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Alan Wake’s American Nightmare
The latest title from Finnish developer Remedy Entertainment, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare is the highly anticipated follow-up to their 2010 hit Alan Wake. Currently it is an Xbox 360 exclusive, and was released on the Xbox Live Marketplace during the 2012 House Party promotion. When Remedy announced last year that the next Alan Wake title would be digitally distributed instead of getting a full retail release, fan speculation ran the gamut from DLC expansions to the original, to a full retail-sized game released in several small “episodes”. Although Remedy stated during this period of speculation that this second installment would not be a direct sequel, in-game dialogue says otherwise. American Nightmare would seem to fit most definitions of “direct sequel”, in that it clearly follows the story of the original and even explicitly states several times that two years have passed since those events. This concept of a small “placeholder” title to tide fans over and help secure funds for a hypothetical full sequel is pretty unique, but does it work?
