YMMV / Alan Wake

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The final boss of the main game only has a flock of crows to defend itself once you get within shooting range, and you get a chest with unlimited flare gun ammo.
  • The final boss of The Signal can be dispatched with a few flare gun shots and boosting the flashlight for about 15 seconds or so. There's a reason one of the achievements requires you to beat it in a minute and a half. The final boss of The Writer is legitimately difficult, though certainly not in That One Boss territory.
• Awesome Music:
  • The entire original orchestrated soundtrack is gorgeous. Special mention should go to Welcome To Bright Falls, The Clicker, A Writer's Dream and Hunters.
  • The licensed music used in the game's episode intermissions is fantastic. Considering the soundtrack includes such musical figures as David Bowie and Depeche Mode, this is to be expected.
  • "Children of the Elder God" by Fake Band "Old Gods of Asgard", the real life group Poets of the Fall
  • Especially "The Poet and The Muse".
  • The main game ends with Space Oddity in the credits, while the DLC final chapter ends with Depeche Mode's Darkest Star.
  • "War", which plays in the fifth episode's ending, and also can be played during what is likely one of the most difficult fights in the entire game.
  • Haunted by Poe. The fact that it's closely tied to another very meta piece of literature featuring sentient antagonistic darkness is probably not a coincidence.
  • "Balance Slays The Demon" from American Nightmare.
  • Roy Orbison's In Dreams which plays at the end of Episode 1. Doubles as a Shout-Out to Blue Velvet.
• Badass Decay: When the kidnapper, Mott, is introduced, he kills multiple Taken in quick succession, and is quick to display that he knows how to effectively defeat them. Later, he's effectively killed offscreen. But then again, he was confronted by the main host of the Darkness, so he was rather outclassed.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment
  • In American Nightmare, during your final trip to the observatory, you fight a horde of Taken while "Balance Slays the Demon" plays seemingly from nowhere. Does Rachel play it for you over the intercom? Is Alan hearing it in his head because he enjoyed the Children of The Elder God fight more than he let on? Or perhaps it's part of the soundtrack to the episode of Night Springs he is living?
  • Also in American Nightmare, interacting with the payphone outside of the motel during Act 3 will treat the player to "The Deer Story", as it's listed in the credits, where Matthew Porretta tells a story about a time when he went on an early morning run and saw a deer that had disemboweled itself trying to jump over a spiky fence. The story is obviously not dialogue written for the game, and Porretta is clearly just telling a story from his own personal life as himself and not as Alan, giving the overall impression that he was just chatting between takes, this haunting story happened to be recorded in the process, and the writers liked it and decided to insert it into the game, even though the overall vibe would be better suited for either of the two mainline Alan Wake games than this one. The story goes completely without comment in the game.
• Breather Level: There are several places in the game, albeit brief ones, where Alan moves about during daylight. These sections are safe, allowing the player to relax a little while some exposition goes on, and occasionally enjoy some Scenery Porn of the local environment.
  • The very last level of the main game has no danger whatsoever, just various things to shine the flashlight on which causes objects to appear.
• Complete Monster: First game & AWE (Control DLC): Dr. Emil Hartman is an infamous psychiatrist who works with artists, and at first appears to be a passive annoyance. It's soon revealed he is aware of the Dark Presence and wishes to control its reality warping powers; his clinic is a front to lure in artists and expose them to the Dark Presence as part of his experiments, driving them insane in the process. It also turns out that Hartman was Thomas Zane's assistant, and manipulated Zane into writing his deceased wife back to life, turning her into the Dark Presence's avatar and resulting in countless people being Taken or consumed over the decades. After luring Alan and Alice Wake to Bright Falls, and Alice goes missing, Hartman stages Alice's kidnapping to lure Alan to him. In his clinic, Hartman tries to convince Alan that Alice is dead and everything he experienced is a delusion. In AWE, Hartman arrogantly doubled down on his research after his arrest and brush with death, eventually transforming into a murderous monster himself.
• Cult Classic: According to Sam Lake himself. Its initial sales weren't the greatest (it had the bad luck of being released next to Red Dead Redemption), but they were steady, and its fanbase adores it for its story and dark atmosphere.
• Difficulty Spike: To call the change in difficulty from the base game to the Signal DLC "Unforgiving" would be an understatement; the first fifteen minutes have you fighting Brute Taken in close quarters, been chased by Taken that throw stuff, and then having every car in Bright Falls thrown at you at the same time.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The story has been highly praised for its creativity and twists, but the gameplay itself is more divisive for essentially being "walk from point A to point B" with occasional breaks for repetitive combat.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Barry, for his constant pop culture references from Zork to Mordor and for taking a couple of levels in badass from Episode 4 onwards. He's also liked because he gives Alan some Pet the Dog Moments. Once Alan starts snarking back and forth with Barry you realize, hey, Alan's not just a mopey jerkass. He's got a sense of humour!
  • Odin and Tor Anderson are considered favorites for a number of reasons: the hilarity of senile old men being a pair of hard rockers, the two of them being Crazy Sane while being some of the least obstructive characters in the plot, being the reason for the game's Signature Scene at their barn and the In-Universe counterparts to the Real Life band Poets of the Fall.
• Game-Breaker: The crossbow in American Nightmare is flat-out superior to every weapon in the game. The flare gun and flashbangs have been nerfed and have limited ammo, while the crossbow can be restocked at any ammo box. It ignores darkness shields, unlike anything that fires bullets. It can kill every normal Taken in one hit, and crowmen Taken in two. For the King Hillbilly Taken and Splitters, the flare gun and the magnum, respectively, will easily deal with them, and the crossbow will still nullify the former's darkness shield in one hit.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Dark Crows, which are about as close to the trope namer as possible without actually being mammals. Also those damned Bear Traps in certain parts of the woods.
  • The Super-Speed Taken and the lesser Fragile Speedster Taken. Neither are terribly threatening as long as you're attentive, but their speed means you can lose track of them in the Multi-Mook Melee, and that tends to be a deadly mistake.
  • In "The Signal" it becomes Goddamned Books.
  • In American Nightmare, the Goddamned Bats are literal Demonic Spiders.
  • Grenadiers constantly heft grenades at you to slowly wear you down and keep as much distance between you and them as they can. It's not too bad during the story mode, but they will screw up your scoring streak during the arcade mode.
• Good Bad Bugs: Popping a flare will briefly stun any smaller enemy caught in its radius. If you use them to stun a ranged enemy after they've thrown their projectile but before it hits you the weapon flying through the air will immediately disappear.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • For a combination of hilarity and harshness bestowed by hindsight, the recent revelation that Verizon routinely turns over all of its records to the National Security Agency makes it an ironically fitting sponsor for a game in which paranoia and everyone knowing everyone else's business are major themes.
  • The ending of American Nightmare becomes this after finding a certain Easter Egg in Control: Alan never made it out of The Dark Place. The ending was just an illusion to mess with his head.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The episodes ending with a musical track just makes the game's Twin Peaks nods even stronger, seeing as how that's how every episode of The Return ends.
  • Adding to that, the fact that Twin Peaks came back with a third season in 2017 which is called The Return, just as Alan's planned sequel to Departure, which Alan began writing in 2012, around the same time Lynch and Frost began writing the new season.
    • Adding another Twin Peaks parallel, while Alan has been stuck in the Dark Place, his Evil Doppelgänger, Mr. Scratch, has been running around in the real world, impersonating him while committing crimes. In Twin Peaks: The Return a major plot point is the fact that Agent Cooper have been stuck in the Black Lodge, while his own Evil Doppelgänger, "Mr. C", has been running around in the real world impersonating him while building a criminal empire.
  • At the beginning of 'The Clicker', Sheriff Breaker gives Barry a list of people to call and deliver a code phrase to, including her father Frank and Pat Maine, prompting Barry to excitedly ask if they're all part of some secret society. Turns out Barry was closer to the mark than even Sarah realized, as incident reports in Control reveal that Frank Breaker is a retired FBC agent, and ended up alerting the Bureau to the situation.
  • The album art for the Old Gods of Asgard album "Memory Thought Balance Ruin" is an inverted black triangle on a black background. Perhaps foreshadowing towards The Board from Control?
  • Penny Arcade released a strip based on the game lampooning the product placement. When the Signal DLC was released, a character ended up actually saying "Can you hear me now?" verbatim.
• Inferred Holocaust: Hundreds of townsfolk from the surrounding landscape are Taken and gunned down over the course of the story. However, in "The Signal" Alan states that he wrote a "happy ending" for the town, and we know that the dead can be resurrected if you know what you're doing when writing a story; the ending implies that Alan brought everyone who was Taken in Bright Falls back to life.
• Jerkass Woobie: Alan Wake himself. Considering the situation he was in.
  • Agent Nightingale Can be seen as this if you've read his backstory in The Alan Wake Files bundled with the limited edition of the game.
    • And carried on with the Novel which goes into even more detail; He and his partner were two By The Book Cops, until the latter's death at the hands of the Dark Presence
• Memetic Mutation: He's Alan Wake. He's written books, y'know.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Maine's late night radio broadcasts really help take the edge off of fighting shadow monsters alone in the woods.
• Narm: In the Signal DLC, the Product Placement for Verizon goes from "obvious" to "blatant"; a phone Alan summons out of text lands with its screen face-down on the camera, showing Verizon's old Navigator GPS service. And then Zane calls you on it, parroting Verizon's old "Can you hear me now?" slogan, made famous by Paul Marcarelli's "Test Man" commercials.
• Narm Charm: As strong an element of Lake's writing as ever. His occasionally stilted and unnatural dialogue (possibly deliberate, in this case), often propped up with gratuitous film references right in the fore-text, is still very sincere in its desire to entertain and has won him many new fans.
  • Barry wrapped in Christmas lights. He looks utterly ridiculous (something Alan himself lampshades), but because it's also an effective defense against the Dark Presence, it comes across as rather badass.
  • The live action scenes in American Nightmare, especially Mr. Scratch's messages to Alan. It's got the usual dorkiness of low-budget video game live action, but he's just so over the top it's hard not enjoy it.
• Nausea Fuel: In one of Mr. Scratch's recordings in American Nightmare, he slashes the throat of one of Alan's female fans while gently massaging her head. The gurgling noise she makes as she dies is very disturbing.
• Nightmare Retardant: Having a deranged hybrid of the Heartless and the Ganados flail at you wildly with a rusty sickle is unnerving right up until he kindly informs you, "Omega-3 fatty acids are GOOD for your health!".
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Pulled straight from the pages of In the Mouth of Madness, anyone within Bright Falls might exist only as a character in Alan Wake's manuscript and can be killed off for the sake of its plot. Or worse, be touched by the Dark Presence and forced to do its bidding.
  • See that harmless tire right there? The Dark Presence might take it over and have it attack you. Oh, look, is that a bulldozer?...
  • At one point during Episode 2, if you go into a certain cabin, a Taken walks by one of the windows, before disappearing. Nothing happens, but it's still Paranoia Fuel to the max.
  • After finishing Episode 1, fighting off the Taken in the middle of the night, you're probably still tense and maybe a bit afraid of the dark. Episode 2 starts in a flashback at Alan's apartment. Alan's looking at cover mock-ups done by Alice - when the lights suddenly go out.
  • Near the entrance of a logging camp, there's a large machine with a claw for carrying logs. Stepping near it causes the claw to open and close menacingly while an Elite Taken starts yelling in his constantly shifting voice. While the machine doesn't do anything else, the Elite Taken is nowhere to be seen.
  • After Alan ends up in the Sheriff's Station, he walks out into the lobby, and the lights flicker. It's just Cynthia Weaver, local Talkative Loon, checking the bulbs.
• Porting Disaster:
  • The Switch port is plagued with performance issues and a bad framerate especially in handheld mode that can make the game unbearable to play.
  • The remastered version looks great on Xbox Series X ... and frequently has no sound in cutscenes.
• The Scrappy: Agent Nightingale is seen by quite a few for being an especially obnoxious and Trigger-Happy Inspector Javert, though Remedy may have special plans for him in a possible sequel.
• Signature Scene: The Children of the Elder God sequence is considered one of the most memorable parts of the game.
• Special Effects Failure: There are a few points where you can see the taken spawn from the aether before they attack you. Might've been done intentionally though, to add to their otherworldliness.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • Remedy could not have made a better adaptation of In the Mouth of Madness if they'd tried.
  • In a lot of really good ways, it's basically Resident Evil 4 without many of the Survival Horror Affectionate Parody aspects.
  • It has so many homages to The Twilight Zone that it's been described as a playable episode of the series.
• Spiritual Successor: To Max Payne, loosely. While MP was inspired by Film Noir books and novels, AW is inspired by supernatural thrillers (of screens large and small) and horror writers like Stephen King.
• That One Level: The battle after you find the radio that plays "War". It's a very cramped warehouse full of the large Taken that take forever to light up and have a tendency to bum rush you. It's also full of smaller, faster guys who can sneak up behind you very easily. Oh, and did I mention that you have recently lost all of your stuff and only get three flares to go along with your revolver? If you're lucky, you'll find a shotgun just before the radio, but it doesn't help that much.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Multiple reviewers have made note of the somewhat "off" character models in the game, particularly Alice Wake. The poor lip-syncing, particularly in the first few cutscenes, doesn't help matters either. The 2021 remaster would attempt to address this by working to re-animate the character faces and improve the lip-syncing.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The remaster takes the already gorgeous visuals from the Xbox 360 original and improves them even further. Besides now running at 60 frames per second, allowing for smoother gameplay, the visuals are now at an eye-popping 4K resolution, alongside reworked cutscenes, more lifelike animation, and remade character models.

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