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1* AntiClimaxBoss:
2** The final boss of the main game only has a flock of crows to defend itself once you get within shooting range, and you get a chest with unlimited flare gun ammo.
3** The final boss of The Signal can be dispatched with a few flare gun shots and boosting the flashlight for about 15 seconds or so. There's a reason one of the achievements requires you to beat it in a minute and a half. The final boss of The Writer is legitimately difficult, though certainly not in ThatOneBoss territory.
4* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic:
5** The entire original orchestrated soundtrack is gorgeous. Special mention should go to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh7bneLa2ek Welcome To Bright Falls]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEwF3zp32SE The Clicker]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Ef2ik_b2A A Writer's Dream]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcMpmZYhhVM Hunters]].
6** The licensed music used in the game's episode intermissions is fantastic. Considering the soundtrack includes such musical figures as Music/DavidBowie and Music/DepecheMode, this is to be expected.
7** "[[https://youtu.be/8-l_kbZbXRQ?list=PLjACqN5i5sDUo3MfGtqogz7P3u5JUm3c- Children of the Elder God]]" by FakeBand "Old Gods of Asgard", the real life group Music/PoetsOfTheFall
8** Especially "[[https://youtu.be/GLxb7m0j5Jg?list=PLjACqN5i5sDUo3MfGtqogz7P3u5JUm3c- The Poet and The Muse]]".
9** The main game ends with [[Music/DavidBowie Space Oddity]] in the credits, while the DLC final chapter ends with Music/DepecheMode's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8gYRf3aeQc Darkest Star.]]
10** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f_hewSrAH4 War]]", which plays in the fifth episode's ending, and also can be played during what is likely one of the most difficult fights in the entire game.
11** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3lBF2h-Pl0 Haunted]] by Music/{{Poe}}. The fact that it's closely tied to [[Literature/HouseOfLeaves another very meta piece of literature]] featuring sentient antagonistic darkness [[ShoutOut is probably not a coincidence]].
12** "[[https://youtu.be/b6RKKCQt82Y?list=PLjACqN5i5sDUo3MfGtqogz7P3u5JUm3c- Balance Slays The Demon]]" from ''American Nightmare.''
13** Roy Orbison's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCKY25ulOe8 In Dreams]] which plays at the end of Episode 1. Doubles as a ShoutOut to ''Film/BlueVelvet''.
14* BadassDecay: When the kidnapper, Mott, is introduced, he kills multiple Taken in quick succession, and is quick to display that he knows how to effectively defeat them. Later, he's [[spoiler:effectively killed offscreen. But then again, he was confronted by the [[EldritchAbomination main host of the Darkness]], so he was rather outclassed.]]
15* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: In ''American Nightmare'', during your final trip to the observatory, you fight a horde of Taken while "[[https://youtu.be/b6RKKCQt82Y?list=PLjACqN5i5sDUo3MfGtqogz7P3u5JUm3c- Balance Slays the Demon]]" plays seemingly from nowhere. Does Rachel [[SourceMusic play it for you over the intercom]]? Is Alan hearing it in his head because [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome he enjoyed the Children of The Elder God fight more than he let on]]? Or perhaps it's [[FridgeBrilliance part of the soundtrack to the episode of Night Springs he is living]]?
16* BreatherLevel: There are several places in the game, albeit brief ones, where Alan moves about during daylight. These sections are safe, allowing the player to relax a little while some exposition goes on, and occasionally enjoy some SceneryPorn of the local environment.
17** The very last level of the main game has no danger whatsoever, just various things to shine the flashlight on which causes objects to appear.
18%%Do not add Mr. Scratch to Complete Monster without getting the cleanup thread's permission first.
19* CompleteMonster: First game & ''AWE'' (''VideoGame/{{Control}}'' {{DLC}}): [[spoiler:[[PsychoPsychologist Dr. Emil Hartman]] is an infamous psychiatrist who works with artists, and at first appears to be a passive annoyance. It's soon revealed he is aware of the Dark Presence and wishes to [[RealityWarper control its reality warping powers]]; his clinic is a front to lure in artists and expose them to the Dark Presence as part of his experiments, [[DrivenToMadness driving them insane]] in the process. It also turns out that Hartman was Thomas Zane's assistant, and [[ManipulativeBastard manipulated]] Zane into writing his deceased wife back to life, turning her into the Dark Presence's avatar and resulting in countless people being Taken or consumed over the decades. After luring [[Characters/RemedyConnectedUniverseAlanWake Alan]] and Alice Wake to Bright Falls, and Alice goes missing, Hartman stages Alice's kidnapping to lure Alan to him. In his clinic, Hartman tries to convince Alan that Alice is dead and everything he experienced is a delusion. In ''AWE'', Hartman arrogantly doubled down on his research after his arrest and brush with death, eventually transforming into a murderous monster himself.]]
20* CultClassic: According to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5CRjoQKyY8 Sam Lake himself]]. Its initial sales weren't the greatest (it had the bad luck of being released next to ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption''), but they were steady, and its fanbase adores it for its story and dark atmosphere.
21* DifficultySpike: To call the change in difficulty from the base game to the Signal DLC "Unforgiving" would be an understatement; the first fifteen minutes have you fighting Brute Taken in close quarters, been chased by Taken that throw stuff, and then having every car in Bright Falls thrown at you at the same time.
22* EnjoyTheStorySkipTheGame: The story has been highly praised for its creativity and twists, but the gameplay itself is more divisive for essentially being "walk from point A to point B" with occasional breaks for repetitive combat.
23* EnsembleDarkhorse:
24** Barry, for his constant pop culture references from ''VideoGame/{{Zork}}'' to [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Mordor]] and for [[TookALevelInBadass taking a couple of levels in badass]] from Episode 4 onwards. He's also liked because he gives Alan some PetTheDog Moments. Once Alan starts snarking back and forth with Barry you realize, hey, Alan's not just a mopey {{jerkass}}. He's got a sense of humour!
25** Odin and Tor Anderson are considered favorites for a number of reasons: the hilarity of senile old men being a pair of hard rockers, the two of them being CrazySane while being some of the least obstructive characters in the plot, being the reason for the game's SignatureScene at their barn and the InUniverse counterparts to the RealLife band Music/PoetsOfTheFall.
26* GameBreaker: The crossbow in ''American Nightmare'' is flat-out superior to every weapon in the game. The flare gun and flashbangs have been nerfed and have limited ammo, while the crossbow can be restocked at any ammo box. It ignores darkness shields, unlike anything that fires bullets. It can kill every normal Taken in one hit, and crowmen Taken in two. For the King Hillbilly Taken and Splitters, the flare gun and the magnum, respectively, will easily deal with them, and the crossbow will still nullify the former's darkness shield in one hit.
27* GoddamnedBats:
28** The Dark Crows, which are about as close to the trope namer as possible without actually being mammals. Also those damned {{Bear Trap}}s in certain parts of the woods.
29** The SuperSpeed Taken and the lesser FragileSpeedster Taken. Neither are terribly threatening as long as you're attentive, but their speed means you can lose track of them in the MultiMookMelee, and that tends to be a deadly mistake.
30** In "The Signal" it becomes [[{{GoddamnedBats}} Goddamned Books]].
31** In ''American Nightmare'', the GoddamnedBats are literal DemonicSpiders.
32** Grenadiers constantly heft grenades at you to slowly wear you down and keep as much distance between you and them as they can. It's not too bad during the story mode, but they ''will'' screw up your scoring streak during the arcade mode.
33* GoodBadBugs: Popping a flare will briefly stun any smaller enemy caught in its radius. If you use them to stun a ranged enemy after they've thrown their projectile but before it hits you the weapon flying through the air will immediately disappear.
34* HarsherInHindsight:
35** For a combination of [[HilariousInHindsight hilarity]] and [[HarsherInHindsight harshness]] bestowed by hindsight, the recent revelation that Verizon routinely turns over all of its records to the National Security Agency makes it an ironically fitting sponsor for a game in which paranoia and everyone knowing everyone else's business are major themes.
36** The ending of ''American Nightmare'' becomes this after finding a certain EasterEgg in ''VideoGame/{{Control}}'': [[spoiler: Alan never made it out of The Dark Place. The ending was just an illusion to mess with his head.]]
37* HilariousInHindsight: The episodes ending with a musical track just makes the game's ''Series/TwinPeaks'' nods even stronger, seeing as how that's how every episode of ''The Return'' ends.
38** Adding to that, the fact that ''Series/TwinPeaks'' came back with a third season in 2017 which is called ''The Return'', just as Alan's planned sequel to ''Departure'', which Alan began writing in 2012, around the same time Lynch and Frost began writing the new season.
39*** Adding another ''Twin Peaks'' parallel, while Alan has been stuck in the Dark Place, his EvilDoppelganger, Mr. Scratch, has been running around in the real world, impersonating him while committing crimes. In ''Twin Peaks: The Return'' a major plot point is the fact that Agent Cooper have been stuck in the Black Lodge, while his own Evil Doppelgänger, "Mr. C", has been running around in the real world impersonating him while building a criminal empire.
40** At the beginning of 'The Clicker', Sheriff Breaker gives Barry a list of people to call and deliver a code phrase to, including her father Frank and Pat Maine, prompting Barry to excitedly ask if they're all part of some secret society. [[spoiler:Turns out Barry was closer to the mark than even Sarah realized, as incident reports in ''{{VideoGame/Control}}'' reveal that Frank Breaker is a retired FBC agent, and ended up alerting the Bureau to the situation.]]
41** The album art for the Old Gods of Asgard album "[[https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Thought-Balance-Ruin-Asgard/dp/B017BH8RIG Memory Thought Balance Ruin]]" is an inverted black triangle on a black background. [[spoiler:Perhaps foreshadowing towards The Board from ''VideoGame/{{Control}}''?]]
42** ''Webcomic/PennyArcade'' released a strip based on the game [[https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/05/26/weve-got-to-get-to-the-jamba-juice lampooning the product placement]]. When the Signal DLC was released, a character ended up actually saying "Can you hear me now?" verbatim.
43* InferredHolocaust: Hundreds of townsfolk from the surrounding landscape are Taken and gunned down over the course of the story. However, in "The Signal" Alan states that he wrote a "happy ending" for the town, and we know that the [[spoiler:dead can be resurrected if you know what you're doing when writing a story; the ending implies that Alan brought everyone who was Taken in Bright Falls back to life.]]
44* JerkassWoobie: Alan Wake himself. Considering the situation he was in.
45** Agent Nightingale Can be seen as this if you've read his backstory in The Alan Wake Files bundled with the limited edition of the game.
46*** And carried on with the Novel which goes into even more detail; He and his partner were two {{By The Book Cop}}s, until the latter's death at the hands of the Dark Presence
47* MemeticMutation: He's Alan Wake. [[{{VideoGame/DeadRising}} He's written books, y'know.]]
48* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: Maine's late night radio broadcasts really help take the edge off of fighting shadow monsters alone in the woods.
49* {{Narm}}: In the Signal DLC, the ProductPlacement for Verizon goes from "obvious" to "blatant"; a phone Alan summons out of text lands with its screen face-down on the camera, showing Verizon's old Navigator GPS service. And then Zane calls you on it, parroting Verizon's old "Can you hear me now?" slogan, made famous by Paul Marcarelli's "Test Man" commercials.
50* NarmCharm: As strong an element of Lake's writing as ever. His occasionally stilted and unnatural dialogue (possibly deliberate, [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall in this case]]), often propped up with gratuitous film references right in the fore-text, is still very sincere in its desire to entertain and has won him many new fans.
51** Barry wrapped in Christmas lights. He looks utterly ridiculous (something Alan himself lampshades), but because it's also an effective defense against the Dark Presence, it comes across as rather badass.
52** The live action scenes in ''American Nightmare'', especially Mr. Scratch's messages to Alan. It's got the usual dorkiness of low-budget video game live action, but he's just so over the top it's hard not enjoy it.
53* NauseaFuel: In one of Mr. Scratch's recordings in ''American Nightmare'', he slashes the throat of one of Alan's female fans while gently massaging her head. The gurgling noise she makes as she dies is ''very'' disturbing.
54* NightmareRetardant: Having a deranged hybrid of [[Franchise/KingdomHearts the Heartless]] and [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil4 the Ganados]] flail at you wildly with a rusty sickle is unnerving right up until he kindly informs you, "Omega-3 fatty acids are GOOD for your health!".
55* ParanoiaFuel:
56** Pulled straight from the pages of ''Film/InTheMouthOfMadness'', anyone within Bright Falls might exist only as a character in Alan Wake's manuscript and can be [[AnyoneCanDie killed off for the sake of its plot]]. Or worse, be touched by the Dark Presence and forced to do its bidding.
57** See that harmless tire right there? [[EverythingTryingToKillYou The Dark Presence might take it over and have it attack you]]. Oh, look, is that a bulldozer?...
58** At one point during Episode 2, if you go into a certain cabin, a Taken walks by one of the windows, before disappearing. Nothing happens, but it's still ParanoiaFuel ''[[NothingIsScarier to the max]]''.
59** After finishing Episode 1, fighting off the Taken in the middle of the night, you're probably still tense and maybe a bit afraid of the dark. Episode 2 starts in a flashback at Alan's apartment. Alan's looking at cover mock-ups done by Alice - when the lights suddenly go out.
60** Near the entrance of a logging camp, there's a large machine with a claw for carrying logs. Stepping near it causes the claw to open and close menacingly while an Elite Taken starts yelling in his constantly shifting voice. While the machine [[NothingIsScarier doesn't do anything else]], the Elite Taken is nowhere to be seen.
61** After Alan ends up in the Sheriff's Station, he walks out into the lobby, and the lights flicker. [[spoiler:It's just Cynthia Weaver, local TalkativeLoon, checking the bulbs.]]
62* PortingDisaster:
63** The Switch port is plagued with performance issues and a bad framerate especially in handheld mode that can make the game unbearable to play.
64** The remastered version looks great on Xbox Series X ... and frequently has no sound in cutscenes.
65* TheScrappy: Agent Nightingale is seen by quite a few for being an especially obnoxious and TriggerHappy InspectorJavert, though Remedy may have special plans for him [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap in a possible sequel]].
66* SignatureScene: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2AwUAr-jPo The Children of the Elder God sequence]] is considered one of the most memorable parts of the game.
67* SpecialEffectsFailure: There are a few points where you can see the taken spawn from the aether before they attack you. Might've been done intentionally though, to add to their otherworldliness.
68* SpiritualAdaptation:
69** Remedy could not have made a better adaptation of ''Film/InTheMouthOfMadness'' if they'd ''tried''.
70** In a lot of really good ways, it's basically ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' without many of the SurvivalHorror AffectionateParody aspects.
71** It has so many homages to ''Franchise/TheTwilightZone'' that it's been described as a playable episode of the series.
72* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'', loosely. While MP was inspired by FilmNoir books and novels, AW is inspired by supernatural thrillers (of screens large and small) and horror writers like Creator/StephenKing.
73* ThatOneLevel: The battle after you find the radio that plays "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f_hewSrAH4 War]]". It's a very cramped warehouse full of the large Taken that take forever to light up and have a tendency to bum rush you. It's also full of smaller, faster guys who can sneak up behind you very easily. Oh, and did I mention that you have recently lost all of your stuff and only get three flares to go along with your revolver? If you're lucky, you'll find a shotgun just before the radio, but it doesn't help that much.
74* UnintentionalUncannyValley: Multiple reviewers have made note of the somewhat "off" character models in the game, particularly Alice Wake. The poor lip-syncing, particularly in the first few cutscenes, doesn't help matters either. The 2021 remaster would attempt to address this by working to re-animate the character faces and improve the lip-syncing.
75* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The remaster takes the already gorgeous visuals from the [=Xbox=] 360 original and improves them even further. Besides now running at 60 frames per second, allowing for smoother gameplay, the visuals are now at an eye-popping 4K resolution, alongside reworked cutscenes, more lifelike animation, and remade character models.

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