As with most games that have that "Interactive Cinema" feel to them, this game is an incredibly fun ride.

The first time.

I felt that while it started a bit slow, the story picked up rather quickly toward the end of episode one, and once the cliffhangers started rolling in I was absolutely hooked until the end of the story.

It borrows a great deal conceptually from Stephen King's "The Dark Half" in which events written in a novel begin taking place in reality, but there's enough twist and originality there to go with it that you never feel like its just a ripoff of King's work. I found the story particularly engaging, the only drawback I found was that the game offered you spoilers at basicly every turn in the form of manuscript pages, that would basicly tell you what was going to happen.

After I realized what was up, I stopped looking at my manuscript pages altogether. I wanted to be surprised, but if you read those pages a good deal of the great moments in the game can be spoiled.


Sadly, there just is not that much replay value to this game. I mean, you have the obligatory replay on the Nightmare setting which makes the game excruciatingly difficult in some areas but also effectively ratcheting up the terror level. Some of the manuscript pages can only be collected on the Nightmare setting, so completitsts and achievement/trophy hunters will have a reason to play the game again.

Aside from that, once youve seen the story and you know how everything goes, replay seems like more of a chore than an enjoyable experience. As stated, environments and gameplay are very repetetive. Once the motivation to "see what happens next" is removed, there is very little want to slog through the action parts of this game.


I rank this game up there with games like the Metal Gear Solid series. Awesome to play the first time, but once youve seen the story, you likely wont be playing back through for some time.

I rented this and finished it in a single playthrough, so that is a good idea of how engaging the story was. I just didnt want to put the controller down until I knew how the story was gonna end.

Not a bad bit of writing by Sam Lake, better known to gamers as the likeness/voice of Max Payne in the first two games. I especially liked his cameo in the talk show late in the game.

Id definately recommend a rent on this one, but I probably wouldnt pay more than 25 bucks to add it to my collection.



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Check this Alan Wake review, include a video:

http://www.gladriel.com/reviewFull/content/1281/



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Pleased to see good things about it, but ten hours relegates it to the 'wait for a cheap used copy' category for me, shame. I guess they're going to try and hook people in with lots of new DLC episodes, I seem to remember reading somewhere they're working on it already.



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