Alan Wake has been in the making for years – five years to be exact. Long enough that I preordered the game for the Xbox 360 console launch and completely forgot (and subsequently got a call last week from GameStop telling me my preorder would be in). That extra development cycle at Remedy was completely worth it – Alan Wake is a phenomenal gaming experience in which every Xbox 360 owner should partake. With chilling horror moments, a compelling story, and solid gameplay mechanics, Alan Wake is a must buy.

Alan Wake tells the story of its titled character taking a vacation to Bright Falls with his wife to get away from his extended two year long writer’s block. It turns out Bright Falls is haunted, his wife disappears, Alan gets in a car accident and wakes up a week later trying to piece together what happened. Many of the town’s folk get possessed by the darkness and become the Taken, who cling to the dark forest and try to kill anything in their path, namely Alan Wake.

The game is broken down into six Episodes, each structured like a TV show. Remedy modeled the game heavily after shows like Twin Peaks and Stephen King novels, which comes through in many aspects of the game. Each Episode has a clear story structure and a climactic ending, making it more of an event than a typical game. This is one of a handful of titles where I have seen people want to sit down and watch, care about the characters, and be compelled to find out what happens in the next Episode.

Gameplay in Alan Wake is, at its core, a solid third person shooter, much like the previous Max Payne titles from Remedy. To defeat the Taken, you have to purge their darkness with your flashlight before being able to kill them with your various weapons. You’ll start with a simple pistol, but as you progress you’ll pick up rifles, shotguns, flare guns, and flash bang grenades to work your way through each episode. The flare guns and flash bangs serve a dual purpose in both purging the darkness and killing enemies at once, and with many around, you won’t have to use them sparingly. Your weapon cache disappears at the end of each episode, so don’t worry about saving them up for later in the game.

The story kept me going throughout Alan Wake, especially with the cliffhanger endings and big reveals at the end of each of the game’s episodes. The end of the game left me wanting more in a bad way. I’ll surely replay Alan Wake while waiting for the DLC episodes to extend the story. My only gripe, which is small, is wishing each Episode was a bit shorter with each section broken into an extra Episode or two. With the game strongly going to an episodic, TV like feel, keeping each Episode around an hour would suit that style a bit better. But I never got to a point where I said “I wish this episode would end” – I just wanted to keep going.

Alan Wake had fallen off my radar over the past few years when the game went into an almost vaporware state. Even at E3 last year when Remedy showed off a level at Microsoft’s press conference, my mind wasn’t blown. Once I got my hands on the game, my feelings changed immediately. Alan Wake will thrill you from start to finish. If you own an Xbox 360, you better play this game.

[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]