Alan Wake's American Nightmare
released on Feb 22, 2012
A standalone expansion of Alan Wake
In this brand new standalone experience, Alan Wake fights the herald of darkness, the evil Mr. Scratch! A thrilling new storyline, hordes of creepy enemies, serious firepower and beautiful Arizona locations, combined with a fun and challenging new game mode make this a must for Alan Wake veterans, and the perfect jumping on point for new players!
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Gameplay still as good if not a bit better than the first game however the story does get a bit repetitive during the middle part but it does pay off well
Ran through the game on Normal with no deaths. Game still slaps, much more than I actually remembered.
I always had more interest in American Nightmare due to 1) playing it before the main game and 2) the experience being shorter, more condensed, offering more variety in terms of combat and enemy encounters, and giving you more tools and options to tackle these in whatever way you want. Alan Wake might excel more in atmosphere and storytelling, but American Nightmare is more realized as a video game.
I always had more interest in American Nightmare due to 1) playing it before the main game and 2) the experience being shorter, more condensed, offering more variety in terms of combat and enemy encounters, and giving you more tools and options to tackle these in whatever way you want. Alan Wake might excel more in atmosphere and storytelling, but American Nightmare is more realized as a video game.
What is this, Alan Wake? Some kind of.. American Nightmare..?
Alan Wake's American Nightmare is a good game that improves a lot of the original Alan Wake's gameplay problems as well as adding much more variety and content at the expense of having a boring and underwhelming story with an ending that's lacklustre.
In the game, we play again as the writer Alan Wake as he arrives in a desert town that has been taken control by the darkness with Alan's evil doppelganger Mr Scartch. Mr Scratch is probably one of the highlights with TVs with recordings showing what this evil maniac has been doing with him taunting Alan, most of the time while committing acts of murder. The villain is charismatic, funny and an absolute psycho which made me of course absolutely adore every time he was on screen. Besides that, the story is well boring. You finish a checklist of pretty easy tasks over and over blasting enemies along the way.
The gameplay is improved from the previous Alan Wake with the same flashlight and dodge mechanics making a return. The movement is somewhat improved feeling smoother and the game adds a plethora of new guns, a welcome change from the limited arsenal of the original. New enemies also come in spades with the same enemies making a return as well as a few new faces like a hulking hillbilly behemoth and vampire-like enemies that can transform from human to a flock of birds allowing them to land behind you and sneak attack you if you don't keep an eye on them. The game itself isn't really that hard though and although there were a few areas I died at I never found myself feeling too challenged.
The game also comes with an arcade mode which although I didn't really touch seems like a nice edition for knocking a few hours into.
Sadly the game's variety stops with the guns and enemies with the total levels being 3. Although each time is made quicker I still found myself rushing through these levels to get to the ending after halfway through the second loop.
Overall I did enjoy the game and although I don't think its the best Alan Wake game Mr Scratch himself would make me play it, which is an ode to the actor Ilkka Villi and the great performance he puts on. I just wish we could have gotten him in this more charming goofy form in another game, but here's for the future.
In the game, we play again as the writer Alan Wake as he arrives in a desert town that has been taken control by the darkness with Alan's evil doppelganger Mr Scartch. Mr Scratch is probably one of the highlights with TVs with recordings showing what this evil maniac has been doing with him taunting Alan, most of the time while committing acts of murder. The villain is charismatic, funny and an absolute psycho which made me of course absolutely adore every time he was on screen. Besides that, the story is well boring. You finish a checklist of pretty easy tasks over and over blasting enemies along the way.
The gameplay is improved from the previous Alan Wake with the same flashlight and dodge mechanics making a return. The movement is somewhat improved feeling smoother and the game adds a plethora of new guns, a welcome change from the limited arsenal of the original. New enemies also come in spades with the same enemies making a return as well as a few new faces like a hulking hillbilly behemoth and vampire-like enemies that can transform from human to a flock of birds allowing them to land behind you and sneak attack you if you don't keep an eye on them. The game itself isn't really that hard though and although there were a few areas I died at I never found myself feeling too challenged.
The game also comes with an arcade mode which although I didn't really touch seems like a nice edition for knocking a few hours into.
Sadly the game's variety stops with the guns and enemies with the total levels being 3. Although each time is made quicker I still found myself rushing through these levels to get to the ending after halfway through the second loop.
Overall I did enjoy the game and although I don't think its the best Alan Wake game Mr Scratch himself would make me play it, which is an ode to the actor Ilkka Villi and the great performance he puts on. I just wish we could have gotten him in this more charming goofy form in another game, but here's for the future.
I didn't like this one. Most of the story is nonsense, and repeats the game gameplay issues I had with Alan Wake.
The Mr Scratch scenes though earn it a whole star those rule.
The Mr Scratch scenes though earn it a whole star those rule.
Yeah, I just dropped this one after like an hour, even though this game is only like four hours long or something. This is just not at all what I want out of this series. There’s barely any story here, and what IS there is somehow both very thin and needlessly convoluted. Feels like they wanted to rebrand Alan Wake as more of an action series to broaden the appeal while also throwing out a low-budget, what-if, ambiguously canon potential ending for Alan’s story, in case they never made a sequel. I just went and skimmed the rest of the cutscenes on YouTube for context before moving on to Control.