360 gaming blog.

After discovering that there was an Alan Wake novel I bought it instantly, no questions asked I knew I had to read it. The story in Alan Wake is one of the strongest parts of the game and certainly if there wasn’t such a great narrative present then the game wouldn’t have been as effective in my mind. So an Alan Wake novel seems like a great way to take the story. A film probably could do the story justice but the game is already laid out like a TV series so I don’t think that would be different enough.

For those of you that don’t know what the story is about, Alan Wake is a troubled writer who is trying to write his next novel but cannot seem to get past his writer’s block. His wife Alice decides they need a break so they go on a vacation to a small Pacific North West town called Bright Falls. But as soon as they get there things start going wrong and a dark presence seems to be taking over everything. It’s heavily influenced by the works of Stephen King and the TV show Twin Peaks among others.

This being the first novel that Rick Burroughs has written he does a commendable job of translating the game to paper. I knew the story yes, but this has given me a much better understanding of what is actually going on. At just over 300 pages I got through this book in no time without even realising how fast I was getting through it. When you read something and it just flows from chapter to chapter you know that the story telling is compelling.

It was a different experience than I’ve had before though because I’ve always read the book then watched the film/ played the game. This time I had all the visual aids in my head telling me what the characters and surroundings looked like from my experience with the game. But for those who haven’t already played Alan Wake the book does a great job describing everything and everyone.

It doesn’t quite manage to emulate the atmosphere and tension you feel when playing as Alan and the action is described in a slightly repetitive manner but I suppose that is because of the nature of the source material. Barry (Alan’s Publicist) is just as funny in the book as he is in the game and there are some of his classic one liners in this that aren’t in the game.

There are also pages with faux manuscripts on them that I never read whilst playing the game. These appear between chapters and are nice little fillers to pad out the story a bit and actually led me to understand some of the untold back story.

The author did sometimes seem to be describing a lot of things in a similar way throughout the book ‘Wake started for the hill’ ‘Wake started to move towards the light’ etc. but that was just a little thing that happened to bug me, nothing major.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed reading this; it is a great addition to the Alan Wake story.

Arctic Hydra 87