Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Disappointing"

Alan Wake is a 3rd person shooter and psychological thriller game for the xbox 360 and pc. This review will be of the xbox version. Alan Wake is a writer who writes psychological and horror thrillers. Him and his wife go to a city call Bright Falls where it appears a book that he has not written yet is starting to come to life.

This game is very story driven and as it should be. The game takes nods at writers such as Stephen King and Hitchcock. However the game play is most a copy and paste of any 3rd person shooter with the exception of fighting your enemies off with light. As Alan you use a flashlight, flares, and flash bangs to fight off your enemies. A cool concept but it was used the same way through out the game making it a little uninteresting by the end of the game.

The game is set into 5 different episodes. Through out each episode Alan's story continues to come to life and he must figure out how to stop it. This happens by running from point A to B and fighting off enemies in your way.There is no variety of objectives. You start an episode in one area and you have to get to another. Always on foot with the exception of two or three times where you can drive a car. But that does not provide any real excitement it just takes less time.

The enemies that you will encounter are also repetitive. From "dark" men (some small some big), dark birds, and the darkness throwing large trucks, barrels, and other items at you that is all there is for enemies. All with the same attack pattern. They're interesting at first but by episode three things were always the same.

Alan Wake has a great story which will draw anyone in. But the repetitive game play can make it hard to finish because it doesn't feel fun a lot of the time.