Alan Wake Review

Remedy's great trick is making a flashlight into a two stage weapon. Shadows have to be burned off a possessed logger before a bullet will touch him, so every fight is a resource problem with batteries and a torch beam you have to hold steady while backing away, and the panic that produces is the whole horror design. Bright Falls is exceptional: the forest is dense and legible, the lake has real menace, and the supporting cast of diner regulars and a manic rock duo keep the tone from curdling into misery.

The episodic structure with previously on recaps is a smart way to pace a story about a serialised manuscript writing its own author into a corner. The combat is the weak leg. Three enemy types repeat for eleven hours, the dodge is the answer to almost everything, and the middle chapters string together too many forest walks that resolve identically. The writing carries it anyway, and the ending it refuses to explain has kept people arguing for over a decade.