Alan Wake was first shown to the public at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo, and was originally a tool to help drive gamers to DirectX 10, and by extension Windows Vista. Since that time, the PC version has been killed and the game is now an Xbox 360 exclusive. PC gamers certainly have reason to be bitter—this is an original, compelling game. Combined with Heavy Rain, it proves that video games have come a long way in the art of telling a story that doesn't rely on space marines or World War II.

Alan Wake is a best-selling novelist, writing books about a hard-nosed New York cop named Alex Casey. After a run of successful crime thrillers, Wake killed his meal ticket with his latest novel, "The Sudden Stop." After that, he found himself in a sort of hell, suffering from writer's block. His wife thinks the best thing for him is to escape to the scenic town of Bright Falls, and maybe they can rediscover his love of writing together. But something wants to keep him in the sleepy town, and its grasp is tight.

Title Alan Wake Developer Remedy Entertainment Publisher Microsoft Price $59.99 Shop.Ars Platform Xbox 360

What sort of game is this?

Wake begins with the titular character quoting Stephen King on the nature of fear, and you'll hear references to King throughout the story. It's not a stretch, because Alan Wake seems like something King would have written; the game shares King's love of taking decent but flawed people and putting them in horrific circumstances. God may not play dice with the universe, but writers sure as hell do.

The game's settings are convincingly rendered

Soon, Wake is stuck in a world that may or may not be real, willing to go to any length to save his wife. The relationship between Alan and his wife is actually one of the most impressive things about this game: it feels real, with arguments, misunderstandings, and a strong undercurrent of love and affection. She's scared of the dark, and when the lights go out in the house it's surprising how quickly you feel protective. In many ways this isn't a horror game—it's a love story.

My name is Alan Wake

The game takes place in Bright Falls, and the town feels real; the environments are stunning in their detail. The characters you encounter in the game also feel realistically odd and idiosyncratic, which adds to the Twin Peaks-ish feel of the game. The lighting effects are beautifully done, for good reason: light plays a huge part in the game. You're rarely without your flashlight, and much of the tension in the game comes from things you barely make out in the darkness. The game gives you guidance on how to set up the brightness before you start playing, and you should take the advice. The game is dark for a reason, and playing with the lights out adds to the mood.

Light is a powerful weapon, and you'll use many light-based tools to fight the darkness

You'll spend the majority of the game both figuratively and literally in the dark, trying to solve the puzzle of what's going on around you, and searching desperately to find out what happened to your wife. At times, it seems as if the very fabric of reality is in play, and you'll be asked to believe wildly different things about your situation. To further confuse you, pages of an unfinished novel are scattered throughout the game, and you'll find that they describe things that are happening now, things that happened in the past, and things that may happen in the future.

These aren't just clever collectibles used to add color to the story; the manuscript exists in the game world. Other characters are aware of it, and they have different ideas about what it can do, and about what Wake himself is capable of. Alan Wake isn't acting in a vacuum, and other characters are clearly aware that there is something large and terrible happening in the town around them. Alan himself comments that it's a rare town that gives public works employees flash bang grenades.