby prop-forward having been flung into the air by his team-mates in a drunken violation of Swan Lake.
And who but those suffering from a sense of humour deficit could fail to be amused upon learning that shooting sufficient of the aforementioned flocks of birds with a flaregun earns them the ‘If it flies, it burns’ achievement?
But Barry’s Christmas-tree-light bandolier of protection ellicits a rictus grin and a groan as the game plumbs the depths of family friendly comedy by the numbers because that’s another element the developers/producers/studio wanted to shoehorn into it along with the kitchen sink.
The late night show that Wake can catch snippets of as he finds transistor radios on his travels is at least fairly well done … entertaining and adds colour, creating a link to a wider world that feels familiarly sane — but, be honest, if you were on the run from the Police, the FBI, darkly supernatural forces and frantically trying to save the life of your loved one, would you stop to listen to some old coot’s ramblings about the weather, or to the inanities of local insomniacs who, if only they were literate, would write to the station in green/purple ink instead of phoning in their inchoate gibberish … never mind take a three to five minute timeout from your activities to listen to the latest release by a band (it’s nothing if not pacey, this game) … or would you grab whatever useful items you could find and quickly get on your way again?
The end result is a horror game that that is only scary for the first few minutes (when you are unarmed) and dully repetitive the rest of the time — it gets tediously wearing after the fifteenth romp through the forest and logging yards (which, ironically, are less wooden than the acting).
Barely able to rise to its knees under the weight of all the cliché with which it is burdened, it sabotages itself at every opportunity.
If you want a genuinely creepy experience that will literally give you chills … and frequently leave you disorientated, wondering if something just really happened or not … then, despite its simplistic gameplay and dreadful graphics, F.E.A.R. and (albeit to a somewhat lesser extent) F.E.A.R. 2 are superior offerings.
If you want to frantically flee from decidedly disturbing assailants, unexpectedly attacking you from all angles then the Dead Space series is not only a more satisfactory experience but is, furthermore, actually what Alan Wake so crassly and so incompetently attempts to be: a series.
If you want to enjoy a well-executed interactive movie experience outside the realm of VR … with a variety of plotlines woven together in a story arc that isn’t fully revealed until the end … then try L.A. Noire instead.
If you want to read a genuinely disturbing horror story that seamlessly merges the ‘real’ world of the story with the fictional world of its protagonist author until neither they nor you are sure whether there is any difference between the two, let alone which might be which, then read Who Made Stevie Crye?
Alan Wake, however, tries too hard to be all of the above and, right from the outset, fails to be any of them.
You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned Wake’s manuscript — the story, within the story, of the story of the story, within the story, of the story within the story (I said it was taken ² with its own cleverness, didn’t I?)
My therapist says some traumas are best left unexamined, however.
But as for the title …
Wake up, Alan … Alan, awake … Alan, wake … Alan Wake
… *sigh* … I think another shovelful might do it.
Doubtless there are some who will seek to explain away its failings as ‘irony’ … but only those who don’t know the meaning of it — they keep using that word but, unlike Inigo Montoya, I am absolutely certain it doesn’t mean what they think it means (Alan Wake isn’t ironic, it’s just lame).
The ̶D̶o̶w̶n̶l̶o̶a̶d̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶C̶o̶n̶t̶e̶n̶t̶ Dreadfully Lame Conclusion (DLC)
Special Feature One: The Signal
At the start, it is promising and I almost allowed myself to believe it might redeem the experience of the game proper, setting that latter as the necessary preamble to the game into which it would be gloriously transsubstantiated by The Signal.
It has some nice touches.
The presence of Barry as a ‘self-aware’ figment of Wake’s fevered imagination, a substantivation of his own insanity (we suspect) keeping him sane, could not work without the previous story first having been told. The idea is far from (ha) novel, but is (for once) not altogether unsubtly handled and Wake’s state of mind is now the theme; and, whilst The Signal is still not the most sophisticated of attempts to lend a psychological element to a story, it wouldn’t be critically slated were it to be handled as it is at this stage in a much better tale than the one to which it is an extension — I found myself wondering what I would have made of the original game had it all been like The Signal from the start.
The constantly shifting, unreliable titular GPS signal as a metaphor for the state of Wake’s mind, whilst not exactly subtle, isn’t as crassly (ha) signalled as I suspect it would have been in the original game either — a definite improvement.
The substitution of copies of his novel for the flocks of birds, Wake being attacked by his own words, having to fight malevolent flurries of his own imagination is an uncharacteristically pleasing twist.
Albeit reliant upon the previous game (in which they really were jarringly out of place), the presence of the TV sets now has a logic of its own (in a way, almost reminiscent of Videodrome) and form a corporeal, so to speak, instantiation of the main antagonist (Wake himself).
Especially to be appreciated by writers (fiction authors in particular) is the way in which Wake shines light on words floating in the environment, turning them into the objects and events they describe, creating the world around him with them, calling his reality into existence with his selections — he is advised, by Barry, that not all of them are good words to make use of (some of them are ‘bad’ words), which, for once. provokes a contemplation of the metaphysical role of an author that goes beyond the level of sixth form/high school appreciation.
Sadly, however, it is too short to explore these matters, merely throwing conceptual one-liners, as it were, at the player along the way to the all-too-quickly reached dénouement … where things rapidly unravel. Quite apart from the disappointment of it drawing to an abrupt close (like an essay/term paper hastily completed hours before its deadline) the final encounter is simply annoying, involving the periodic appearance of one (or two) Taken whilst attempting to destroy the TV sets making up a barrier to progression. It is quite literally hit or miss as to whether you survive, as by far the most significant opposing force are the various objects that are flung at Wake (à la Poltergeist), many of which are large enough to warrant the replacement of the flashlight’s batteries in order to destroy them. And this is where the constant interruptions by other objects and Taken becomes exasperating: there is little cover, because any Wake does take can turn out to be one of the threats (they aren’t all immediately apparent), meaning he is hit from behind and side on whilst trying to strategically destroy another from afar rather than by dodging a maelstrom in the centre of the room — which renders the use of cover as effective as standing in the middle of the room.
Just like the main story, The Signal sabotages itself, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory — all the more disappointing because, unlike the main story, it was beginning to look like there might be a victory worth achieving at the end of it after all.
Special Feature Two: The Writer
It starts as subtly as you’d expect from the original: after the obligatory recap at the start, Wake re-recaps his situation for us; once again, telling as well as showing — the development team really needed to make their minds up whether they were writing a novel or making a movie/TV series, because the clumsy combination of both is amateurish.
Again, Wake talks too much, telling us what needs to be done almost before we’ve had time to realise there was anything to be done; this time, even Barry (on the other side of that gate again) getting in on the action, telling us how to defeat the first obstacle should our first attempt be unsuccessful — it’s as though the developers considered the developmental stages in child psychology and accommodated the limits that preschoolers might face when playing this psychohorror game without their parents there to advise them. And in contrast to the almost subtle approach of The Signal, the first thing Wake does after clearing the first hurdle is to explicitly clarify for us that if all he saw were a figment of his imagination then he was creating his own reality, literally fighting himself — no, really, it truly is that corny, never mind crass, and I almost gave up altogether at that point (if it weren’t for my duty to you, the reader, I would have done too).
It doesn’t play fair either. In The Signal, what words meant was apparent — at the very latest they would surely become so after a couple of experiences of each. The very first thing that happens after completing the second task in The Writer … walking up to a pedestal to pick up a flashlight (it’s a serious brainteaser, that one) … is that, when the darkness is burned from it and it is transsubstantiated into a ‘corporeal’ form, the word ‘surprise’ isn’t surprising so much as a predictably unpleasant experience but, unfairly, as a result of something that in The Signal would be the product of transmuting a different word into its real form — yes, it’s surprising in that sense, but it’s a cheap shot. And it’s inconsistent: as in The Signal, the word ‘climb’ results in the appearance of a ladder, but not in the space in which the word is encountered, appearing instead outside the room — you have to wonder if anyone on the development team has ever looked into the importance of consistency when designing experiences for people, or if they were all fresh out of school and this was their first work experience.
Immediately after climbing said ladder, Wake again reminds us of what happened in The Signal, questioning whether the warnings he received about going in too deep were referring to The Dark Place or to insanity, or if the two might even be one and the same — only three minutes in and it’s already thrown away the shovel in favour of a mechanical digger.
After a brief traipse through the hedge maze ¹, we reconnect with the figment of our imagination posing as Barry, who … after telling us that we ‘both’ knew insanity was our destiny … suggests we focus on the light at the back of a building and then, even though it is the only place there is to go from here, indicates that we should make our way to it — he’ll be connecting our mittens with a piece of long elastic next, before accompanying us to the end of the path to wait for the short bus, you mark my words.
Yet another lazy reuse of earlier material (the Old Gods’ ‘Ragnarok’ concert) follows, only this time we make it happen ourselves by burning off the darkness surrounding the words that (re)create it, whilst Barry observes the irony of a writer’s own words being used against them (two cheap shots for the price of one, nice job!). By now I’m ready to kill myself by shooting him in the face, if he makes any mention of how we are retracing our journey, but backwards (to the beginning ²).
When the fireworks are over (again) we meet up with the voice of Zane (no prize for spotting a possible interpretation of his name that begins with ‘S’) and learn that ̶ ̶̶̶D̶̶̶̶̶̶̶a̶̶̶̶̶̶̶r̶̶̶̶̶̶̶t̶̶̶̶̶̶̶h̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶V̶̶̶̶̶̶̶a̶̶̶̶̶̶̶d̶̶̶̶̶̶̶e̶̶̶̶̶̶̶r̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶i̶̶̶̶̶̶̶s̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶o̶̶̶̶̶̶̶u̶̶̶̶̶̶̶r̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶f̶̶̶̶̶̶̶a̶̶̶̶̶̶̶t̶̶̶̶̶̶̶h̶̶̶̶̶̶̶e̶̶̶̶̶̶̶r̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ we will have to confront and fight ourselves alone in the lighthouse (or the cabin, probably, I’m beyond caring now). There’s always a lighthouse, there’s always Zane in his diving suit. A diving suit? I wonder … could that be a sly reference to Bioshock? I thought of mentioning it in the review of the main game but decided that, on balance, I was probably suffering from apophenia and it was purely coincidental. But this game isn’t that subtle and if there’s a lighthouse and a guy in a diving suit in the role of guardian, you can bet your life you’re supposed to pick up on it and think to yourself “Ooh … that reminds me of Bioshock.”
A tedious process follows, of creating our path from here to there by manifesting its rocky fundament from the ether of literary description (the word ‘rock’ in other words), after which we clamber into a boat conjured, with the flashlight in our hand, from immaterial memory, bringing light to the darkest corners of our psyche and enabling us to progress on our journey both ‘physical’ and metaphorical — or something like that (probably).
Yep, it’s definitely the cabin, not the lighthouse, where we will come face to face with ourselves and battle our dark side to the death with a beam of light (use the flashlight, Luke!) — I fell out of the boat in my excitement at the end of the journey and had to listen to Zane’s portentous twaddle again.
Then we’re in Oz and the house tumbles around us but, thankfully, doesn’t land on us — which came as a relief, let me tell you (I’d’ve been ready to kick Toto, if it had).
Then there’s more tedious platforming.
Yet more platforming.
Some cheap wins calling forth exploding barrels that roll downhill and take out the Taken lining up to be wiped out by exploding barrels rolling downhill — although when I initially saw the word ‘roll’ I anticipated a more prosaic ‘ham and cheese’ or ‘bacon, lettuce and tomato’ rather than ‘fiery death in an oil-drum’, but perhaps that’s just me.
Then the first genuine puzzle in an entire game and two bits of DLC occurs: we see the word ‘hole’ disappear down a well. Ahead of us is the word ‘fireworks’ which (typically inconsistently) doesn’t reveal a public display sized fountain of sparks but more flares than we can possibly carry (oh, how I laughed). And, instead of Wake musing aloud about what to do next, it is left up to us, for once, to come to the obvious conclusion. Wow!
Obviously, the hole that appears is, unlike every other time we have done this, to be found nowhere near the word itself — this chapter is at least consistently inconsistent, which is reassuring.
I will give it this: it does a reasonable job of portraying the consistency and logic of dreams … in which the inconsistent and juxtaposed are completely consistent with a logic that adapts itself to whatever our brains/minds randomly throw at us; in dreams, everything makes sense … even when it doesn’t, it’s supposed to not do so — and is, therefore, logically consistent. It’s also consistent in that it has returned to form after the feeble promise of The Signal and is tiresomely conceited rather than actually as clever as it likes to think itself — what a relief … for a moment there, I was almost worried I’d misjudged it.
Some more walking/exploring and then another ‘puzzle’: use some giant typewriter keys as stepping stones, but which ones? Could it be the letters ‘W’, ‘A’, ‘K’ and ‘E’? Who knows? For the second time, Alan doesn’t spell the solution out for us. I do hope this is a metaphorical process, descriptive (as well as causal) of our awakening — I’d hate to learn it were genuinely clever at this stage in the game.
Back to the handholding — if we’re in any doubt as to whether the ghostly memory of ourselves diving into water is a hint that we should do the same here and now, there’s a glow-in-the-dark yellow arrow pointing towards the water — I was flummoxed. let me tell you … *sigh*
Now we have to find our way through an environment which is a conglomeration of various locations from the original game rotating as if around a spindle, making orientation and movement a little trickier than usual. Albeit uneventful and linear, it’s actually pretty well done, only for Wake to utter, upon entering the elevator at the end of the path, the immortal line “Next stop, Sanity.” Again, a close call there — I was beginning to worry it might not sabotage itself after all.
Some outside locations again as we backtrack along the path we first followed when we started the original game … a few encounters that we can resolve by crumbling the path beneath our attackers’ feet (or causing strategic explosions) with conveniently located words … some irrelevant but environmentally appropriate platforming … and then we walk seamlessly from a cliff path into a building (the dream-logic is very well presented, I’ll give it that) before observing ourselves sitting in a therapy session with a television for a head and then listening to an embittered message from our now estranged wife (that may or may not be a paranoid delusion or a trick of the dark).
This episode gets increasingly better, with less tell and more show. I’m loathe to praise it overly though because, given how low the bar was set at the start, that’s not actually difficult. Moreover, by this stage, I’m beginning to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome and any light relief from the grind stands out like a beacon … not to say a lighthouse … in comparison, so I really don’t trust my own judgement any more.
Aaaaand … as if to prove my point, Wake solliloquises about what he’s just witnessed and what he needs to do as a result. Self successfully sabotaged again — I wonder it that’s what the theme of this whole game really is, which would be clever (it’s unlikely though … it’s just my apohenia flaring up again, isn’t it?).
Some not remotely difficult obstacles to overcome … the theme of creating our reality around us by substantivating the glowing words floating in the environment isn’t really any different from the dayglo yellow writing or ‘press the red button now’ directions, it’s just mercifully devoid of Wake’s running commentary … followed by some more encounters in the forest (we shoot lots of Taken in the face at point blank range because that particular trope has long since become tedious now and I’m getting irritable).
A few more obstacles and then, having reignited the previously exstinguished lighthouse with a word (being a writer is like being God, don’t you know) we use its light to wipe out a wave (or twelve) of marauding Taken as we slowly but surely make our way towards the light to redeem ourselves (albeit more than a trifle irritably and, consequently, markedly low on ammunition).
We climb, uneventfully to the top of the lighthouse, out of its roof and find ourselves, once more, below the lighthouse, at the edge of the lake in the middle of which is the island on which the cabin stood/stands.
The bridge we create does not go straight there, instead it takes a different route … there’s probably an analogy there … allowing us to be confronted by our imaginary friend, Barry, who, despite not being real has feelings and is jealous of our burgeoning relationship with Zane — it gets all psychological … Barry gives us some sound advice about abandoning our fantasies (of which he is one himself) and we callously tell him “Fine, you’re abandoned.”
Some more confrontation with Barry as we make our way along an irritatingly long, meandering, winding, wooden walkway/bridge/whatever … that is probably a metaphor for our journey … getting nowhere slowly (and life in the ̶f̶a̶s̶t̶ bus lane is losing its lustre after the first two minutes of it) until, finally, we reach the cabin, to face off against Barry, the mad axe-man, as we secretly knew, right at the beginning of the original game, we must ultimately do — he’s our best friend, so, of course the game is going to turn us against each other at the end … it’s simple narrative causality and I never trusted him from the start for that very reason (the only surprising thing is that it took two post game DLC packs to get there).
We shoot our imaginary best friend in the face.
Then our psychiatrist attacks us with an axe — by now we are are ready to spit blood, so we shoot him in the face, at point blank range, with the shotgun four times more than is necessary … just to make the point.
Then we end up having to fight The Old Gods, who are on crystal meth and move like Kevin from The Farm in Sin City.
After we die and respawn four times, we are mightily irritable and unload the shotgun with abandon any time they are anywhere near us, driving them into a corner … where we shoot them repeatedly in the face until we run out of ammo.
Then we rinse and repeat, but more carefully this time … driving them into the corner again, but conserving ammunition, so that we can finish them both off when we get there rather than only one and receive a pick-axe in the back of our head from the other one for our troubles.
Then that whining bitch Barry returns — I thought the bastard was dead!
Same thing: moves like Kevin on meth, irritates the f**k out of us, kills us multiple times before we get it together to do the bastard in.
He comes back!
Rinse and repeat.
He comes back again!
With added flocks of f**king birds!
We are no longer irritable but utterly pissed off and end up using everything in our arsenal — 19 flares, 48 pistol rounds and 42 shotgun shells in the face … of which only the flares and half the shotgun shells were actually necessary but we simply unloaded the shotgun at the spot we last saw him explode in and then switched to the pistol, screaming “WHY won’t you just f**king DIE, you C*NT!?”
It’s a cheap trick this fight … simply making Barry come back time and time again rather then designing a clever challenge — unimaginative and exasperating.
When the dust settles, we tool up; we are not in the mood for anyone’s nonsense and are toting 42 pistol rounds, 36 shotgun shells and a seriously bad attitude — we just want this thing to be over now.
Which proves to be entirely unnecessary, because we enter the cabin, find ourselves gibbering on the floor, fix the problem and threaten to write a sequel by the name of The Return … all in the space of thirty seconds or so.
And the DownLoadable Conclusion is:
… a cheap trick (moreover they never made a sequel, so it’s all of no consequence whatsoever — they might as well have ended on “It was all a dream.”)
—
¹ In this chapter/episode, rather than the coffee thermoses of the original game or alarm clocks of The Signal, we seek collectible (see what they did there?) copies of the Night Springs video game — I’d suggest this were delightfully ironic self-reference, but I don’t want to be cruel.
² See what he/I/we did there? Or rather didn’t but might’ve done had the story taken a different path? ³
³ I’ll stop now — I’ve sufficiently belaboured their point, I think.
