A lot of things have happened in the world since 2006, haven't they? We've had the global economy fall on its arse, entire governments and leaders change, two of today's three major home consoles launched, the death of the King of Pop... yup, it's been a pretty wild few years. During the period of 48 months between E3 2006 and now we've also had Grand Theft Auto 3, BioShock, Assassin's Creed, both Modern Warfare game and countless others, meaning that the gaming landscape has somewhat shifted too.

The reason I mention E3 2006 is that it was there, amongst mentions of Riiidge Racer and giant enemy crabs, that Remedy's Alan Wake was first teased. Having signed off the rights to Max Payne over to Rockstar, this was to be the Finnish studio's next 'big thing', their new flagship title. Microsoft were so interested they snaffled up exclusive rights. Then... well, then the above happened, and all of a sudden we're here in 2010 writing a review for a game that we were all expecting a long time ago. Not quite Duke Nukem Forever territory, but still a somewhat agonising delay.

If you haven't found a spare ten minutes sometime over the past four years to find out what Alan Wake is all about, then let the proceeding few sentences do that job for you. Alan is a writer who, ever since his last big release, has struggled inwardly to find the inspiration to overcome his writer's block (I know the feeling). His wife decides that the best solution for this is a nice extended break in a small out-of-the-way town called Bright Falls, but things go rather wrong within mere hours of arriving and Alan is eventually left not only trying to desperately find his missing wife, but to put the pieces together and work out why he seems to have forgotten what he was doing in the week since she disappeared.

If you've ever played a Silent Hill or Resident Evil game then Alan Wake will instantly feel familiar, with it being a third-person shooter with occasional puzzle leanings. The unique element that Remedy have lodged into proceedings is that Alan's most powerful weapon isn't of the bullet-firing kind, but is instead his handy torch, packed full of not-so-subtle product placement batteries. With most of the game taking place in darkness, Alan has to fight off hordes of menacing shadow enemies by shining enough light onto them to destroy their dark shield and leave them vulnerable to traditional firepower.

This combat mechanic works nicely, even if it does take a little time for you to get used to the fact that your torchlight is basically your crosshair for your gun, with each being assigned the left and right triggers. A deft tap of the left bumper in addition to a flick of the left analogue will see Alan duck and dodge, and if done at a perfect moment during close combat this will result in a slow-mo cinematic moment that actually will help you make good your escape or allow you to get the upper hand.

The enemies themselves are somewhat of a mixed bunch of fellows, each being a shadowy presence of the kind of townsfolk you’d expect to find in the areas you are venturing through. You’ll never have to face off against anything particularly taxing, although the chainsaw-wielding beefcakes nearer the end do a bloody good job at striking sheer terror and panic in you as you lamely flash your torch at them only to find they still keep coming at you. On occasion you are also tasked with bringing down a couple of boss-like characters who are particularly resistant to your torch, but all-in-all the game finds its difficulty in the numbers of enemies it throws at you, not how powerful individual attackers are.

When you’re not flashing and gunning (sounds wrong, shall leave it in there in any case) then the game spends most of its time either having you solve simple puzzles or watching the plot slowly unfold. Most of the time the puzzles are the standard ‘go to point A, find item to allow you to progress through point B’ type and nothing comes close to being particularly taxing on the old grey matter, but then again the difficulty of the puzzles and how easily they are completed kind of slots in nicely to how the game keeps trickling the story through to you. Any kind of big progression-halting teaser would have adversely affected that for sure.

In fact, it’s the game’s narrative that is by far its strongest element, as you’d expect. I mean, yeah, it does borrow heavily from David Lynch and at times the voice acting and script leave a bit to be desired, but overall the plot that unfolds sinks its teeth into you at a very early stage and doesn’t let go. It’s not what you would call a majorly scary effort, but it remains particularly unsettling throughout the game’s dozen-or-so hours of length, successfully planting the idea in your head that somehow, something with Bright Falls is very, very wrong. As someone who has played through each Silent Hill game, it’s an atmosphere that is at very least a match for the best Team Silent etc have bought to us through the years, and that is no mean feat.

Obviously there has to be a ‘but...’ section of this review, so we’d best deal with that now. See, if there’s one major criticism to be slapped across Alan Wake, it’s that when it is all done and dusted you sit back and get the impression that for a good three-quarters of its length you spent your time running through the same bit of forest again and again. Granted, the forest area of Bright Falls is an integral part of the story, but you’ll be dealing with it throughout the main chunks of each of the game’s levels save one of them, and there’s only so much you can do to differentiate one clump of trees from another. The game works very well when it gives you other areas to plod around in, be it the town itself at night or a clinic gone slightly mad, so it’s a shame that the majority of the game doesn’t throw more of these kinds of settings at you.

It’s this repetition, allied to the fact that the game isn’t really what you’d describe as ‘cutting edge’ visually that really undermine Alan Wake more than anything else, and prevent it from being the outstanding classic it could have been a couple of years back when the competition hadn’t moved the ballpark so far forward. There’s plenty more it has going for it – the episodic nature which breaks the levels up into T.V. show style episodes with little ending music screens and ‘Previously on Alan Wake...’ segments leading in are great, and give you time to digest things at the end of a few hours of hectic action. There’s a couple of collectable items littered around to flesh out the story for you too, from manuscript pages that seem to be written by Wake and foretell what is about to happen in the game and radio and television shows that add extra layers to the atmosphere as well, although one quibble is that the one-hundred coffee thermos flasks scattered throughout the levels are nothing more than a achievement trail as they add nothing in terms of story, content or character strength and seem to be there to simply extend the game’s lifespan.

But hey, overall it has ended up being a heck of a lot better than the endless delays may have led you to think it was going to be. The flaws it does have are countered strongly by the enjoyable combat, intriguing story, fantastic atmosphere and great soundtrack, and it’s well worth the investment if you’re gaming tastes include the likes of Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Quite where Alan’s adventures head from here are supposedly all dependent on how well this first ‘series’ sells – with a little luck, it’ll do well enough so those of us who have been bitten by Remedy’s knack for good storytelling can find out for ourselves.