In his 2006 expository composition guidebook On Writing Well, William Zinsser writes, "Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost." Prolific authors know this truth by experience, with piles of cut sentences, rewritten scenes, and forsaken adverbs lying like so many bodies under the baseboards of a backspace key.

Protagonist Alan Wake's editorial body count in the downloadable American Nightmare is a comparable graveyard of stricken concepts and dispatched lumberjacks. It smacks as loudly of authorial allegory as the 2010 Alan Wake retail release and its DLC (The Signal and The Writer). To hear the conflicted Wake tell his story, the struggle again falls between light and darkness.

Alan Wake's American Nightmare Xbox 360* Release Date: Feb. 22

Feb. 22 MSRP: $15 Official site * = platform reviewed

"I know that indulging my weaknesses, giving in to fear and complacency will only drag me down; the Dark Place taught me that."

Alan Wake's American Nightmare is a natural progression from the original Alan Wake, the cerebral journey of a burnt-out writer through the twisting reality of the Pacific Northwest to save his wife from his surprisingly literal demons. Like its predecessor, American Nightmare takes the form of an episodic, Twilight Zone-esque television show, Night Springs (which Wake himself purportedly wrote years before, in an Inception-like meta-twist).

Wake's internal conflicts are manifested as shadowy, violent human husks called Taken. Wake once again battles these zombie apparitions using light (from flashlights, flares, flash bangs, etc.) and firearms (pistols, shotguns, crossbows) on a vulnerable Arizona nightscape. While the original Alan Wake also required some sleuthing, some puzzle-solving, and a few dodgy driving segments, American Nightmare's narrow focus on skirmishes creates a purer action-horror experience.

Avoiding fear and complacency is central to surviving the tense enemy ambushes. Most encounters leave enough space for a deranged farmer or four to flank Wake while he's lighting up a flock-of-birds-turned-gremlins or a ghostly tractor trailer. Playing good defense requires sharp sense, constant visual scans of the environment, listening for audio cues, tactically replacing batteries and ammo at the right moments, and making use of a smoothed-out, slow-motion dodge mechanic.

"Mr. Scratch is more powerful than I am, but he can't change the rules in the middle of the game. He's not a creator. I am."

Throughout literature, doppelgangers have a nasty habit of exploring the evil halves of the originating personality. American Nightmare's Mr. Scratch doesn't disappoint on this score. As Wake's physical double, he uses charm, seduction, anger, and violence to twist the fictional town of Night Springs into a ghost town, save for three strong female leads. To keep Wake from ending his story, Scratch employs a time loop that causes events to repeat from the game's first stage. Wake's only advantage is his ability to write, to create, in direct opposition to his destructive counterpart.

American Nightmare asks the player to explore patiently to find its truth. In-game radio shows debating fate and disturbing live-action videos of Mr. Scratch's serial murders lay the foundation, but discovering over fifty errant manuscript pages scattered throughout the game fills out the structure with substance. Reading each page demands a 15 to 45 second pause that feels a bit out of place in an action game, but which is practically required here by the permeating abstractions of Wake and his narrator. Those that are uninterested in the narrative glue provided by these pages can also use them to unlock more powerful weapons.

"This act of creation is exhilarating and frightening. Subtext and symbols loom, eager to take effect."

The original Alan Wake was obsessed with the question: "Why create?" (especially so in The Writer DLC). In American Nightmare, creative iteration is paramount. Wake has to constantly alter his environments to match the fictional "realities" represented in his found manuscript pages, so that the world itself contains enough details to comprise a believable narrative free of encroaching Darkness. In Wake's universe, light and creation are one, though inseparable from the darkness that gives them form and context.

Much as in writing, the gameplay in American Nightmare is steeled by revision. Mr. Scratch's time loop forces Wake through the revision process, reinventing his approach with each new try. While the game only takes place in three open environments, it gains traction and poignancy through its repetition. It's a clever trick to make a small downloadable package feel fuller, and while it's not as engaging as a set of infinitely unique new levels, the game makes efficient use of its limited resources.

"Our destinies and inspirations are shaped by lies, myths, and fables."

Aside from the metaphor-heavy story, American Nightmare also includes a score-driven "Arcade Action" mode that finds Wake fending off waves of Taken in large arenas until sunrise. Here, weapons and ammo lie scattered across the maps, promoting mobile run-and-gun tactics, thus increasing Wake's vulnerability and ramping up the tension. Combo-kill multipliers lead to the highest scores, which grant star ratings needed to unlock additional arcade maps.

The concept in this mode isn't that original, though it's notable for a horror game to find such confidence in its frantic combat; a pure test of reflexes and instinctual survival tactics that's refreshingly uncomplicated by manuscripts and doppelgangers. It's curious that the developers chose to ignore multiplayer for these arcade sessions, but it could be seen as a deliberate attempt to keep the difficulty high and maintain a sense of dread inherent in a solo battle against armies of darkness.

"Everything is as real as everything else."

While Alan Wake's American Nightmare draws vaguely from classic sci-fi B-movies, it never succumbs to satire or artistic monotony, despite the repetitive meta-narrative. Wake's writer-critique thriller stands alone in the gaming industry for its intellectual insistence and challenging allegory, but joins the ranks of action-horror greats with its tense balance of defense and gunplay. American Nightmare charges players to create and recreate, or else feel the steel separation of darkness. Or some abstraction thereof.

Verdict: Buy It