Alan Wake is a best-selling psychological thriller author who has had a writer's block for 2 years. His wife arranges for them to take a vacation in the small mountain town of Bright Falls, WA, in hopes of giving him some time away from it all to refocus and overcome his writer's block. While getting settled at their cabin on a small lake island, his wife cries out for help. Alan witnesses her being sucked into the lake and dives in after her.
Alan wakes up a week later, having regained consciousness after crashing his car in the woods. He has no memory of the past week or how he got there. But he's being chased through the woods by shadowy figures trying to kill him. He learns he can eliminate the figures by shining a flashlight on them and uses it to escape them. While running through the woods, he finds scattered pages of a manuscript titled Departure that has his name on it. Has he been typing a manuscript this past week? And what happened to his wife? And why do the townsfolk insist that his cabin hasn't existed in years?
This psychological thriller plays out like a TV series, with 6 "episodes," each ending on a cliffhanger to draw you into the next. It reminds me of old supernatural thriller books my mother and I used to read when I was a kid, and they do an excellent job of making a fascinating story about a thriller author stuck in his own real-life thriller adventure. While playing through this game, all I could think of is that, if my mother played video games, she would absolutely love this game. It was beautiful, well-told, and addicting to play.
If you haven't played this game before, you can get a PC or Xbox 360 copy from Amazon for around $16. I highly recommend it!
