Would be the best video game adapted from a Stephen King novel, if it were actually adapted from a Stephen King novel, which to be clear it isn't.

I remember getting hyped from the original trailers, which made it look like a big open-world horror game set in a Twin Peaks-y Pacific Northwest town, an ambition for a game that was unattainable until the prodigies at [checks notes] Access Games with Deadly Premonition cracked the code.

(I had to fact-check the above, and found out that, in fact, Deadly Premonition came out three months before Alan Wake? This is my Mandela effect moment. Absolutely no fucking way. I've quantum leapt here somewhere along the way.)

I seem to recall this was a bit of a flop. I had the big collector's edition hardbox that came with a little novella inside. I was already pretty in the tank for Remedy at this point. I kind of took an apologists line for it, I was pretty defensive.

In the years since, I've lost all apologia about this -- this game rules. I think it caught people flat footed, because it had the trappings of a survival horror game, but it really is more of a straight up action game, just with horror/thriller trappings around the presentation. You can tell that Remedy learned their lesson, in a way, with the [sequel](@/blog/stack/2026-04-30-alan-wake-2.md], which very much is a survival horror game, and lesser for it.

Four Stars.

---

Alan Wake is the:

• 2nd greatest Remedy Game of all time.
• 2nd greatest Video Game of all time.
• 3rd greatest Thing of all time.