Time to Wake Up, Part 2

Now that I've had sleep and have a bit of caffeine in me, I'm prepared to tell you more about my experiences within Alan Wake.  This morning, I'm going to be making a couple of comparisons.

The first is a bit of an obvious one.  There are parts of this game that remind me very much of Max Payne.  This is obvious because the original two Max Payne games were developed by Remedy, the same developer of Alan Wake.  (They're Finnish!)  Specifically:

• "Bullet Time" shows up on several occasions throughout the game, which of course was basically invented in video games by Max Payne.  This shows up as a piece de resistance at the end of each conflict with a group of "Taken" -- a slow motion 180 or 360 degree spin to highlight the cool thing you just did in the game.
• The sound effects are giving me a major case of nostalgia.  Some of them are identical to the sound effects from Max Payne, such as a lot of the footsteps, and most of all the sound of a locked door.  I was really thrilled to hear them again, and it brought back a lot of good memories for me.
• The overall style of the storytelling is also very reminiscent of Max Payne.  Max Payne was presented like a graphic novel or modern day comic book.  Alan Wake is presented like an old science fiction television program, but the feel of it is very similar in nature.  It's a focus on story.  It's structured and presented very methodically.  And it's brilliant.  The narration that Alan gives while you play the game is very similar to the narration you get from Max, although Max was a bit more melodramatic and noirish.  (Noirish is now a word.  I have made it so.)
• Vikings.  It's developed by a Finnish company, don't forget.  Max Payne featured a drug called Valkyr, a night club called Ragnarok, a corporation called Aesir, and a -lot- of other references to vikings.  The references in Alan Wake are more scarce, but they are there.  The biggest so far has been the two crazy old rock stars Odin and Tor, and their farm called Valhalla. 

The next comparison may surprise you.  Sometimes this game reminds me of Half-Life 2.  That's probably the greatest compliment I could ever give a game.  Specifically:

• The game is linear but doesn't feel like it.  Exactly like Half-Life 2 feels.  "Hey I'm going to go over HERE because I feel like it...oh a cave!  Oh look, goodies!  OH CRAP MONSTERS!"
• Weapon caches.  The paint marking where they are is even the same color as the Half-Life lambda insignia.
• The thing that really made me go, "This is like Half-Life 2." was when I was driving in a vehicle, noticed a house, and stopped to investigate it.  It had nothing to do with my current objective, but it had stuff in it.  This sort of goes along with my first point about the game being linear but not really feeling like it, but it's a specific thing worth mentioning on its own.
• Basic gameplay made infinitely more interesting by adding another mechanic to it.  Half-Life 2 gave us physics -- the gravity gun.  Alan Wake gives us a flashlight.  

So what we have here is a game that reminds me of two of my most favorite and cherished games of all time.  Would I call Alan Wake as good as Max Payne or Half-Life 2?  No, I would not.  The gameplay is a bit clunky at times, the save-game system is ATROCIOUS, and sometimes the game is a DICK.  All of these things take the game down a few notches.  But, so far, it's a very enjoyable experience that I recommend to anyone.