Alan Wake was introduced at E3 in 2005 and has been finally released 5 years later. A "Psychological Action Thriller" as the box art displays is a pretty good summation of what entails, but was Wake worth waiting 5 years to play?
You are the world renowned writer Alan Wake, on vacation with your wife Alice at Spring Falls, a quirky little town surrounded by a lake with lots of small town folk. You book a stay in a little cabin by the lake and are trying to just relax and enjoy your vacation when Alice tells you this trip was a way to get you to be inspired to write another novel. In your anger you storm out of the cabin, leaving Alice behind to clear your thoughts. As you venture further, you hear your wife scream and once you turn, you see all the lights of the cabin have been shut off! You race back to the cabin, calling out to Alice, but your cries are in vain because Alice's own shrieking is drowning them out. You look out toward the lake, some 40 feet below, as you see Alice's silhouette through the water. Without hesitation you take a deep breath and dive in after your wife. Then in a flash, you wake up in the drivers seat of a car, blood dripping down your forehead as the car is dangling off the side of a highway. This is the beginning of Alan Wake and what follows is a great story, some may say, worthy of a big screen adaptation. You are attempting to find your lost wife and are trying to uncover the mysteries of Bright Falls. Along the way you must deal with all sorts of terror caused by the Taken (things trapped by the Darkness).
The Taken are beings or objects enshrouded by a dark presence. These take the form of people, objects, and even animals. While covered in Darkness, your enemies are near invincible and only can be destroyed by first removing the darkness by ways of flashlights or other light sources. The game shines (no pun intended) in the way it uses light as not only a source of comfort, but as a weapon. You will definitely need to cling tightly to that flashlight because more then half the game you're covered in darkness. Enemies can be around every corner and sometimes you may think your eyes are playing tricks on you, but its true that you actually did see something scurry a couple yards ahead. Speaking about enemies, the enemies are sometimes a pain. Often they come in pairs but other times you're bombarded by close to 6 enemies at once. Not only do they gang up on you, but they like to circle around you so while you're dealing with one enemy, another sneaks up behind you and hits you with a hatchet. When you're playing on the harder difficulties, one hit could mean the end for you because some enemies actually combo into you, taking you down in one quick swoop. 
The enemies are competent enough, but the game shows its age in other ways. There are times where you can't see enemies around you because of the placement of the camera (similar to the problems in Resident Evil 5). Also, you're supposed to be collecting Coffee Thermos (for Lord knows what) as little collectibles which don't seem to have any purpose to Alan as a character. Finally, as you get further along in the game you are tested with what seems like an endurance round as swarm upon swarms of enemies are thrown at you at once, giving you little time to recover. This is not to take anything away from the game as a whole, but it shows some of the older gameplay mechanics this game has since it's been in production for close to 5 years.
The main focus it seems as to why this game has got such high praise is because of the story and to be honest, I did enjoy it. Is it the best story I've played this year? No..that'd be Heavy Rain. This game has a great pacing though and truly feels like it could be a episodic series. The presentation is broken into chapters and Alan plays through each one usually ending in a cliffhanger. The credits roll and then the next chapter immediately starts giving players a summary of last episodes events. With this type of gaming, you could limit yourself to one chapter a day and not feel the need to plow through to the end (unless you really want to.) Without giving too much of the story away, Alan finds these manuscript pages along the way from a novel he doesn't remember writing, but strangely the pages seem to be foreshadowing upcoming events. The more pages you find, the more of the story you can uncover. Even though I was able to read what would be coming in the future, it actually helped build tension as I went along, worrying about when the events would take place.
SUMMARY
Pathetic
Enemies sometimes cheap
Short Game
Some awkward animations
Some cheap scares and dated game cliches
Very Nice!
Great Story with Excellent Pacing
Lighting Mechanics are beautiful
Sound is amazing as is the musical score
Combat is fun as is the creative ways you can use the environment to destroy enemies
FINAL GRADE: B
While I enjoyed the game and my experience playing through it, I don't really feel compelled to run through it again. Aside from beating it on the nightmare difficulty (unlocked after completing the game on hard) and collecting miscellaneous objects, there doesn't seem to be any other reason to play through it. You won't get the same experience the second time through as you did with the first. Definitely an enjoyable game and worthy of a playthrough, but I can't say it's worth a purchase yet. Have to see about the upcoming DLC, but as a standalone, worth at minimum a rental.
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