Alan Wake’s American Nightmare Review

Going by what I saw and heard at the time, Alan Wake was probably one of the better games that nobody played from a couple of years ago.  It had everything going for it…except for an audience.  For some reason it seemed like not many were playing the game when it released, so I was a little iffy when I finally picked it up at a good price and decided to give it a shot.  What I got out of it was everything I had wanted in a game for quite some time; a tense storyline, fast paced action, creepy thrills and mysterious entities called the Taken hunting you from the darkness of the ever-present forest.  I was hooked and loved every single moment of the original and the continuing DLC downloadable episodes, titled “The Signal” and “The Writer”, that I was super pumped to hear that Remedy Entertainment was working on a sequel that would continue the story of Alan and the search for his missing wife.  What I didn’t expect was that what Remedy was working on wasn’t a sequel to Alan Wake, but a “standalone-alone spin-off experience” that would not be available on disc, but would only be available by download exclusively via Xbox Live Arcade.  What?  How will that work and how does it fit in the Alan Wake story?  Well, I finally got my hands on Alan Wake’s American Nightmare and while it goes off in a different direction, it still feels like good ‘ol Alan Wake.

While Alan is a long ways away from the woodsy Pacific Northwest setting of Bright Falls that the original was set in, we now find him stuck somehow in an episode of “Night Springs” set in the desert of Arizona.  “Night Springs,” which was touched on in the first game via television sets and is the setting for this game is the Twilight Zone-ish TV show that Alan was a writer for at one point earlier in his career.  What Alan soon discovers is that he already knows the script and story for these episodes and through discovering manuscripts that are scattered throughout the desert he can alter and shape the story anyway he wants it.

In this installment we find Alan frantically trying to hunt down his evil double, Mr. Scratch. While Wake is labeled as the champion of light, Mr. Scratch is labeled as the herald of darkness and as you find out shortly at the beginning via some twisted video recordings of Scratch and some of his victims…this guy is a freaking psychopath!!!  We find out that not only is Mr. Scratch psychotic and that he is very proud and aware of it, but Scratch is darkness shaped in Wake’s image, his evil twin, if you will.  He might look, sound and even be confused as Alan at times, but he is evil personified and would make Woody Harrelson’s character in Natural Born Killers look like a cuddly stuffed animal.  Alan must hunt down and defeat Mr. Scratch before he can make his way to Wake’s wife, Alice. Wake must learn to control reality itself and find the secret to Scratch’s demise before Scratch reaches her.

While this XBLA title is being labeled as “standalone-alone spin-off experience that anyone can pick up and play,” I still found that it felt more like a direct sequel to the DLC chapter, “The Writer” than a standalone story.  Being that this story takes place in a completely new setting from the original and Alan is now sporting a flannel shirt and jeans, doesn’t change the fact that I found that there is a ton of original Alan Wake story that first timers to the series will immediately have questions about or at best need to go back and play the original.  Being that the original game and DLC episodes had a  “previously on” option separating out the chapters, I was disappointed to see that this feature was missing here.  It would have been nice to see a “previously on” feature in the menu to help flesh out some of the backstory for newcomers and veterans looking for a refresher, but it is unfortunately missing, which is a shame as it made my time with the original feel more episodic and like I was playing a book and taking part of the story as it happened.

If you’ve had the opportunity to play the first Alan Wake, you should be able to pick up the controls fairly quickly this time around.  Not much has changed from the original other than the combat is a little smoother, the camera is a little snappier and Alan can run a little bit longer before becoming winded.  Newcomers to the series should find that the controls are fairly user friendly to pick up and should get used to all of Alan’s movements in a pretty short amount of time.  American Nightmare also uses the same aim your flashlight at the enemy until the darkness is “burned” off and then shoot it with your weapon of choice until it’s dead.  While that mechanic is still the same, it was a fresh feeling of joy that overcame me as I began experiencing some of the new weapons Alan will have at his disposal.  While you still have your standard pump shotgun and pistol, you will also come across a very handy Uzi and my new favorite toy, the nail gun!  I’ve not felt that much joy using a nail gun since the first time I laid my hands on one as I was putting a roof on my grandmother’s house as a teenager.  Imagine if you will, my glee as I picked that sucker up and unloaded an entire clip of nails at an enemy as he charged my position.  It may not be as powerful as some of the other weapons, but this gun was a blast and I found that I didn’t like using any of the other weapons after using the nail gun.

If you do decide to try out a few of the other weapons, you’ll find some just lying around, but other “fancier”, more powerful weapons will be available via locked storage cases that can only be unlocked after finding a certain amount of manuscripts around the levels.  While searching for the manuscripts is fine and they help flesh out some of the story, I couldn’t help but feel this was just an easy out for the developer to deal with these other weapons.  Instead of having to find manuscripts that help progress the story and unlock cases that contain more powerful weapons, since Alan is the creator of this story, how about a collection system of using the dispatched souls of some of the Taken Alan has taken care of.  A system like this would have made this portion of the game a bit better for me as I wasn’t crazy on the whole collecting of manuscripts to begin with.

As with the old and new weapons, the ‘ol trusty flare gun, flash bangs and standard flares are all back.  I found that while you can use each of these items as easy as you could in the first game, they seemed to have been weakened and didn’t seem to have the same strength and damage effect on the Taken as they previously did.  Not that this is really a bad thing or made it any harder to take the bad guys down, but you will discover that you will have to plan accordingly.  If surrounded by enemies and you decided to use one of these light weapons, just know that a direct hit from the flare gun to any of the Taken usually spells immediate death for them, but a miss will only give you a few seconds to breath and give you time to reload your batteries and ammo in your guns.

Where Alan Wake felt more inspired by early Stephen King novels and the great ABC series, Lost, American Nightmare felt more along the lines of Tarantino’s newer, grittier films or even supernatural & sci-fi pulp movie classics.  Taking the game this direction did give it a different feel this time and I felt it a little refreshing at the beginning.  Where as in the first title I felt more fear and dread about what was lurking out in the shadows of the forest that I couldn’t see, this time around I felt a little more mystery and sci-fi interaction as I explored the Arizona desert and it’s surroundings.  Not that this feel and direction was a bad decision because I still jumped out of my seat a few times, but after the newness of my surroundings wore off it became simple to see my enemies coming from a mile away and I could lay waist to them before they ever knew what hit them.

Once you’ve finished up the story mode, Remedy has added a fast-paced, over-the-top arcade action mode called FIGHT TILL DAWN.  In this mode, you’ll find yourself having to survive the night as wave after wave of enemies swarm you.  I didn’t know if I’d like this mode at first, but with new enemies, new weapons, and scoreboards, this game mode immediately had me hooked!  Did I mention scoreboards?!?!  I know not many of my friends have been playing this yet, but I know it’ll be a nightly thing to see if I can beat buddies scores for bragging rights for the next couple of nights.

In this Gears of War Horde mode clone, the enemies start out fairly simple and you’ll dispatch of them almost immediately, but as the time ticks down and your enemies keep attacking, they progressively become stronger and before long you’ll be overrun by darkness. If you can survive until dawn, you’ve got some skills!  As the enemy numbers in each wave grew and the difficulty increased, I found myself shooting and running to the nearest light source to heal up and stock up on ammo before heading back out to take on my attackers.  After dying a few times I swore I’d quit after my next unfortunate death, but I found myself immediately heading back in to take on more Taken time after time.  With the scoreboards and bragging rights on the line, I would expect this to be one of the more frequently played modes on your Friends List in the upcoming weeks.

While I feel that American Nightmare does a fairly good job by adding to the Alan Wake story and fleshing out the story and craziness of Alan’s doppelganger, Mr. Scratch, I’m excited to see where Alan Wake’s universe will take me next.  Even with the new settings, weapons and enemies, American Nightmare still felt like a sequel to me and I feel like newcomers will have so many questions on the Alan Wake universe that they’ll either be lost and have no idea of what’s going on or they’ll be forced to go back and play the previous Wake games to get a handle on things.

American Nightmare will wet the whistle of the fans of the series until the eventual true sequel, but I’m not sure how many newcomers it’ll lure its way.  If I have any suggestions for newcomers, I’d suggest playing the original Wake to get caught up on the story and then hop on the American Nightmare train.  Just watch out for that Mr. Scratch guy!  That dude is creepy.

A copy of Alan Wake’s American Nightmare for Xbox 360 & XBLA was provided to us for this review from Remedy Entertainment.