I have recently done a playthrough of Alan Wake Remastered on pc and it has become a very beloved game for me. I did a playthrough of the game on the normal difficulty (nightmare was locked behind a first game completion) and did not get the chance to play through its dlc the signal and the writer. I will split this review into multiple sections starting with the story.

Story

Alan Wake wears its inspiration on its sleeve; that inspiration being twin peaks. From the game taking place in a small town within a mountainy and forest-y region in Washington with a Diner that was lovingly and painstakingly modeled very closely to the Twin Peaks diner. The question some might ask is if Alan Wake can stand on its own without being a love letter to Twin Peaks, and I believe it carves its own path. It's a story about a writer named Alan Wake, a writer who hasn't properly written a new book for 2 whole years. He is haunted by the words he wrote, and has frequent nightmares about the darkness around him. He was brought to Washington from his upstate New York City apartment by his loving wife Alice, as she is worried about her and Alan's future without a stable income from book sales. Alice and Alan get situated in a cabin by a mysterious woman, and when confronted with a typewriter Alan gets quite irritated at Alice tricking him on what was supposedly a vacation. Alan storms off in the night knowing Alice would not follow as she has a fear of the dark. Things go awry when the engine powering the lights in the cabin malfunction, causing Alice to panic in the darkness of night. Alan bursts in to see that Alice fell off the back porch into the lake below. Alan dives in to save Alice. As he hits the water he suddenly wakes in a crashed car with a head injury. This sudden whiplash is when the game truly begins. As you explore around as Alan you to try and find help nearby. Soon you are faced with these zombie like beings plagued by darkness, known as the taken. Alan has previously seen these Taken in a tutorial, shown in context as a nightmare he had before Alice woke him up. In order to counter these taken, Alan is equipped initially with a flashlight, some batteries, and a revolver. Later on he amasses a large arsenal but I shall talk about this more during the gameplay. Alan uses the light to shine on enemies to remove their shield of darkness, allowing you to damage them with your gun. This is what will happen for a lot of the story, interspersed between these sections of fighting enemies you will find pages to a manuscript Alan does not remember writing. These pages will write exactly what you're doing in real-time as you find them, as if all the events you do are planned in advance. Without going into spoilers, you begin to piece together what lead you to the point you are at with flashbacks and other in world storytelling methods, like radios and televisions that play charmingly low budget live action flashbacks to you supposedly writing the story you are playing. Throughout the game you will face a variety of characters who absolutely thrive in their unbelievably camp world. You will see your agent Barry, Alan's manager who sees Alan has dollar bills in his eyes. There's a therapist who loves to talk and was the reason Alice brought Alan here in the first place. As you continue through the game and piece together why all this madness surrounding Alan is happening, you make incredible realizations and twists that always keep you at your feet. If there's one thing Alan Wake succeeds at, its pacing. Throughout my playthrough I never felt a truly dull moment, and always felt motivated to overcome the next seemingly impossible obstacle. There's some incredible set pieces and shake ups that always changes what you are doing next. Alan experiences a fulfilling arc without spoiling, and all the surrounding side characters never truly get dull or annoying which is an easy mistake to make. I would like to note that this game separates levels by episodes, and each episode end comes with an outro and a nice musical bit. Choosing to play the next episode gives you a very cliché "PREVIOUSLY ON ALAN WAKE" that nails all the corny tropes these serialized network shows always had that also works quite well as a summary of the events that have happened so far. The story to me is close to perfect, and there's not a moment too dull for me. I would give it a 9/10. Now to move on to the gameplay

Gameplay

Alan Wake's gameplay has flaws, but overall I did enjoy myself and will start out with compliments. Combat with Taken enemies has a very fun core flow that never grew tires in the 10 hours of playtime I clocked in. There's something so satisfying about perfect dodging knife throws, and making good use of the more powerful but rarer items at good times. One thing this game does that I don't see too often from games is stripping the player of the gear they've earned through the level. This may be seen as a bad thing since you feel that you were robbed of your goods, but it works really well in the episodic format. Stripping away weapons allows moments where you feel more vulnerable, and makes re-earning the arsenal back very satisfying, especially with hidden caches that give you the upper hand. This effectively gives the developers a way to control how you the player can interact with the level and give a very fair difficulty curve. I have been showering this game with non-stop compliments but I do have a few flaws with the game. Most of my compliments have been about the combat against human Taken, but that is not the only hurdle you will face in this game. Sometimes the game will have you face against Taken objects, and will hurl big objects towards you and you will have to use a flashlight to destroy said objects. That sounds fine on a conceptual level, but the issue is that this game has a very jank way of executing this. The physics engine for this game is very basic, reminds me of havoc engine. The objects feel weightless and are very unpredictable and a bit glitchy. This would be fine if there was an easy way to dodge these objects but there really isn't. While your dodge works well with up-close enemies swinging, the dodge does not move nearly far enough to work well against these objects. The best method I've learnt is to hide behind a wall in a way to basically cheese the challenge. There's your own fun you could have with this, but that's not the worst enemy in my opinion. If there's a complaint I must massively put on this game it is the crow enemy. Never before have I been so annoyed by an enemy. Like the objects talked about previously, crows only die with the flashlight beam or a flare gun. The issue is that these enemies are also quite unpredictable and I am not able to dodge nor able to kill them with the flashlight. This may be an issue in my skills but it simply felt not completely thought out. By the end of the game my flare gun was used much more to kill flocks of crows rather then clearing out hordes of enemies because it's just that annoying. As far as combat goes, that is the worst it probably gets. Combat is not the only thing that happens in this game, that won't be until American Nightmare (stay tuned for that review). This game has other gimmicks that while never overstaying there welcome, don't really leave that much of an impact. One thing I believe is a remnant from when this game was going to be open world is the driving. The driving to put it bluntly is not good. It is functional but I never enjoyed driving. There is also moments where the game will ask you to do bits of puzzle solving which never gets too pace breaking and are pretty beginner friendly logic tests. Another thing the game will ask from you is to do very basic platforming. There is a dedicated jump button in this game unlike its sequel Alan Wake 2 (review for that also in works) but there was quite a few missing levels of polish with this. Jumping never feels like its entirely going to work, and lots of times my jumps either messed up with collision or routes that feel very unintentional were the routes you were supposed to go. One more thing before we wrap up gameplay is level design. The game is very open feeling which works quite well for the combat. The few times they have me fight in cramped interiors the flaws with the games mechanics felt more clear. But overall the level design manages to be engaging and gives you quite a variety of places to explore for something that is set in a very specific location. Overall I would give the gameplay a 7.5/10. Next for our shortest section will be the music and audio design.

Audio

Let me start by saying I am no audio professional in any respect nor will pretend to be so. I may say stuff that isn't correct and if you would like to correct me in any way I am more than willing to listen. This is a very basic outsiders perspective on audio. Let's start with the music. The music perfectly encapsulates the campy nature of the game while being able to stir up emotion at times. The music is quite reactive to the gameplay, and can sometimes even be used to predict what happens next. Sometimes this can be a detriment to the gameplay but it doesn't get too bad. The only other issue I have with music is that by the ending stretch the music does get a bit repetitive with the same looping tracks and I would wish for more variety in tracks. Besides the music we have the audio design, that I say is near perfect. The sounds never feel out of place, they don't never have inconsistency in loudness, and I will say these gun sounds are ever so satisfying. The voice acting/casting was quite on point. Alan Wake is casted phenomenally well and all the side characters have fitting cornball voices. I have really no complaints about the sound design, voice acting, and music so I will give it a 9.5/10. Since I have nowhere else to put this I will put it in this quite sparse section. I played Alan Wake Remastered on my pc through epic games store, and I experienced a very specific bug that ruined a bit of immersion without being a deal breaker. Before cutscenes started to play there will be this weird blocky artifacting error on the top left corner of my screen that was distracting. This would play for every cutscene including little jump scares peppered throughout. It is not a dealbreaker it just was a weird bug I faced. Also since I didn't talk much of the cutscenes I will say they were shot relatively well although it is annoying they are still capped at 30 fps. Call me a pc snob but I would like if those scenes were interpolated for a more smooth and consistent experience between gameplay and cutscenes, but I can understand technical shortcomings could prevent such a thing. Let's end off this quite longwinded review with a tldr.

Overall

Alan Wake is a very enjoyable experience that was so charming and heartfelt I had no choice to love it. Although I had my qualms with the game, this is a very easy recommendation for such a unique and thrilling experience. Overall I would give this game an

8.5/10