Broken down into specifics, it's a great action game with a good many freaky jolts and bone-chilling thriller-isms but a really wimp sense of the psychological. Instead, you're talking the mind-messer-upper stuff of made-for-TV movies, high school creative writing classes or, more directly, video games aspiring to be oeuvre and failing miserably.
But whatever, take the hackneyed clichés, pathetic/pretentious dialogue and Stephen King wannabe story for what it is and you're still left with a rock solid romp through the Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls, all creepy, woodsy and folksy and totally ripe with recent horrors, possessed local yokels and a few choice ghosties.
Atmospherically, Alan Wake is terrific, surprisingly gorgeous for a game that's set mostly in darkness and shadow, and brilliantly crafted to feel like you're wandering through the a wide open, no-idea-where-you're-going tale even though it's entirely linear with only one place to go, that being from A to B to C and so on, with maybe a little side jaunt to C(i) and C(ii) to pick up some ammo and batteries.
Speaking of ammo and batteries in the guise of a segue, that's really what the game's all about, essentially a zombie-shooting scavenger hunt that you've played many times before.
Unique within that, however, is your flashlight as well as flares, flashbangs, worklights and searchlights all acting like weapons as much as mere light sources to brighten up the aforementioned darkness and shadow. Directing a beam or otherwise brightening up any given possessed or incorporeal baddies will either destroy it outright - quite the phantasmical spectacle right there - or knock the living imperviousness out of it so you can shoot it old school with thine pistol or shotgun or whatever other weapon happens to be handy. Pretty cool. But still just a shooter, albeit it one with a ton of dank, dark and dingy mood and double duty lighting effects to die for.
Still, this is exactly the kind of game you rent for five bucks, have your mind blown for good 10 hours of play, return and then maybe revisit again when you find it in the bargain bin.
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