Recent reviews by Department of Redundancy Dept.

Alan Wake is a decent game with an amazing story full of mystery and suspense. Both the characters and the plot are engaging and it's all executed very well. The game is split up into episodes, and it flows very much like a TV show, complete with a "previously in Alan Wake" section at the beginning of each episode. Every episode ends with a song. Yes, a full song. You can skip it, but I find it's actually helps with the pacing of the game a lot. It gives you time to check your phone or stand up and go do something for a minute or two. For a game that's this intense, that short break is actually pretty useful.

The same can't be said about the rest of the game. I don't really consider it a horror game. It tries to be scary but doesn't quite achieve it for me. This is largely due to the repetitive loop of:

- walk to a new area
- 1-3 enemies appear
- shine flashlight at enemies until you can shoot them
- shoot the enemies
- search the area for items
- go to the next area

that makes the gameplay very predictable and boring. All I've seen so far is the introduction of more powerful weapons along with larger/tougher enemies, but no added depth to the flashlight mechanic, which gets old fast.

In my opinion, it's definitely worth playing once, but I don't see much replay value in it outside of going back for the hidden collectibles or trying to get all of the achievements.