Long before Jesse Faden and the denizens of Control were losing their minds over sentient fridges and rubber ducks, Alan Wake was doing unholy battle with possessed logging tractors and combine harvesters. In hindsight, it seems obvious that these two worlds would eventually collide in Remedy's newly established Wake-iverse - such is their shared love of shadowy, flying objects - but back in the dark days of 2010, little did we know that Remedy's tortured horror writer would be making such a big comeback eleven years later.
Well, at least he is over on consoles. While the original Alan Wake had a brief, year-long holiday from Steam in 2017 due to the expiration of its music licences, PC folks have been able to play Remedy's cult classic shooter more or less uninterrupted since its release in 2012. Alan Wake Remastered, however, marks the first time it's ever come to PlayStation (it having been an Xbox console exclusive all these years), and its spruced up character models, higher frame rates and 4K texture packs feel very much intended to get PS4 and PS5 players up to speed on this old-but-new figure in Jesse's life than us on PC. Indeed, when there's still a perfectly good version of Alan Wake sitting right there on Steam for less than half the cost of this new remaster, you're probably better off playing the original than stumping up the cash for this latest nip and polygon tuck.