Outstanding environmental design and some brilliant visuals and sound make Bright Falls and its mountainous surroundings look and feel alive. Remedy has built a world that, despite being a fantastical realm of twisting shadows and realities, is solidly anchored in authenticity. It’s a pulpy, Stephen King-style thriller viewed through the dreamlike lens of David Lynch, and it’s every bit as gripping and surreal as that pairing of influences would suggest. The details described in this breadcrumb trail of manuscript pages manifest themselves into the subsequent events, making for a consistently enthralling journey down a descent into madness in which Wake is armed only with a small arsenal of guns and a battery-powered torch to keep the darkness-cloaked townsfolk at bay. When crime fiction author Wake’s wife goes missing in a small town, the only clues to her whereabouts are the loose excerpts from a book he has no memory of writing. If you missed it the first time around, Alan Wake Remastered’s story remains a novel one in every sense of the word.

Alan Wake Remastered’s twisted brand of psychological torture by torchlight still makes for a supremely tense trip through the woods, but as a shooter it’s stuck in the past compared to more modern games – including developer Remedy’s own Control. Yet while the details in its moody environments are now far easier to make out, its gameplay shortcomings are presented in equally stark relief. It’s not too long, took me about 8 hours to finish the main campaign.Like a flashlight flickering to life from a freshly inserted set of Energizers, Alan Wake Remastered takes the 11-year-old survival horror shooter and presents it in its most radiant form. If you like thrillers like classic Resident Evil games and The Medium I’d give it a try. If only there was a way to add some armor (like xmas lights…?). Like Control, the character can be really weak and go down with just a few hits. I started off on normal and switched to easy midway through and, though I still occasionally died, had a much more pleasant experience overall. I’d recommend starting off on easy on first play through. It is very easy to get flanked which can get frustrating. This is fine when you have a couple enemies but when you get a big crowd it’s best to either just run for the next checkpoint or use flares/flash grenades. Enemies are basically shielded by darkness and you must remove the barrier by shining light on them. The gameplay is ok once you get used to it but may seem clunky and disorienting at first. Some frame-rate jitters here and there also. Graphics are good in terms of the environments but the facial animations are quite dated which may be off putting for some. Very Stephen King style thriller and it even calls it out itself. Overall, despite some annoying gameplay at times, I really had fun seeing where the story was gonna go. Definitely worth playing for $10 or through PS+.

With a sequel coming soon I found the Alan Wake Remastered on sale on PSN. I never heard of Alan Wake until I played Control.

Alan wake remastered ign