Parent's Guide: Alan Wake's American Nightmare - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Alan Wake's American Nightmare is a sort-of stand alone, sort-of not Xbox Live Arcade game, which, although you don't need to have played the original Alan Wake in order to run it, you'll certainly have needed to play the original to know what's going on.

Trapped in a groundhog day style time loop, downtrodden writer Alan Wake has to battle his nemesis, Mr. Scratch, in the hope of returning the world to normality. As you play through the story, you'll come across certain scenes that have been mentioned in the manuscript pages you come across as you progress through the story - and by altering objects in these scenes, to make them resemble the manuscript, you can break the loop.

With less of an emphasis on the storyline, and more of a focus on combat, Alan Wake's American Nightmare should be fairly easy for a newcomer to get into - but a lot of the story won't make much sense if you haven't played the original games. Knowing who Alan is, why he's there, who his wife, Alice, is, and why you're being attacked by countless monsters all aren't really explained in this game, so unless you're familiar with Alan Wake, they likely won't get as much out of this as someone more experienced will.

In terms of things that may put new players off, the game has a strong emphasis on combat which, while not gory, may be awkward for newer players, especially with it requiring the use of dual analogue sticks. It isn't the most forgiving game in the world, yet the adjustable difficulty level means that most players should be able to finish it with some perseverance. If you can handle dual analogue controls, you'll likely be fine here.

Violence in Alan Wake is usually confined to TV screens, which you can optionally choose to watch. These sometimes show Mr. Scratch, Alan's evil twin, torturing, and killing what appears to be an innocent person - at first, teasing his victim about what's yet to come, before finally strangling him with his own tie. Other scenes similarly show Mr. Scratch torturing and/or beating up people in a hotel room in various ways. Bar these scenes, though, there's little in the way of gore - the enemies you shoot don't bleed, but instead simply disappear when defeated.

There are a few sexual references - towards the end of the game, a woman who's been possessed by the darkness comes on to you quite heavily, including a line about having "bruises in all the right places". There's also a few utterances of the word "sh*t", although the game's generally quite light on strong language.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Xbox 360