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TLDR: Creepy and tense paranormal shooter, that plays pretty well

I played the game Control last year and really had fun, so I thought I would check out one of Remedy's earlier games and give Alan Wake a try, and for the most part, I enjoyed it.

The game starts with the main character (of the game's name) heading on a vacation with his wife Sara to a remote forest town known as Bright Falls, where both hope, in their own ways, for Alan to reboot his writing career. They rent a cabin on Cauldron Lake and during a power outage, Sara disappears. Wake begins to discover something very, very wrong with the lake and surroundings.

Alan Wake is a fairly linear game, proceeding on a direct path through six chapters. The chapters do a brief recap via a "previously, on Alan Wake," mechanic, much like a television show. Each chapter takes Wake on a tour of some part of the forest, rural dwellings around the lake, and Bright Falls itself. Controls are fairly easy and minimal, with no inventory, skill, or map screens to manage. Though the interface is more streamlined than a lot of games, I think it works fine here.

With a few brief exceptions, Wake's journey occurs at night, which adds to the mystery and sense of dread, since the areas often feature minimal atmospheric lighting. Through most of the story, the player has their own light source (such as a flashlight). That light becomes critically important, since night is when the monsters come out. There is a "dark presence" associated with Cauldron Lake, which seizes locals and turns them against regular people. These "Taken" come in a couple of flavors, all shrouded in protective darkness.

Fortunately, light sources like the flashlight can burn away the darkness around the taken long enough to make them vulnerable to weapons, several types of which will become available. Wake can also make use of flares to hold the Taken at bay, and flare guns or flashbang grenades to take out groups of enemies at once. As one might expect in a survival horror game, these assets are very limited, and ammo for the revolver, shotgun, and rifle are not abundant early on, though I really only found myself counting bullets in a few places. The player can often reach the "safe haven" of a steady light source to despawn any nearby Taken, and this is more cost-effective than fighting it out.

The thing is, this game actually features a lot of combat. Too much. Alan isn't durable and he's not an ace fighter either. The player has zero hand-to-hand capability. Enemies are very hard to outrun and you can be stunlocked if a few of them are hitting you at once. The blows of the Taken can be dodged, though the timing window is tight. There are multiple sequences where the player has to hold off multiple waves of foes and intense, persistent combat just isn't this game's strength. I actually got annoyed with the repetitive nature of jogging along a forest path, encountering a few Taken, handling them, proceeding another fifty feet, and repeat. There's not enough enemy variety and any bosses are just more durable versions of the regular goons. So the combat became something to endured, not anticipated.

On the other hand, the story is very enthralling. I'm not sure the paranormal and metaphysical concepts are all that original but the structure is well-developed and kept my attention. Visuals are decent enough. Dialogue is mostly well-written and consistent with the mood of the game. Excellent sound design and a low, slow musical score also help (though the music shifts to a more urgent, fast-paced beat when the enemies materialize to attack). In fact, the entire game has a very creepy ambiance. Enemies are sometimes seen moving nearby and televisions activate on their own, airing rather upsetting broadcasts. Scattered manuscript pages are recoverable along the journey and not only help build the tale but add to the anxiety and sense of dread and can give the player a hint of things about to happen.

Aside from pages, there are several forms of collectibles to be found. The good news is that once collected, all collectibles stay registered as "found" and do not have to be picked up on subsequent playthroughs or reloads.

Other than the ever-present fighting, my only real annoyance was the checkpoint save system. Checkpoints are often *very* close together, which means if you drop into a new area and miss something--like a manuscript page--you can't reload from a previous save and might have to repeat the whole chapter to see it again. I've never appreciated this kind of saving over letting the player save whenever they want, and the ability to have multiple saves. On the plus-side you can easily abuse the checkpoint system to refight a battle if you think you used too much ammo or want to farm kills for achievements, as long as you don't advance to far.

Alan Wake runs smoothly and loads quickly. I didn't have a single crash and no bugs that I could recall. No clipping or graphical glitches either.

There are two DLCs with this edition, each about the length of a main-game chapter. Both take place after the completion of the main game and while they introduce a new mechanic or two, neither packs quite the emotional punch as the main story, or advances it in a meaningful way. Like Control, both DLCs feature final sequences much more challenging than the regular campaign finale, so Remedy must really love this idea.

Steam achievements will challenge some players, as it requires playing on Nightmare difficulty (unlocked after finishing on Hard mode) and picking up Nightmare-specific collectibles. I barely staggered through on Normal, so I let those go.

Overall, Alan Wake is a well-tooled product. It lives up its billing as survival horror, with very good writing about paranormal events, and runs well. If you really get sucked into the story, as I did, you may be able to overlook the repetitive combat.

Pros
- Intense dread-filled atmosphere that's well-rendered
- Excellent writing, dialogue, and story

Cons
- Way too much combat
- Lousy checkpoint save system

Final Score: 7.5/10