Alan Wake’s American Nightmare

Publisher: Microsoft Studios

Console: Xbox 360

Other Platforms: none

Release date: February 22, 2012

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is good arcade game. It provides you with a solid story, solid visuals, and good gameplay. The story revolves around Alan Wake a novelist as he adventures and travels around the small town of night fall. The visuals are very good for a arcade game. The gameplay is based around the use of a flashlight to help defeat enemies. Overall, it’s a interesting game.

The main enemy of Alan Wake and can be referred to as the taken. The taken are people who have been possessed by darkness which is being manipulated by the elusive Mr. Scratch. Mr. Scratch is everything that makes Alan a bad person. The story is driven by Mr. Scratch’s acts. He does many bad things. He kills most of the people in the town and attempts to destroy a telescope. Mr. Scratch even goes so far as to put the evil darkness into a woman’s body so that she can get closer to Alan to try and kill him. The story is fun and keeps you engaged while you play.

American Nightmare’s gameplay is based around the use of a flash light to remove the darkness shield that protects the Taken from harm. This flash light acts as a reticle so that you can aim your gun at the taken after you have removed the Darkness. By making the Taken immune to damage, the developers at Remedy Entertainment, have made the game more stressful. It’s more stressful simply because you can only attack one Taken at a time.

The look of the game is superb. Because a main component of the game is darkness, your flashlight penetrates the darkness like a hot knife through butter, its really amazing. The darkness also engulfs the enemies, and when the flashlight hits them, it reminds me of vampires when they step into the sunlight. The back drop of the game is well designed as well. The motel that you encounter in the game looks dirty and grimy, just like a trucker motel should. The rest of the locations in the game look good too, However, I was more inclined to like the motel the most.

The one problem I have in this game is that they mix live action with standard gameplay. The live action is simply to tell the story, but I don’t feel that you should have actors in games unless they are doing a voice over. The game starts out with a live action cut scene, explaining who Alan is and where he is. But throughout the rest of the game the live action scenes come from Mr. Scratch as he taunts Alan and pushes the game forward. Even though I feel that live action has no place in video games, the actor who plays Mr. Scratch actually does a very good job.

Final Thoughts:

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is good and the story is fun and engaging. The gameplay is simple, yet effective. The look of the game is top notch. The game is pretty intriguing for the most part, but the live action cut scenes just does not do it for me.

Final Score:

I give Alan Wake’s American Nightmare a eight out of ten.

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