I'm playing it currently and loving it! First night I was very impressed and now I'm totally hooked. Excellent varied levels... magnificent countryside. I can see where the 5yrs of loving Remedy detail went.

Maybe this game is so awesome to me because I grew up with forest related experiences. My interests from early teens through to adulthood were Orienteering and Rogaining. Night orienteering... awesome... just you, a map, a compass and torch. If you've ever been in a forest, by yourself, miles from anywhere at night and then had your torch batteries die or a bulb blow on you like I have... well anyways this game hits all the right notes for me. Me also loving Alaska and Twin Peaks - this being very much like both helps.

Yesterday I thought Alan Wake was a top 10 game but after playing another 2 levels I'd say easily in my top 3. I am close to declaring it my favourite single player story of all time. The last time I was this impressed with a single player story... would have been Half Life 2. Two very different games but both did a great job of creating the feeling of isolation. To me creating the sense of loneliness is actually pretty difficult and only the best story tellers do it well. Valve are one of the masters. When you can instill fear into a person based purely on a "sense" of isolation rather than overt visuals you have a gift.

There is no gore in this game. Only dark nights, the sounds of the forest and your feet trudging over scrub... or creaky wooden stairs or floorboards. The cinematic qualities of the game make it more immersive. When playing Alan Wake I'm not sprinting from light to light and trying to make every level go as fast as possible. I'm wandering off the trails out into the forest. Finding many deserted shacks - all creepy in their own unique way. I have stopped countless times to listen to long radio broadcasts and watched every episode of Night Springs (like mini Twilight Zone episodes) showing on TV's you find. It all adds to the atmosphere.

Seeing as you're playing a game about isolation... so you should try making yourself isolated as you play it. This was my advice to people playing Left 4 Dead single player too. Of course in L4D your AI team mates would very occasionally speak but overall Valve did another great job there of creating a creepy atmosphere.Playing Alan Wake with surround sound turned up in a darkened room by yourself is the only way to really get the full experience. If your circumstances don't allow loud surround speakers use headphones like I am as the sound design in this game is top notch. Sound is so important in this style of story. Just the soundtrack is frightening as it is let alone any visual component. So yeah... if you're playing this game in a brightly lit room with the sound down while someone is chatting to you at the same time... you're doing it wrong.

Remedy can be assured I'll be getting the 2 x DLC missions for this game!

nice review

I've played 20-30 mins and am loving it

have to admit I was pretty chuffed when nick caves "Up Jumped the Devil" was playing on the radio while the girlf was playing it.

Keeps getting better... and I love the way it's presented in episodes with a recap of what happened in the last episode just like on a TV show. Nice touch there.

I'm loving the claustrophobia of it.

It's another game where it's nice to watch the cut scenes.

Finished the story on Normal play through last night and it was engrossing right to the very end. Looking forward to replaying on Nightmare difficulty.

hmmm so it is worth buying

Yeah, it's so flippin' atmospheric

I've just done the 1st episode and the cliff hanger had me going WTF!! But in a good way.

How long is the campaign??

As the review says watching it in the daylight is so wrong you need to play it at night with the lights off. It was 5:30pm and was dusk (in real life) and was thinking geez this is getting creepy.

I came on here to express my love for the game and found this thread.

Rented it out and didn't take it back for two nights because it HAD to be finished, If I had any problems with the game I'd mention the facial expressions being a little bad.

But Remedy are completely forgiven because they have given me one of my favourite games in the last couple years.

Turn the lights off, Lock the doors, crank the sound, and if you consider yourself a decent gamer do yourself a favour and play it on hard the first time through, it's pretty much the 'normal' difficulty.

Playing it on Nightmare at the moment and its definitely more of a challenge.

Your evasion skills need to be alot better as quite often there are 7 enemies (including a few lumberjacks - the big guys) and you only have limited equipment (maybe some flares and revolver ammo). So I had to sprint between them all the time evading and then trying to find a suitable area to funnel them into so I could use the torch on them as a pack.

A Lumberjack on Nightmare takes 9 revolver bullets to take down. In areas with environmental weapons try to use that to spare your ammo. A swinging electrical cable once took out all the approaching enemies. All I needed to do was position myself behind it and draw the taken towards me whilst using my torch to weaken them.

Cliffs are also handy. If you can draw the taken to a cliff edge and then give them a blast of your torch you can force them off which eliminates them. Great for Lumberjacks.