Alan Wake Day#6: Sleep No More

Day 6 ends the game, and its the worst session of them all. The gameplay is artificial and frustrating. The narrative becomes simultaneously ridiculous and incomprehensible. Almost all of episode 6 is filler that should have been cut to accelerate the movement to the climax. It’s a disappointing conclusion, but it’s been a disappointing game overall. Spoilers within.

We start with a flashback in NYC 2 years ago. Alan is in bed, waking up or something. Oh, he’s hungover. I have to get him sunglasses and painkillers. I get them, listening to a quite dumb voiceover about how Alan parties. I listen to an answering machine message; it’s Barry telling me that Alice is upset about me partying and called Barry to bitch.  Barry wants me to watch the show I was on. I go to the TV and watch it. It’s kind of lame and unrealistic how much this host is praising me. Wake on TV talks about how he killed his main character. Boy this show is written terribly.  I guess I got into a fight with some paparazzi.  Alice comes home and is being nice and Alan is a total dick in response. It is very disconcerting to be controlling a character that is acting like an ass for no reason. We cut to a CS of them talking. Oh Alice is such an ugly model. She wants him to take a shower and go back to bed. He apologizes in abuser language (“I’ll never do this again!”) and  he suggests they take a vacation when the tour is over.

Back to the present in the well-lit room, and Alan has to go to the lake to finish the story.  It needs to be just right to work.  The sheriff wants to come with but WAKE PULLS A GUN ON HER!?! WTF!?!  Is that really necessary? Couldn’t Wake use a less crazy tactic, like maybe saying “Stay here?” Hello, writers — if you need to meet real people to see how they actually behave, there are TONS of us out here that can help you. Anyway, Barry takes her gun and hugs me to wish me off. Wake leaves, and in the CS of Wake leaving it’s daytime. He wonders if the clicker did that. He gets in a car and drives away. We zoom over the hills, and cut to wake at the side of a road. His voiceover doubts what’s happened in the story, but he has a set course and he’s finishing this. I get control back and again they have stripped me of my equipment for no reason — FUCK YOU GAME. I get into a car and drive until I reach a dark tunnel. The road inside is blocked. As I exit the car, there’s a flash of Alice-typewriter visions.

I come back and it’s dark again. Jagger’s voiceover says she will kill my wife. I fight some Taken and win; at least I still have my good flashlight. I get back into another car. I drive until I can’t. Then I’m forced to run and fight off dark flying things and Taken. I run out of ammo, but I run and make it to the light. I cross it to a  bridge which immediately starts to fall apart, and I happen to stand on a platform that drops to my very cheap death. I cross the bridge in the plodding style I used last session, and then I have to get past a bunch of poltergeist things. I see the possessed front-end loader again and kill it. I get back in the car and drive. I switch to another car — not sure why I had to do that. I drive past flying things until I’m stopped again. I kill dark spots as I run. I finally get more bullets and fight off a few Taken. I fight a little further on and I die. I end up using lots of flares here to get through to a tunnel.

I get back in car for like the fifth time. I drive until I see a light, and assuming I’m just going to have to ditch the car, I get out. I find an equipment stash and fight off a couple of enemies that appear when I reach it. I head back to the car, but I die in the next fight because my controller dies on me. I die once again trying to run in the dark from the stash. I fight my way through a nearby building equipping myself and I find a switch. I guess I would have had to go in here after all. A gate opens and I drive a little further before I hit yet another gate. This gate is a typical Alan Wake puzzle. I stumble into the generator before I even see the switch. As I head to the gate, I have to defeat a possessed bulldozer. I’m close to death, but I make it through the fight.  Back in the car again (sigh), I drive until I reach another gate (sigh). I  jump in a building to go around the gate as Alan’s voiceover  tells me about how he had to face horrors to get to this point.

I go around the gate and into a flash of Jagger with Alice, Jagger saying, “I will never give her to you.” I’m in a small group of buildings and we zoom to watch a thing fly into a water tower above me.  I run ahead and suddenly die. When I don’t run the second time, I don’t die and I see that I have to kill a couple of Taken with small spotlights. I then run across the field, and on the other side, I have to fight with the big spotlight. I win and into another barn. There are all of these carts blocking me and lots of the hit-A-to-push-something mechanic in this scene. I climb on to a structure. I get into a mine car and release the brake, which allows me to slide about a hundred relative feet and fight a small flock of birds before I’m stopped and have to get out.  This start and stop movement is getting SO annoying. I run across the bridge, killing more birds. I win a short fight after the bridge as I run uphill, and then I go into a small cabin. I run through the cabin and outside I get into a longer fight. The mini-boss in the very dark is hard to fight, but I actually get a generator started in fight for first time and it saves me. I run up hill and am suddenly mobbed and die. I get further uphill, and I die from another mini-boss — they’re very hard to see in the dark.  This time, I just run and use flares to stall them and that works much better. This tactic gets me to a generator and lighting it to end the fight.

I run further up the hill, and I die once when a big dark thing starts falling down the hill into me. I blame that one on the lame camera. I then avoid that thing and lots of other huge falling things as I run up hill. I take some stairs to get to a light checkpoint. I get through burned out building to (I guess) a gate with a dead switch, and surprise surprise I need to find a generator. I find it and there’s siege there on the platform. I die once when I stupidly come down off of the platform, but then I fight them off. Turns out the switch was for an elevator and I take it up. When I get to the top, tons of debris flies up to block the tunnel I need. I have to hold off enemies while I clear the dark debris a piece at a time. I use my flares, and that makes it easy. I go into the tunnel, dodge metal bars that erupt from the walls. There’s a flash of Alice and ahead of me is a tornado of darkness surrounded by giant dark objects. My goal bar tells me I have to destroy the tornado. I fall to death as I approach the tornado because I can’t see the ground — SUPER CHEAP. I jump to my death again: STUPID, STUPID JUMPING PUZZLE.  To destroy the tornado, I have jump a bunch of platforms, dodge the giant things, and fire flares directly into it. Aside from the STUPID jumping, it’s pretty easy, and when the camera decides to stop killing me, I take it out quickly. There’s a CS of Wake seeing the tornado destroyed. He runs to edge of the cliff over the lake, waits a dramatically posed moment, and dives into the lake with the ultimately weapon, the Clicker.

Alan wakes up next to Alice. She says he was having a bad dream, but he knows that wasn’t a dream. I get control to see dark stuff swirling around outside. Alice wants me to come back to bed so she can help me forget my fear of the dark.  Alan says it’s HER fear of the dark. I have to find the clicker. I wander the apartment as Alice tells Alan things he wants to hear. I see the clicker as a big white word over a table, and I suddenly have a flashlight. I grab the clicker, and Alan clicks. I’m no longer in apartment, and in CS Alan sees the diver.  He tells Alan he has to go to the cabin, and there,  Alan must fill the darkness’s heart with light. Then, inexplicably, we see another version of wake that Alan’s not supposed to mind. The other Alan disappears and it’s almost as if I imagined that; that’s how little sense that made. I get control and I’m on a field with white bright words in the space.  Lighting up the words with the flashlight makes them objects. There’s a voiceover of Alice saying she’s leaving me. I light up a path then a bridge then the cabin, occasionally lighting up phones and answering them to make sure I’m on the right track. I enter the cabin and in CS, Alan sees Jagger, older, with her heart missing. She claims she will find someone other than Alan to dream her free. Alan hugs her and turns on clicker inside her. The cabin fills with light.

We cut to Alan getting up in CS. In voiceover,  he says he can feel Alice as he walks to the typewriter. The scales need to balance and everything has a price, he says. I bet he’s going to sacrifice himself. We cut to Alan seeing Alice jump into lake.  He follows and we zoom over lake, with days passing I think. An eye opens in an extreme close-up, and then we cut to Alice’s swiming up. She survives. We zoom out to her on shore, and zoom further to the mountains and the larger town. It’s deerfest and everyone is celebrating, including I think people who died. Rose holds a lantern, staring ahead creepily, with darkness inside the house behind her. We cut back to Alan writing, and he says “it’s not a lake; it’s an ocean.” What the hell does … ok. Sure, whatever — this game is over and I don’t have to worry about this stuff anymore.  Alice (off-screen) says to wake up and the credits roll to Space Oddity.  The credits end with the promise that Wake’s journey will continue, but I won’t be joining him. The very thankful end.