{"id":814,"date":"2012-09-11T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/11\/alan-wake-american-nightmare\/"},"modified":"2012-09-11T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-11T18:00:00","slug":"alan-wake-american-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shadowcovenant.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/11\/alan-wake-american-nightmare\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Wake: American Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"alan-wakes-american-nightmare-walkthrough-cover\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This was a big pleasant surprise\u2026 I wrote about the original Alan Wake<\/a>, and one of my big complaints was the fact that I saw Alan Wake (the character) as too empty\u2026 While I enjoyed the game, I didn\u2019t see myself playing sequels or DLC based on it (specially given the crummy ending).<\/p>\n

So, when a friend of mine convinced me to give this a try, I wasn\u2019t expecting anything good, specially because it was a downloadable title\u2026 but boy, was I surprised\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cAlan Wake\u2019s American Nightmare\u201d really exceeds the original\u2026 Heck, this should be the original, with this kind of format, pacing and length!<\/p>\n

Most of my original criticisms (animation in general, done-before story) are gone, replaced with a tighter game, with a much more focused experience!<\/p>\n

The atmosphere of the original is intact and surpassed by the narrative hook of making the whole game seem like a \u201cNight Springs\u201d episode (the Alan Wake equivalent to \u201cThe Twilight Zone\u201d). The story is also more interesting and is more successful in investing the player in it.<\/p>\n

The addition of new weapons and more enemies makes the tension drop a bit in the combat sections, but at the same time it doesn\u2019t make them into a chore like in the original.<\/p>\n

Apparently, you don\u2019t need to have played the DLC to make sense of the story, which is also a good bonus (I haven\u2019t played it, and besides some references that may or might not be explained in the DLC, there\u2019s not even a big connection to the original game).<\/p>\n

All in all, I hope they\u2019ll make more games like this one\u2026 a short, compact experience (circa 4 to 6 hours) that corrects the flaws of the original game and gives something new to the player\u2026 10\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This was a big pleasant surprise\u2026 I wrote about the original Alan Wake, and one of my big complaints was the fact that I saw Alan Wake (the character) as too empty\u2026 While I enjoyed the game, I didn\u2019t see myself playing sequels or DLC based on it (specially given the crummy ending). So, when […]<\/p>\n