Alan Wake's American Nightmare (Xbox 360)

American Nightmare is sort of a sequel to Alan Wake. It's an arcade game, so in essence, it's pretty short.

Alan is trapped in The Dark Place and is I'm a cycle that's in a constant repeat and the only way for Alan to get free is to break that cycle. Up against Mr Scratch, an evil doppelganger of Alan, he berates Alan and constantly reminds him he's trapped and will lose everyone he's after loved.

The story has Alan at a motel, then an observatory and finally a drive in theatre. You actuality do all three parts of the story three times.... The game literally repeats itself three times. Does that sound fun? Because it's not. It's fine the first time, but it gets old real quick. Thankfully, the same sections get a bit quicker after the first set.

The whole game is presented as an episode of Night Springs, Alan Wake's knock off version of The Twilight Zone. The graphics look ok, but when you see the side characters they're noticeably bad. The voice acting on those side characters are also really flat and hard to listen to. The same actor returns to voice Alan, as well as the manuscripts make a return, they are again great to listen to. There are also real life scenes, Mr Scratch as appears as a real life actor on TV screens of him recording videos for Alan, they're actually really cringey to watch at times. There's also optional conversations, but the poor voice acting makes them a chore to do.

There are a ton of new weapons, smgs, assault rifles, new shotguns, snipers, lots! It no longer feels like a survivor horror and feels a lot more action orientated. Ammo is never scarce. There are a few new enemy types, some are really cool too, there's spiders, big guys with chainsaws, splitters that 'split' into more enemies if you shine your torch at them and my favourite, the bird men, they fly as birds then land as people and revert back to birds if you don't kill them fast enough. You now have to boost your light at enemies to get it to work, you can't just point it at them to do minimal damage, that was a pain to get user to.

Now onto what was easily the best part, the arcade mode. It was survival were you had to hold of against waves of enemies for ten minutes at a time. It's way more fun than the repetition you face in the story. My only wish was that they made it two player, it woulda been a lot more fun that way.

Based on the ending, I'd say it's worth playing as it does contribute more to the story, and seeing as there's still no sequel confirmed, you shouldn't look away. Why it bad to literally repeats itself I don't know, it hurt itself that way.

6.6/10