Alan Wake 10 Years Later: 10 Moments Worth Revisiting Bright Falls For

10. The Nightmare

Typically, tutorial sections don’t tend to be particularly engaging. Teaching players the basic gameplay mechanics before throwing them straight into the meat of the game, these training sections are as short and sweet as possible.

Alan Wake, on the other hand, uses its tutorial section to give players a tantalising taster of what’s to come within a condensed encounter with a hitchhiker that's framed as the author's nightmare.

Desperately racing to reach a lighthouse, believing it to be the only safe place left, Alan accidentally hits a hitchhiker in his haste, instantly killing him – or so he thought. With his car wrecked in the collision, he must continue to his destination on foot. But after taking a few steps, the hitchhiker reappears wielding an axe.

While this section does teach you the basics of dodging, healing, and combat, it does so by throwing players straight into the deep end, as they frantically flee from the evil presence at their heels, while sewing the first seeds of mystery of what’s to come.

Gripping players at the very start, things were only going to get better from here on.