I literally laughed out loud at the intro when they mentioned Stephen King then immediately hit a guy with a car on a nighttime rural road.

I still don't know how much of this game is supposed to be intentional. Is Alan supposed to be a gigantic dick? Are his writing samples supposed to seem like middle school creative writing class material?

The uncertainty only makes the entire thing more hilarious. This game hits the same note as Max Payne where the atmosphere and all the creative story elements make you happy to slog through monotonous shooting.

The part where I officially gave up was when Alan and his agent are holed up in a cabin, fearing for their lives because they're being hunted by omnipresent shadow monsters, and they find a huge jug of moonshine in the closet and go "fuck it" and swig it all down.

The whole aspect of Alan as dickish Don Quixote and Brad as enabling Sancho is the best part!

or maybe second best after bizarro agent Dale Cooper comes to town, a fatty who hates small town, fir trees, and coffee.

I think that this game gets camp right. The hard boiled silliness is intentional, I think, because it is so over stated. I never understood the criticisms of the game mechanics.

I thought they were fine. I liked how you needed to use your flashlight to make the enemies vulnerable before shooting them. It felt like ghostbusters.

Its a shame you quit so early, Dessert, you missed the shooting gallery at the derelict rock stage while pyrotechnics go off and iron maiden-y metal plays.

Alan Wake for me, was a playable Stephen King novel or a twilght zone episode through and through. Sure those things are imperfect but that's what makes them fun.

Fuck! Sorry, the best part is Brad lugging around and protecting Alan's cutout for half the game and using it for a ventriloquist act, then stumbling into a hardware store and stringing himself with christmas lights and donning a miner's flashlight helmet.

There are a fair number of games with good story, or atmosphere, or mood/setting, and so forth. There aren't many games that are actually well written. Sam Lake knows how to write a game.