Alan Wake's American Nightmare is an XBLA spin-off from the Alan Wake series made by Remedy. It is a follow up to the first one but its not a sequel.
Now when you play this and you want to compare with the original Alan Wake. Don´t because this is a 15 bucks XBLA game not a 60 bucks retail game. Although there are some aspects i will compare them with.
Graphics/artstyle: Now to be really honest i am kinda dissapointed by the graphics. They aren´t bad in fact they are really good looking for an XBLA title but i´ve seen better looking games on XBLA. The character designs look extremely simple, there is alot of details missing in the surroundings (although it is noticable when in becomes light in the fight until dawn mode) And the textures are really bland.
But the thing that really dissapoints me the most is the atmosphere. I really respect Remedy for changing up the artstyle in thriller genres and this style is really amazing and fits this game but its just not the right atmosphere. The original wake's atmosphere was just perfect in every way possible you really felt like you where being isolated, you felt like you were a prey and the taken were the hunters. It was so damn engaging that i was so happy when it was light and i didn't want it to become dark anymore.
But now i feel more like an action badass like "come on taken bring it on bitches" which doesn't really fit alan wake's whole survival thing much.
8.0/10
Gameplay: Now i have the feeling that the gameplay will have love/hate relationship. To me it's love.
The gameplay features the same light, shoot, dodge, survive mechanic. However the feeling is completely different as they now switched from isolated survival to a more open fast paced oriented feel.
At first you will kinda think that its a huge step down from the original due to the lack of recoil in the guns and the kinda arcade like feeling but i promise you just play it through the end and you will start to love and respect the fast pace action approach as you will be dodging and multitasking while a variety of taken are surrounding you and you just try to find the perfect strategy to take them all down at once.
Not only are the controls and camera far more inproven making the gameplay more quicker and easier to preform things like dodging but there is also a far bigger variety in weapons including automatic, sub-automatic guns.
There is also a far bigger variety in enemies now. My favorite being the splitters which will split up in two as you shine light on them. This gives quick thinking and the gameplay far more in depth as it requires you to quickly think of a plan before they split even more up.
Seriously just play through it to the end and in the end you will have an epic intense feeling, while not having that surival feeling it does have that feeling just in a complete different way.
9.5/10
Story: Now this is what i call a fucking awesome story that is extremely well written and dare i say it this story is superior over the original alan wake in every way.
In Alan Wake's american nightmare there are places where reality and fiction have become one. Alan Wake is stuck in a show that he himself wrote called night springs where he is trying to stop an urban legend known as Mr Scratch who is trying to take over Alan Wake's place and then destroy his life and friends. Alan Wake will have to go through three different places and will have to do certain actions like how it is written in his manuscript pages in order to manipulate reality and destroy Mr Scratch.
Now not only is this story extremely well thought out easily the best part of this game is Mr Scratch. He really is the definition of an insane psychological fucked up human being, the perfect antagonist for Alan Wake. But to really experience Mr Scratch his full psychotic mind you need to make sure you go through all the TV's. If you turn on a TV you will see a live action clip of Mr Scratch showing how extremely disturbing this man is and the things he will do to your life.
Ilkka Villi the person who play both Alan Wake and Mr Scratch in the live action clips does a phenomenal job of playing a complete psycho. Although he does kinda overact sometimes there is no one who could've done a better job in my opinion.
My only complaint and the thing that stops this story from being 10/10 is that the other supporting characters the three girls that will be assisting you are pretty cliché characters. But overall this is a story that is on par with some of the greatest retail games.
9.5/10
Replay value: I am just gonna say it this is by far the greatest bang for your buck you will ever get for 15 fucking bucks.
Okay so this game has a campaign that goes about 5 hours, with completely new enemies, completely new weapons, and a different style (not the atmosphere but how its more open) This game is what i wish call of duty would be and that is a fucking 60 bucks game.
However the problem with the campaign is that you will go through only three places and you will actually back track to those three places two fucking times. HOWEVER that is completely forgiven not only because of story purposes but the fact that they always change the pace, difficultly and the amount of enemies as you progress further. Especially going through these places one last time it will be just fucking epic going through the things way faster with just hordes and hordes of taken chasing you and sometimes being provided with epic background music of poets of the fall it really destroys the whole idea that you play through the same levels.
And after you are done with a campaign that has the lenght of a full retail millitary shooters you also have fight till dawn mode which is like gears of war's horde mode. Now i know that this is not the most original concept but remedy changed it a bit up creating a true zombie survival feeling as you will have to survive a certain amount of time until the sun rises.
This gamemode does not only fit the alan wake series very well. It is provided with 5 maps which each (beisde s 1 which is already unlocked) can be unlocked by gaining a certain amount of stars you unlock from playing this mode.
So if anything this game shows that call of duty sucks balls and that alan wake's american nightmare has the best replay value in any XBLA game.
10/10
Overall: This is one of the greatest XBLA games i've played so far. While it's obviously not as good as its full retail counter part is does actually improve on a shitload of things including more action focussed gameplay, improven combat system and larger variety of weapons, settings and enemies. Hell if the campaign had more variety, the gameplay was more realistic and the atmosphere was better this could've been passed as a full retail sequel.
Overall American Nightmare gets an outstanding:
9.0/10
Also just small rant: WHAT THE FUCK REMEDY WHY DIDN'T YOU FUCKING INCLUDE A MR SCRATCH BOSS BATTLE EVEN THE ALAN WAKE DLC EXPANSIONS HAVE FUCKING BOSS BATTLES MR SCRATCH COULD'VE BEEN A FUCKING EPIC BOSS THAT WOULD STRIKE YOU WHILE POETS OF THE FALL-THE HAPPY SONG COULD'VE BEEN PLAYED IN THE BACKGROUND. IT HAD SO MUCH POTENTIAL ASJKFAJBHJB
/rant
Subject: Toxic reviews Alan Wake's American Nightmare 
Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:42 am
