I originally played through the Alan Wake so many years ago, one bit at a time, chipping away at it slowly after work on what was a broken graphics card at the time.
I didn't want to replace the GPU because I was afraid that I could better spend the money on other things, so my game was beset by artefacts and more graphical anomalies.
I still enjoyed it vividly. It was a challenging psychological horror game that dug deeply into the mind of the titular character, Alan Wake, who is a successful writer off for a holiday with his lovely wife.
It all starts to go wrong from almost the moment they arrive at the town of Bright Falls. Wake has a Nightmare, and parts of it start to come true.
It isn't long before we venture into the paranormal, with ethereal figures who can only be stopped by light (and gun shots) start to attack.
Along the way, the game makes much reference to horror films and literature, and the references are very obvious. There's the "Here's Johnny" scene from the Shining, and lots of inspiration from Twin Peaks.
There's also product placement in game, which is pretty cringe, particularly the energizer batteries which you need for your torch, which do not last for very long at all.
I played the game this time on my Steam Deck, and it performed admirably. No crashes, fast loading, and decent controls. The game is clearly suited to a bigger screen however, with the impact and small details littered around the game world not being incredibly obvious on the Steam Deck's proportionally tiny screen.
With the sequel coming later this year, I felt like it was a good time for a revisit, and I'm pretty happy that I did - the game has aged pretty well, and tells a good story.
I do have to say, however, that Max Payne 1 & 2 was probably my favourite Remedy game, and I really hope that it runs on the Steam Deck.
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