A couple years ago, a little game came out called Alan Wake. The game was an amazing blend of horror, suspense, action, and drama but left fans wanting more. Well Remedy Studios and Microsoft Studios have heard the cries of us fans and have given us Alan Wake's American Nightmare. Now does it hold a candle to the original or does it just plain suck?
Well worry not, American Nightmare lives up to the expectations of fans of the original. One thing needs to be noted though before I go on. Remedy has said this is not a sequel or even a prequel to Alan Wake. Instead it’s just kind of a random story.
*SPOILER*
The ending of Alan Wake had Alan stuck in the "Dark place" at the bottom of Cauldron Lake writing like a mindless drone for the darkness. American Nightmare takes place two years after the end of the original and has him (even though you don't see it) still stuck in the dark place.The story goes in Alan's absence from the world, a dark doppelganger is trying to take over Alan's place in the world and Alan has to stop him. The imposter, known only as Mr. Scratch (whenever the game says his name, they "Scratch" out the audio so you can only read his name), is basically the evil version of Alan who parties, drinks, murders, & tortures to his heart’s content.
Alan chases after him to a little town in Arizona called Night Springs. Players of the original will recognize the name of the town as the TV show that can be found playing all around on Alan's first journey. Night Springs was basically supposed to be a in-game knock off of the Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone and that sets the tone of this game. As the original Alan Wake gave an essence of Stephen King and such novels, American Nightmare has a grindhouse feel to it. With weapons like crossbows and nail-guns and even a damn good Rod Serling impersonator as the narrator, it’s easy to say it hits the mark.
The story goes through 3 locations: A local motel and road-stop, an observatory, and a vacant drive-in. Sure it’s not a wide variety of levels of but without trying to give anything away you will be replaying each a couple of times as the story goes on. It can be seen as cheap level gimmick or a clever plot point. It’s just all in the eye of the beholder.
Gameplay is exactly like the original game, which is a good thing. Remedy had a good formula with the original and kept it intact. Enemies are shrouded in darkness and cannot be killed by bullets until you flash light on them (or flares, flashbangs, or just your handy dandy flashlight) and make them vulnerable. It almost eliminates the spray-and-pray method most shooting games have, that is until you get rid of an enemy's darkness which, after that, you're going to, as the kids say, "UNLOAD ON THAT MOTHA!!"Trust me you'll get that sense of urgency as 5 or 6 of the "Taken," as they're known, are coming towards you. Alan can also dodge any incoming attacks leading to a very cool slow motion dodge when it’s evaded correctly. Dodge too early or too late and the game will punish you for it with multiple enemies putting the hurt on you.
On that topic, enemies come at you with a deadly ferocity making you either take flight or fight. The AI though can be a bit dumbfounded at times by getting stuck on walls and losing track of you. There aren't many different types of enemies in the game either. You have your average taken, a big version of the taken, a huge grinder wielding taken, splitters, spiders, crow men, and grenade throwing taken, that's about it. Some enemies only pop up a few times so you’re mostly fighting your basic taken most of the time. It can be understandable considering this is a downloadable game but the thought remains. Overall the gameplay itself is solid and pretty damn fun.
The game does have a few collectibles to...well collect. You can find Manuscript pages that help give a deeper insight to the story along with unlockable weapons. Take note that I mention the manuscript pages first before the weapons, that's because the weapons are locked in cases around the levels that require you to have found a certain amount of pages before picking up that weapon. Another form of collectibles are radios that put out shows hosting a few characters from the original Alan Wake. Lastly, not so much a collectible but still something to keep your eye out for, are the TVs on each level that show Mr. Scratch taunting Alan in different ways and murdering random people. It all adds to the replayability of the game.Most of the replayablilty is in the Arcade mode. Its tagline is "Fight till Dawn" and that's basically the concept of it. Players have 10 minutes to kill as many taken as they possibly can. After that the sun rises, burns all the taken away and gives Alan a moments reprieve. It has the feeling of Red Dead Redemption's undead overrun multiplayer mode which isn't bad. There are different areas to pick from so players can choose their favorite spots and dominate that map. All this together does make you want to come running back to play the game.
Now it’s not an entirely perfect game, it does have problems. As mentioned earlier, enemies can be plain stupid when it comes to walls and losing track of what they're doing which can take away from the immersion of the game. Also in my run-through I ran into major frame-rate issues while fighting enemies in a well lit are or after throwing a flashbang. It completely stopped my immersion into it. The rest are just big story problems. 1) Remedy went on saying this isn't a sequel, yet it has the feel of one albeit a short one. Much of the manuscripts pretty much state this is what happens after the original game and even the characters take note of it. I think what Remedy intended to do is make a mini-adventure after the Alan Wake but came up with a accidental mini-sequel, if that makes sense. 2) As I said earlier, it’s kind of a short game, it won’t take that long to beat it. Like 4 hours or so. I know it’s an arcade game, but for 15 bucks can't help but thinking that was a bit too much to pay. Even with these problems, it’s still a good game.
Alan Wake's American Nightmare may have not been what fans wanted when it was first announced but it is a definite buy for them if they need their Alan Wake fix. Even people who haven't played the original can download this one and still have a good time. It’s a good game with a couple shortcomings but even those won't stop me from giving American Nightmare an 8/10. I highly recommend you download it the second you're done reading this sentence. GO!
