Alan Wake

Alan Wake was developed by the same people who made one of my favorite games, Max Payne. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent to the awesomely addictive bullet-time shooting mechanics of Max Payne. Instead, the main gameplay hook is that you shine a light on the bad guys to wear them down before you can hurt them with your gun. It’s not a horrible system but it gets old really fast. Unlike Resident Evil, which mixes up gameplay on just about every level, in Alan Wake the thing you do in the tutorial to kill that first enemy if the same thing you do to defeat the foes in the last level.

What Alan Wake does have going for it is a lovely Twin Peaks vibe (all the way down to a clone of the Log Lady) and well thought out story. There are a bunch of collection achievements, but that sort of thing doesn’t really interest me as much as plowing through the main storyline.