Search Results for “alan wake's american nightmare”

Deal of the Week and Alan Wake’s American Nightmare sale

By Christine Mitchell • May 23, 2013

The new Xbox One was unveiled earlier this week but there’s still plenty happening on good ole XBLA. A mix of old and new XBLA favorites are on sale this week, …
Read More

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare guide

By Todd Schlickbernd • March 6, 2012

The darkness is near, but the guide to it is here.
Read More

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare review (XBLA)

By Nick Santangelo • February 20, 2012

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare was developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Studios. It was released February 22, 2012 for 1200 MSP. A code was provided for review purposes.

This time around, Emma wasn’t going to allow things to play out the way they had the previous two. She wouldn’t just sit idly by playing the damsel-in-distress role while Alan did his hero thing, hiding away in a supposed bastion of light from the Taken. No, she’d had quite enough of that already, thank you very much.

This time they’d play things her way. This time, she had already collected all of the pieces of the oil rig puzzle and even had the motel keys. However, she wasn’t about to just hand it all over to the Champion of Light and help him along in his quest to put a halt to this perverted little desecration of reality, one in which the two remained imprisoned. That is to say, not unless he would first do his part to protect her from the Taken, at least.

Most readers are probably wondering what the heck all of that means. How would you feel if a game inspired those same sensations of confusion by seemingly starting in the middle rather than the beginning? This is the reality of playing through Alan Wake’s American Nightmare. It’s a reality that will become all too familiar to players as they relive the three same sections of the game over and over again, with the events altered just enough to keep things interesting. Don’t expect to jump right into this spin-off of the original Alan Wake and have a grasp on what is going on out in its quiet little stretch of the Arizona desert: you’re not meant to. Though the plot will of course clear up as players progress, the onset leaves one feeling as if they’re reading a library book from which the first chapter has been ripped out by some juvenile miscreant.

Alan went missing for a couple years after the events back in Bright Falls, and he know finds himself in a version of the Twilight Zone-inspired program he once wrote for: Night Springs. Only this iteration of it has been twisted into a disgusting apparition of a Night Springs episode. Mr. Scratch, who plays the role of a sort of “Nega-Alan,” is pulling the strings here, thinking Wake nothing but a puppet in his little game.

Al, being the crafty little scribe he is, has built in a backdoor to get out of this nightmare, though. Trouble is, he’s not really sure how the narrative goes — and neither is the player. Cue a frantic “fight with light” struggle against Scratch that can’t live up to the excellence of its predecessor, but still offers a fun excursion on a scale that is rarely seen on XBLA.

Scratch that itch with the third Alan Wake’s American Nightmare developer diary

By Nick Santangelo • February 15, 2012

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare will debut on XBLA next week, and Remedy’s offering gamers what is probably their last pre-release look at the title in the form of its …
Read More