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.