Read the additional Alan Wake: The Signal DLC (Xbox 360) Review Flashlight Flashback

Read the additional Alan Wake: The Writer DLC (Xbox 360) Review Read the full Alan Wake (Xbox 360) Review Remedy's done a great job of mixing elements of written work, television, and videogames to create an experience full of scares, laughs, and thrills that's just as fun to play as it is to watch. Though the camera can cause issues and the supernatural story that's more interested in asking questions than answering them, it's a tough game to put down once you've started. 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. 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.

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