despite what you may have heard, the similarities to twin peaks are superficial; alan wake's vibe is paperback supernatural thriller mixed with survival horror. the latter is done very effectively, with excellent lighting and sound design, especially for a game from 2010.

the game tells most of its story through pages of a manuscript strewn throughout the environment. it's a familiar mode, but it's more convincingly diegetic here than in other games where you might be reading emails or listening to audio recordings.

the core gameplay is decent once you get the hang of it, but it suffers from the fact that it doesn't develop much over the course of the game. there are just a handful of enemy types and just as many weapons, and the monotony of this becomes apparent long before the final chapter. weapon accuracy isn't rewarded for some reason (headshots seem to deal no more damage than anywhere else), and most of the challenge is based around crowd control and staggering enemies with your flashlight.

frustratingly, the windows version of the game has no option to disable motion blur nor mouse acceleration. i could see the former being a creative choice, but i really hate its inclusion in any game.