Alan Wake's American Nightmare

Hi, Alan Wake - (Amr Ngt) - is a (TPS), superb graphics, high graphics available. A entertaining adventure, choose story mode or unlock arcade mode areas. Good options available, (ex: blur on/off). Enter a wasteland. Torch enemies away into the distance or simply shoot them away into it, after all, it is going to be you or them. Full 360 degrees horizontal rotations + full 180 (allowing for the character) degrees vertical rotations, making it excellent. Has configurable keys, like - movements, jump, torch, renew battery, interact, throw + more. Weapons like - high range burning torch, flares, pistols, shotgun, SMG, crossbow, nailgun + more. Enemies are after you and in numbers. On screen mini map shows objectives and directions. Your real safety is on your weapons, your ranged burning torch, inserting new batteries, your ammo, your grand wits in attack situations. The (A1) + (NPC's) + (You) is voicing your operations and objectives as you traverse the land. NPC's voice speeches, chatter, sound effects, music. Freedom of exploration (Hit). Excellent (TPS). YxDDVxY

Groundhog day? More computing power = More graphics = More mimicking of Hollywood's crap repetitive plots and story lines. I'm getting tired games trying to be a Hollywood look-a-like, it smacks of laziness and god knows Hollywood is already 80% lazy in my view, working and reworking the same old plots and stories. Not all games that lent themselves to a film genre or theme are bad but somehow when they are done badly and for no good reason it just falls flat. I have not played any previous titles in the series and having played this probably won't bother now even though reputedly they are very different. I leave the plot and explanation of story line to other reviewer other than my first sentence which says it all. This is so short I was aghast at how ridiculous and excuse for a story this was and it just seemed to me that this was just slapped together possibly for fans of the series. A quick buck. For me the groundhog theme just meant you played the same 3 maps with slight adjustements each time making this not only stupidly short but mindbogglingly boring and if you like the good ol' "Hollywood" Zombie shite then this is right up your street. I personally don't - I could never see the fascination with that craze and it's been done to death over decades and is just boring as hell to me. Why did I buy it if I don't like Zombies - 1) I got it free in a recent offer and 2) I didn't realise it had the 'horror' element. I don't recommend this at all, however, if you like this kind of zombie shootout stuff (god knows there's enough of them why would you want another), there's an arcade mode which probably allows you to mindlessly blow zombies away till your fingers bleed and/or your mother/spouse/brother/sister/aunty tells you to go the f**k to bed. For the rest I'll warrant your money would be spent more wisely elsewhere.

In summer sale I did the big mistake to trust the 4.3 rating of Alan Wake, never again. Alan Wake the man who can't walk straight forward, who can't reload fast, who can't really jump, who walks like having a wooden peg in his ass and of course slow. A pure pussy victim as a gunslinger. The intention of Remedy entertainment must have been to take an intellectual plot to hide the overall bad game mechanics. Shame on you. Remedy must have thought that pressing q for recharging the battery of the lamp and pressing r for reloading weapons in combination with turning around to endless materialising enemies is the ideal recipe for entertainment. The Alan Wake universe as a game is a bad joke, brilliant graphics aside. I threw my money away for such a piss.

American Nightmare is a fun continuation of Alan Wake, moving his story forward and adding some variety to the combat mechanics via new enemies and a larger selection of weapons. However, it's fairly short and basic, as though Remedy didn't have enough money to make a proper game and did the best they could with a tiny budget. To their credit, there's no drop in quality- the writing, characters and look of the game are still excellent, though the move to an Arizona desert environment means the spooky dark woods and Twin Peaks-esque atmosphere are replaced with a less interesting vague pulp sci-fi feel based on the game's Twilight Zone expy, Night Springs. The shift away from horror is matched with easier combat- the Taken don't feel all that threatening, and the wide variety of weapons outgrows the game's limits, making it possible you'll upgrade from one weapon to the next without even having a proper chance to use them all. The game takes place in only three fairly small map sections, repeated, and though the game handles this fairly intelligently with a time loop plot, it still feels like a weak excuse for not being able to make a full game, rather than an organic part of the creative process. There's some fun to be had with the arcade mode, but it too feels like a tacked-on apology for the game's brevity rather than a necessary feature. That said, if the game being short and repeating the same areas doesn't come as an unpleasant surprise, there's a lot to like here. The manuscript pages and TV/radio messages give us more of the backstory and characterization that made the first game so enjoyable, there's a couple musical bits to pump up the action scenes, and the villain is such an absolute bastard and his taunting messages are so personal and smug that you love to hate him, even if his existence and motivation are sort of vaguely defined. Thankfully they did finally make a proper sequel, but for that long period in between, this was much better than nothing.

If you loved Alan Wake 1 (like me), you might find brief pockets of fun here. However, there's just too much that I disliked about this game. It's not all bad though, here's what I liked: - You keep your items: In Alan Wake 1, it bothered the crap out of me that you lost your items and weapons so frequently. This doesn't happen in American Nightmare. - New Enemies: There's a few new enemies. However, the spider enemies were just annoying and melting them with the flashlight was pretty boring. - Some Progression: As you find collectables, you can unlock new weapons. Some were cool and some were kinda useless. But a bigger selection is always good to have. - Great Port: Graphics are about the same as Alan Wake 1 and didn't stutter or crash at all. Some of the environmental effects from Alan Wake 1 were absent here. But I didn't enjoy most of this game. Some examples: - BAD story, BAD characters, BAD writing: So you're stuck in a timeloop and trying to escape it. You work with a mechanic lady, a scientist lady, and a film journalist i think? They were all very bland and Alan is always reassuring them all that "everything's gonna be okay". The dialogue frankly sucked and they all had almost no personality. - Flashlight recharges almost instantly: In the first game, juggling batteries to charge your flashlight was fun. That's still in this game, but the flashlight automatically recharges so quick, the mechanic is essentially dead. - VERY repetitive: You're basically repeating the same objectives until the game ends. It's very uninteresting and doing the same task over and over again frankly bored the crap out of me. - NO new combat mechanics: Besides the new weapons and no longer needing to monitor your flashlight's charge, nothing new is introduced and the only horror element of managing your flashlight was stripped from the game. All in all, I don't recommend this. It doesn't add any new fun stories or gameplay to make it worth your while.