Alan Wake's American Nightmare is a standalone DLC from a year or so after Alan Wake came out and dang - the game looks a LOT better! The graphics are significantly improved and there's a much greater diversity in the art style as well though it is not quite as strong as the origianl game. The gameplay also is very much the same (use your flashlight to weaken monsters, shoot them with your totally normal pair of guns) but feels a lot tighter. Remedy was so pleased with the upgraded gameplay that they even have a "horde" mode extra of sorts to test your mettle in though who shows up to Alan Wake looking for more GAMEPLAY is a strange cookie in my opinion.
So American Nightmare picks up a bit past the ending of the original Alan Wake. There's a mysterious dream being wearing Alan's face called Mr. Scratch and Alan himself is sorta stuck in the dream world and not in the mountain town he was at previously... how exactly he ends up in the American Southwest I've no damn idea but the location is certainly infused into every visual detail of the game just as the New England vibe was set into the first game. Alan does battle with Mr. Scratch over a small town that is overrun by his 'dark' servants though we're not given much in the way of details where the hell everyone IS in this town... AW games are supposed to feel surreal/dreamlike though and this game has that in spades. You move through 3 different levels that are all pretty cool but unfortunately underutilized while tracking down what Mr. Scratch is up to. You then get to do a refresh of each level THREE times until the end which is a biiiiit tiresome but at least the character's are aware of it - one of the NPCs in the first level has all of the McGuffin's gathered for you as soon as you arrive hahaha...
Alan is his usual charming self and the actor is still top notch however this leads to one of the game's bigger problems - the voice acting for the other characters in the game is TERRIBLE. Normally this isn't too big of a deal as old video games + terrible acting = classic, it just doesn't work for this game because Wake's actor is solid and this game isn't even old! We knew better by 2012 dammit! Also one of the coolest things about Alan Wake was all the documents you uncovered which gave you some spooky glimpses at the things you were going to run into later and while these documents remain they're mostly just about random shit related to Alan's life this time rather than helping to evoke an aura of dread. The first Alan Wake game is a solid horror + action game with good scares and a great story and this is just... a decent expansion on the action? It DOES give us SOME resolution to the end of Alan Wake however: we are shown a video at the end of Alan reuiniting with his wife and he explains that while this may not be now - it will happen one day at least!
Most DLC are truncated and ultimately unsatisfying portions of their main game counterparts and American Nightmare does very little to disprove that notion. The gameplay and looks receive a significant bump but the writing and story are not there to match. Thankfully the AWE expansion for Control is on its way to set things right....
So American Nightmare picks up a bit past the ending of the original Alan Wake. There's a mysterious dream being wearing Alan's face called Mr. Scratch and Alan himself is sorta stuck in the dream world and not in the mountain town he was at previously... how exactly he ends up in the American Southwest I've no damn idea but the location is certainly infused into every visual detail of the game just as the New England vibe was set into the first game. Alan does battle with Mr. Scratch over a small town that is overrun by his 'dark' servants though we're not given much in the way of details where the hell everyone IS in this town... AW games are supposed to feel surreal/dreamlike though and this game has that in spades. You move through 3 different levels that are all pretty cool but unfortunately underutilized while tracking down what Mr. Scratch is up to. You then get to do a refresh of each level THREE times until the end which is a biiiiit tiresome but at least the character's are aware of it - one of the NPCs in the first level has all of the McGuffin's gathered for you as soon as you arrive hahaha...
Alan is his usual charming self and the actor is still top notch however this leads to one of the game's bigger problems - the voice acting for the other characters in the game is TERRIBLE. Normally this isn't too big of a deal as old video games + terrible acting = classic, it just doesn't work for this game because Wake's actor is solid and this game isn't even old! We knew better by 2012 dammit! Also one of the coolest things about Alan Wake was all the documents you uncovered which gave you some spooky glimpses at the things you were going to run into later and while these documents remain they're mostly just about random shit related to Alan's life this time rather than helping to evoke an aura of dread. The first Alan Wake game is a solid horror + action game with good scares and a great story and this is just... a decent expansion on the action? It DOES give us SOME resolution to the end of Alan Wake however: we are shown a video at the end of Alan reuiniting with his wife and he explains that while this may not be now - it will happen one day at least!
Most DLC are truncated and ultimately unsatisfying portions of their main game counterparts and American Nightmare does very little to disprove that notion. The gameplay and looks receive a significant bump but the writing and story are not there to match. Thankfully the AWE expansion for Control is on its way to set things right....