Alan Wake
Review

Alan Wake (2010) is a shooting game with a horror tone where you must survive the darkness and the terrors that dwell within it. You use your torch to weaken the monsters that hunt you, then switch over to conventional weapons to dispatch them. It stands out for the way darkness itself is your primary enemy, and also for the surreal, nightmarish story that makes the unfolding drama as creepy as the shooting.

You play crime novelist Alan Wake as he and his wife go on vacation to the sleepy midwest town of Bright Falls. When your wife mysteriously vanishes into the waters of the lake, you start having strange visions and hallucinations that guide you on a path that's equal parts Twin Peaks and Stephen King. As the drama unfolds, and you rush from the safety of one well-lit area to the next, you discover you are caught in the pages of the protagonist’s novels, and things soon spiral into the surreal.

Play focuses on surviving attacks seemingly from the darkness itself and from possessed ‘Taken’ locals. You use flashlights to burn away the possession before dispatching them with firearms. When in darkness, you are more vulnerable to attacks, so you need to conserve your flashlight's battery and quickly move between the patches of bright light scattered about.

The result is a game that takes its unique narrative and pairs it with gameplay that keeps you moving and you swap between flashlight and gun attacks. Easily dismissed as just another horror game, Alan Wake’s detailed environments and open geography create a world that is both full of foreboding and inviting to investigate.

Our examiner, Jo Robertson, first checked Alan Wake 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Andy Robertson and updated 3 weeks ago.