"Stephen King once wrote that 'nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.' In a horror story, the victim keeps asking, 'why?' But there can be no explanation, and there shouldn’t be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it’s what we’ll remember in the end."

Alan Wake, developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Microsoft Xbox 360 on May 18th, 2010, may have encouraged me to become a writer, or at least, saying that doesn’t feel untrue. I was 19 years old at the time of Alan Wake’s release and King was one of my favourite writers, having read the entirety of the Dark Tower series, Dreamcatcher, and From a Buick 8 - taken collectively, his magnum opus and at least one book he’s since publicly stated he doesn’t like. It probably averages out!

I initially became interested in Alan Wake because a friend of mine recommended I check it out. We had met in our high school’s film and video class senior year two years prior, where our final project was a documentary-style piece with a running gag of tapping interview subjects on the head with a boom microphone. We didn’t really have a lot in common; he was a cool dude who smoked, where I decidedly was not. During my freshman year, my university won a contest to have Death Cab for Cutie, one of my favourite bands, perform. It was a private show, but I had volunteered at the campus radio station for a few years by that point and was able to get a pair of tickets. I invited him. I don’t think he enjoyed it, but he also never claimed otherwise. He probably just wanted to hang out. In retrospect, and mostly on the other side of a global pandemic, that’s a quality that I may not have appreciated enough.

Looking up some footage of Alan Wake online was really all of the convincing I needed. When the game released, I headed for the nearest EB Games and purchased a copy of the Collector’s Edition. The Collector’s Edition emulates a book; under the thin cardboard slipcover, the cover and spine both feature the game’s logo, while the titular character’s silhouette from that logo is on the back. The cardboard comprising the other three sides of the box is painted to resemble a stack of pages. The spine is connected to the front cover, so when you “open” the book (with, of course, a cover page once again featuring the game’s logo, as well as Mr. Wake’s autograph), you can open it further and reveal the enclosure with its contents. These contents are:

• A black game case, as opposed to the green ones that Microsoft continues to use, containing an Alan Wake game disc for the Microsoft Xbox 360. Said game case also includes a download code for what was then the game’s first downloadable content expansion (both of which have been included in every subsequent release), and that most nostalgic of relics, a 22-page manual.
• The Alan Wake Files, a 144-page hardcover book to expand and detail the game’s world. Notable inclusions include interviews with game characters, some of the protagonist’s fiction, and a collection of news articles detailing significant events.
• A second, non-game case, containing a soundtrack CD on its inner left and a bonus disc containing a number of video features on its inner right, an image of the titular character visible through the clear plastic disc trays.

It’s a pretty neat package! If you removed the outermost slipcover, you almost might be able to disguise it as a legitimate book on your shelf. At a time when the majority of special and collector’s editions are gaudy space-fillers, I appreciate Alan Wake’s restraint, and I say that as someone who has owned the almost five-and-a-half pound PVC statue of Marcus Fenix from the Epic Edition of Gears of War 3 for over a decade. That is a weapons-grade collectible. If someone ever tries to rob my house and I hit them in the head with that statue, it will, at minimum, mildly inconvenience them.

In the video game Alan Wake, the character Alan Wake is a famous and best-selling crime fiction novelist who has been unable to write anything for two years. He’s sarcastic, quick-witted, self-absorbed, and possibly a bit over-fixated on his wife, Alice. In the game’s opening cutscene, taking place in a nightmare, Alan commits vehicular manslaughter and immediately worries he will never see Alice again. In reality, the two have travelled to Bright Falls, Washington, for what is ostensibly a vacation, albeit one that quickly goes south when supernatural forces intervene and take Alice hostage.

Despite its literary trappings, Alan Wake is presented through the lens of another medium: television. The game is split into six distinct “episodes” (its downloadable content comprising two “specials”), all of which end with a title card and all but the first beginning with a recap of the story to that point. The game features a lot of televisions, but luckily, there’s only one that plays any advertisements. Instead, televisions are mainly used expositorily, providing Alan with visions of his past self. However, there are also six televisions, five of which are interactable, dispersed throughout the game, one per chapter, that play episodes of Night Springs, a Twilight Zone-style anthology series. The first such episode you encounter features a scientist calling a press conference to demonstrate the many-worlds interpretation using a loaded pistol. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think people should speak at press conferences with guns in their hands.

This laissez-faire approach to firearms is something that often appears throughout the town of Bright Falls. There is a slightly higher number of multiple types of firearms lying around than there are sweeping, cinematic shots of the Pacific Northwest landscape in the game’s cutscenes. As you play, you will have access to a standard six-shot revolver, both double-barrel and pump-action shotguns, and a hunting rifle. You can only carry one type of secondary weapon at once, even though you can pick up ammunition for any type of weapon at any time. Ammo is similarly so plentiful as to appear in places you wouldn’t expect, such as at the bottom of closets in unoccupied cabins.

Sometimes, the placements of these weapons seem justified; early in the game, a revolver can be found at a logging camp, where it could conceivably be used to scare off wildlife. At other points, it’s not unusual to find a shotgun or a rifle lying unattended in the middle of nowhere. It may simply be that Bright Falls has a gun control problem, though the weapons left behind may also have been owned by enemies that you encounter.

There are three types of enemies in Alan Wake: the Taken, poltergeists, and birds. The Taken is an objectively great name for a group of enemies; these are people that have been fully possessed by the game’s supernatural evil, the Dark Presence. Their dialogue may be a reflection of the people they were when they were themselves, or it might just be gibberish. Either way, it’s pretty good!

There are several varieties of Taken: normal Taken have melee weapons that they will either strike you with or throw at you; fast Taken will speed around the area and quickly approach to attack; large Taken will charge at you with a shoulder tackle; some large Taken wield chainsaws. Notably, while being struck with a chainsaw will knock you down to a low-health state, it will not outright kill you, suggesting that either Alan Wake is easier than Resident Evil 4, or that Alan, described in his own game as a “geek” who “wears a tweed jacket” is more physically resilient than special agent Leon S. Kennedy.

Poltergeists are possessed objects that, in most cases, lift themselves into the air and hurl themselves at you. These can run the gamut in size from car tires to train cars, though possessed construction equipment or vehicles also serve as mini-bosses.

Lastly, swarms of birds will swoop down on you, typically appearing in two or three groups. They often appear in locations where there is no easy escape, or to distract you from something else you are trying to do. While their evasiveness is not dissimilar to the fast Taken, they are far easier to deal with.

In Alan Wake, having a gun, no matter how lethal it is, is not sufficient. In order to damage or defeat enemies, you’ll need to use a flashlight, heavy-duty flashlight, or lantern to burn away the darkness that envelops them. In many cases, simply pointing the flashlight at enemies will reduce the amount of darkness covering them, indicated by a shrinking circle of light appearing over them. Focusing the flashlight on them will reduce this shield more quickly, though at the expense of battery power. There are some enemies that you need to focus the flashlight on, their light-circle having an orange hue. If you focus the flashlight and then proceed to wait, the battery’s charge will restore itself. In my 32 years of experience, no batteries actually do this, but according to Alan Wake, Energizer batteries apparently last forever if you give them time to recharge.

Towards the end of the game, and frequently in the downloadable content expansions, you can shine the flashlight on giant glowing words in the environment to make objects appear. This is still incredibly cool!

The flashlight is not the only tool you have at your disposal to dispel the darkness. Flares are plentiful, and you can also gain access to a flare gun and flashbang grenades. I really appreciate that items are concrete and individual; if there are three flares on the ground, picking all of them up is three actions, not just one combined action. Flares burn darkness away in an area-of-effect, while the flare gun and flashbangs can outright kill enemies within their ranges. When you fire the flare gun, there’s a neat cinematic moment that happens where enemies are blown back by it, sometimes being popped up into the air in slow motion. This is never not hilarious.

There are also generators and flood lights strewn about the environment that can be interacted with to create light sources. Activating generators is a simple action button event relying on timed presses; mistime a press, and you’ll need to start from the beginning. Generators are often tied to safe havens, which are some of Alan Wake’s checkpoints. When you stand in the light of a safe haven, your health will restore and any enemies in the field will de-spawn.

Obviously, weapons and items appear in helpful locations and in generous numbers because Alan Wake is a meticulously-designed video game. By the time larger groups of enemies are spawned at once, you’ll have both arsenal and environmental ways to deal with them. However, there are some instances where combat is not the safest or most efficient way to deal with groups of enemies. If you can see a safe haven in the distance and Alan has low health or ammo, it’s likely better to try to reach it instead of standing your ground.

Now that we have discussed the separate elements that appear on Alan Wake’s heads-up display, let’s break down the HUD itself. In the top left, Alan’s health bar appears as a semi-circle framing a compass, which itself contains a yellow circular icon pointing towards your objective. To the right of the compass is the battery icon for the flashlight, which changes depending on which flashlight you currently have. Below this is the number of batteries you have, a lightning bolt symbol appearing to the right of this number. Your objective appears below this, the same yellow circle as in the compass appearing on the left of the objective text. Of the many objectives in the game, “find out what happened to you” goes the hardest.

Your current weapon appears in the top right, with your remaining ammo displayed either to the left of or below the weapon icon. Next to the ammo counter is an indicator of how many bullets you have remaining before you need to reload; it is satisfying to watch every individual bullet reload in the HUD. Below this is an icon for whichever consumable item you currently have selected - flares or flashbangs - with the number you have available similarly to the left of this icon.

This is all to say that Remedy Entertainment are not capable of making a bad HUD. Starting with Max Payne in 2001, the HUDs of each of their games has had a minimalist quality that keeps your attention on the action while quickly and succinctly conveying all of the information you need. Maybe this is the result of some demonic bargain negotiated by creative director and Alan Wake writer Sam Lake, whereby he is eternally cursed to recreate the facial expression he used for Max Payne. Generally speaking, big-budget game interfaces have, over the course of the past decade or so, gravitated towards cramming as many things on screen as possible, seemingly forgetting that simplicity speaks for itself.

That clarity permeates Alan Wake. Quite often near the beginning of a playable section, your destination is a showcased to you, the distant lights of a gas station or a looming mountain peak. There’s no intrusive waypoint marker; no persistent indicator telling you how far away you are. There is simply you and the journey into the unknown.

This philosophy for guiding the player also extends to smaller areas, where the light of a safe haven or destination serves as a guiding beacon in the night. This how you direct a player: give them the information on where to go without holding their hand. Players will be able to figure it out; people are generally pretty smart!

As someone who has lived in a small, rural town for the better part of a decade, Bright Falls and its inhabitants radiate the same vibe. Bright Falls has its traditions, like Deerfest; it has its beauty, with a national park on the outskirts; it has its history, as a former mining town. It has a sense of place beyond a generic video game backdrop, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that people would live here.

And people do live here. Small towns have few common gathering spots; I have sometimes waited in the drive-through of the local Tim Hortons, the only chain coffee shop for over 60 kilometres in one direction and almost 40 in another, for over half an hour, even though sometimes I’d really prefer Starbucks. Alan Wake takes advantage of this type of location in performing the unenviable feat of making sure you see, hear, or hear of the majority of its characters in the first 30 minutes, many of them initially appearing in Bright Falls’ local diner, the Oh Deer Diner. It’s a bit of a cliché that in such a place, everyone knows everyone else, though it may be fair to say that there are some people that the majority of residents would at least be familiar with. In many of the game’s radio broadcasts, the host and the callers banter. There’s a call in hopes that someone has seen a lost pet. Someone has wrong opinions about a group of people based on where they live. For better and for worse, the residents of Bright Falls inhabit it as much as it inhabits them.

Even thought Bright Falls is a small town, that doesn’t mean you’re limited to walking between one destination and the next. If I wanted to walk from one end of my town to the other end, it would only take an hour and a half, and it would be great exercise, but why would I? Alan Wake provides the player with vehicles in certain sections; only the first one requires a key. I suppose after killing so many people, stealing a few cars is the least of Alan’s worries.

The idea of getting in an SUV and driving to your destination in comfort, paying no mind to any of the Taken you may choose to run over, is the antithesis of most of the rest of the game, this desperate scramble through the dark. What makes the inclusion even stranger is how robust it is, featuring multiple types of vehicles with unique handling, acceleration, and durability. While driving does offer some gameplay variety, it mostly just feels like a consequence of areas being too large, or the developers wanting players to traverse certain sections more quickly.

Alan Wake features no fewer than two car crashes (and, for that matter, two helicopter crashes), and it often uses such changes in location to reset your inventory. Limiting your ability to fight back not only regulates the game’s difficulty, it also dramatically increases its tension. That tension plays a huge role, as if you are racing against the very darkness itself. Alan has decent cardio, but he will slow down, out of breath, if you run for too long. His dodge will put you just out of reach of the axe being swung at you. Tapping the reload button adds rounds to your weapon faster than pressing it, which gives the act of reloading a frantic energy.

Normally, this tension would be relieved by some sort of scare. Alan Wake’s scares usually involve spawning enemies where you might not expect them to be, such as in a bathroom stall that was locked when you initially went past it, leading to a feeling of being constantly assaulted from every direction. The game’s tension only breaks when you’re in the light, whether that’s a daytime section or a safe haven.

Even if it deviates from the structure of a traditional horror movie, there are plenty of cinematic flourishes on display. Early on, the game uses a jump cut to take you from one intense scene to another, juxtaposing those situations. A later section has you open a door to enter a building, and a cutscene begins with that door opening. At certain points, the camera will pull back, alerting you to the presence of a group of spawning enemies who are already after you. During some dodges, the camera will focus in on the blow you just evaded in slow motion. Whenever you reach a checkpoint, a dramatic musical sting will play. These may be small details, but they make the game a more dynamic experience.

Just as with any big-budget film, no video game is complete without its set pieces, and one of the most memorable is the concert sequence at the Anderson Farm. Musical sequences during games will never not be awesome; what would a game that was just musical sequences be like? This particular sequence has always reminded me of the Dark Carnival finale in Left 4 Dead 2, and while bombastic spectacle may not be Alan Wake’s brand, the sheer joy of this encounter demonstrates that video games are often at their best when they allow the player to do cool stuff.

One of the coolest things in Alan Wake are the collectible manuscript pages. Not only are they important to the plot of the game, they fill in story details, develop characters, and warn you of upcoming enemies and events. One of the more clever details is that the manuscript pages aren’t always collected in a linear order, so even two picked up back-to-back could contain unrelated information. So often, games are packed with collectibles that don’t really mean anything, existing only to pad things out, and to be fair, that happens here. In addition to the manuscript pages, there are also coffee thermoses to pick up, radio broadcasts to listen to, signs to read, television broadcasts to watch, can pyramids to knock over, and supply chests to find. Many of these types of collectibles add to the game’s world, so I feel like I can’t be too critical of them, though there’s not much reason for any game to have seven different categories of them.

When I play video games, I often have a tendency to want to structure them so that I can conceivably do everything they contain within one playthrough, so I can imagine a world where I may have wanted to tackle the game with a list of checkboxes. The plot of Alan Wake resists exactly this sort of structure and categorization. Alan is manipulated by the Dark Presence into writing a story that will free it, as Cauldron Lake, outside of Bright Falls, possesses mystical properties that make the works of artists and creators come true; it is referred to as a “place of power”, the idea of which was greatly expanded on in Remedy Entertainment’s Control in 2019. For a third of the game, Alan is gaslit into thinking Alice has been kidnapped by another character who wants to take advantage of the lake’s power. Later, Alan is given a manuscript page featuring one of his memories that someone else wrote, as part of the story that Alan himself had written. In a medium that often features very serious, self-important stories, Alan Wake’s willingness to keep increasing the absurdity of its central conflict, to where you are standing on the rim of Cauldron Lake, tasked with destroying a tornado make of darkness, is not only immensely entertaining, but a tribute to the horror genre.

"There’s light and there’s darkness, cause and effect. There’s guilt and there’s atonement. But the scales always need to balance, everything has a price."

More than a battle between light and darkness, Alan Wake is about loss and how we deal with it. To save Alice, Alan sacrifices himself to the darkness, but his disappearance is hardly the only one with no closure. About halfway through the game, there’s a radio broadcast where the host laments the loss of a former love, and another where one of Bright Falls’ deputies remarks on how many people have gone missing. The unanswered mystery may be what we’ll remember in the end, but we might not want to recall those memories.

The friend who told me about Alan Wake and I gradually drifted apart. In 2014, he moved into the same apartment building as me, but we didn’t really hang out any more than we had before. In the summer of 2015, when I was about to move out and my internet service had been cancelled, he was cool enough to let me use his. The last time I saw him was when I went downstairs to his place to do one of the timed challenge towers in Mortal Kombat X. A few years later, we connected on a social network, only for him to leave that network last year. I’m grateful that he was in my life, but life is always changing. There are no guarantees; either we allow our memories and experiences to make us bitter, or we keep pressing on through the night in search of the light.

Alan Wake being one of my favourite video games would already be enough to warrant its inclusion here. However, its uniqueness and creativity, combined with the detail and care with which it was created, only further strengthen the argument for its placement on

KEVIN AND MATTHEW’S LIST OF THE TOP TEN MOST VIDEO GAMES OF ALL TIME.