June last year I was being steadily ushered towards the grand finale of poor Alan Wake’s nightmarish experiences. The game itself had been perfectly composed. Rarely did I wonder where I was supposed to go next or what I was supposed to do when I got there; in each map I went to the very few places The Taken didn’t actually want to take me and I did something they’d really rather I hadn’t.
Similarly, I never cursed the game for insufficient resources whilst I hammered The Taken for taking me. If I ever found myself low on ammo, I knew it was my fault for being trigger-happy during the last ambush. Chainsaws have that effect on me. Health and ammo conservation was a game mechanism used to challenge me, and I couldn’t fault Alan Wake for that.
But I think this kind of textbook game design has its drawbacks. When set an objective and a map-marker, I’ve historically always turned in the opposite direction in order to explore. But in 3D adventure games, with progression often comes a road block preventing you from retracing your steps. So well-timed exploration becomes crucial for those seeking a 100% achievement score or a highly intimate game experience. But whenever I tried to really digress from the game path in Alan Wake, I met a wall. The path really was ‘It’.
Alan Wake is an example of a game that delivers what it promises but no more, and I’m not sure that we should settle for that in this day and age (yeah I said it – I’m allowed to, I’m almost 30). Aside from the more open game worlds we have now, like those of the Grand Theft Auto series, there are many 3D adventure games that behave in this linear fashion but are intelligent enough to make you feel as though they aren’t so linear.
The first four Silent Hill games are constructed using generally linear maps, but they proffer small choices regarding how to negotiate them. The developers throw in small events to make the game world seem bigger, such as having the protagonist climb from one building to another. And backtracking obstructions are fewer – revisiting earlier maps is sometimes even necessary.
Forbidden Siren 1 and 2 work similarly. If you were to make a Google map of Alan Wake’s game world and trace a pen along it from beginning to end, not only would you be called an outrageous geek but you would more or less draw a single line. In Forbidden Siren’s and Silent Hill’s maps, however, you would draw branching points covering larger areas. A Google street map would also show you more constructions to explore and when navigating these maps, buildings would make them seem more expansive than they really are by obscuring borders and distances.
I’ve been meaning to write about Alan Wake for some time because it’s a technically good game. But I guess my question is this; if a game is technically good does that make it actually good? Alan Wake would score highly if marked by modern game design instructors; it’s perfectly paced, has a balanced difficulty curve and a steady flow. But the experience leaves me wanting, perhaps not in spite of this but because of this.
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