Alan Wake: Official Survival Guide (Prima Official Game Guides)

Customer Video Review Length:: 0:29 Mins

This guidebook is unique in its presentation of information, although I'm not sure gamers might like it.

The book's written like a novel with the walkthrough highlighted in yellow to separate it from the story. Since it's written like a novel (third person), the text aren't exactly instructional although you can always guess what to do from the text.

If you're using this as a quick reference when you get stuck, locating where you are might be tough as you're sifting through a chunk of text.

There aren't any maps included so locating objects, or yourself, might be a bit tough. The lack of maps makes you rely on the walkthrough which isn't spoiler-free, unfortunately. If you don't want to miss out items, you have to read in advance and sometimes you'll be smacked with a plot turn you wish you learn from the game instead of the guide.

Overall, it's a comprehensive guide that covers everything it should. The...Read more

I understand what the author is trying to do. It's cute, but it's not necessary nor is it terribly useful. The most useful part of the book is the last 10 pages, where they list appendices of achievements, coffee thermoses, manuscript pages, etc. With a game with so many collectibles, this is definitely handy. However, the first 230 pages are trying to emulate a newspaper or magazine article about the events of the game. It's clever, but not very handy. Using color coding in the middle of a long paragraph to denote a collectible, achievement or difference in the difficulty settings isn't very intuitive for the reader. What's more, due to the newspaper/magazine format, the pages are far too busy, and cluttered with fake advertisements that sometimes detail collectibles, and other times simply hog up some real estate on the page.

In the future, the author should probably follow the old "KISS" rule (keep it simple, stupid). The actual walkthrough is needlessly long, and...Read more

I was looking forward to getting this, so that I could play my Alan Wake game. I don't like being lost in games like these. I'm glad to say that the guide is a good read, but since it's layed out like a book, it can sometimes be a bit confusing. I'm used to glancing at the guide and getting the information I want. Here, I have to really dig and search for the info that I want. It can be a bit frustrating for some.