Back in 2012, Remedy put out Alan Wake, a pulpy third-person shooter about a troubled author literally battling the forces of darkness, as well as his own demons, with a flashlight and a gun. It didn’t light the world on fire, but over the years, it did become a bit of a cult classic, and now it’s widely regarded as this loving ode to a seemingly bygone era of strange games from massive teams. Nearly a dozen years later, Alan Wake finally received a critically acclaimed sequel, and it’s now the lynchpin to a connected universe of titles from its developer, sometimes called the Remedyverse. So if you want to jump in on one of the strangest and most exciting stories in games at the moment, why not start at the beginning?
Alan Wake Remastered came out a few years ago, after Remedy got a publishing deal that enabled the studio to re-release the game and make it look better, as well as completely remake others, which it’s currently doing with Max Payne. Alan Wake was the first one of its titles to get the fresh coat of paint, with the remaster releasing back in October of 2021. Crucially, this release finally brought the game to PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, since it was previously an Xbox exclusive that eventually made its way to PC as well.
Now, it is deeply discounted on PlayStation and I implore you all to pick it up, especially as the summer heat begins to give way to an autumn chill. Alan Wake Remastered, which typically goes for $30, is now just about $10 on PlayStation. That’s about how much a coffee might run you—which is deeply fucked up—so stay under your blanket and just get this much cooler game rather than support, like, Starbucks.
Alan Wake is a lot of things: it’s both spooky and deeply hilarious. It is what would happen if David Lynch turned Twin Peaks into a game instead. Alan is just a guy, and a kind of crappy one at that, who’s trying to rehabilitate his marriage and career in a sleepy town in the Pacific Northwest when suddenly everything goes sideways. His wife goes missing, the town gets plunged into darkness, and shadowy lumberjacks start throwing things at Alan’s head when he starts stumbling around in the dark.
More things that occur in Alan Wake: fights with various inanimate objects, the introduction of a road flare more powerful than any weapon the military complex could build, and a concert helmed by geriatric rock and roll legends. Folks, Alan Wake has got it all and then some, and it only gets stranger the more you dive into its connective tissue with other games from Remedy’s extensive portfolio, like the surprisingly sexy Control and the ambitious Quantum Break, which attempted to blend TV and games into one product to mixed results.
It’s a guaranteed good time, and if you scare easily, the atmosphere is more than enough to get you your fair share of thrills. Really though, this is just a great price for the entry into the Remedy universe, which you are going to want to be up on ahead of the sequel to Control, as well as the multiplayer title that Remedy’s developing in that world at the moment. At the very least, play this game and then maybe give Alan Wake 2 a shot, as it’s one of the most ambitiously weird games I’ve ever played.