A labor of love by master craftsmen of the horror genre. Games like this only come around every once in a while.
From the beginning it pulls you deep into the genre. Every detail is directed toward creating immersion. The developers lay it on thick and keep it on. It also benefits from a high production value. The experience is polished and seamless. Nothing was overlooked.
One potential problem with highly cinematic games like this is that they can take too much control from the player. Thankfully, I did not experience that here. I spent most of my 22 hours in control of my character. I'm estimating I spent about 55% of my time in combat, 25% running and exploring, 5% puzzle solving, and 15% watching cut scenes.
The world and scenery are beautiful. Your path is extremely linear, but the world is crafted in such a way to give you a sense of openness. When you're outdoors, you can almost smell the mountain air and feel the approaching storm. The scenery does not just seem like a backdrop - it's believable.
Great care was put into the light system, a good thing considering that the light/dark juxtaposition was the main theme of the story line and gameplay. Sometimes blinding, sometimes ominously black, and every subtlety in between. The lighting flares and other effects (I don't even know what to call them) are spot on for creating just enough tension and "surrealness".
The sound is fantastic. Most notably the voice acting. The character's personalities really shine through in their voices. The original musical score is top notch and the choice of licensed music tracks is tasteful. It sounded like there were even some songs written in-house for the game. And they weren't bad at all.
The combat is fun and original, but was crippled somewhat by the controls (see below). On normal, the difficulty of enemy encounters ranged from very easy to somewhat difficult - a decent range. I thought the average landed somewhere in the middle. The challenge was perfect for me.
What I found most unlikable about Alan Wake were the controls in general. I admit that for a console-type game on PC, they are actually very good. More than playable. The mouse is pretty tight and the keyboard mapping is good. But it still suffers from some console shortcomings. One is the over-the-shoulder camera which can make precise movement difficult and unnatural, like when crossing narrow bridges or jumping over things. It tends to mess up your spacial sense a little bit. Otherwise, the camera work is fantastic, letting you see everything you need to nearly all the time. My second control concern was poor accuracy with guns. It uses a too-forgivable auto-aim, which makes it too easy sometimes, but also strangely difficult at other times, like it was hard to find the sweet spot for some reason. There's no crosshair or iron sights which turns aiming into a clunky, trial and error affair. Not good when you have limited ammo.
The bottom line is if you like the horror game genre, you will most definitely like Alan Wake on some level. Don't expect scares around every corner, but do expect a solid, well-built, story-driven labor of love. Games that hold me this captive only come around every once in a while.