There are of course some pretty obvious inspirations here in the form of Twin Peaks and Silent Hill, but Alan Wake manages to standalone well enough to be its own thing. Some of the foresty areas, while nice, can get a little samey but Bright Falls feels like a lived in location, helped by the menagerie of characters you find along the way and the story really did manage to hook me.

I wouldn't call them bad, but the enemy encounters can get a bit clunky and repetitive, especially with a pretty narrow selection of tools at your disposal, but these elements are actually surprisingly easy to look over thanks to the overall presentation and story. The conceit of finding manuscript pages for a book that's been written for events that are yet to occur as collectibles is very well done, allowing them to not feel like pointless trinkets.