Alan Wake/Nightmare Fuel

Needless to say, there are some very dark moments in Alan Wake.

• The Dark Presence in general, but particularly its avatar Barbara Jagger, who is especially terrifying the scene where Alan is talking to her and she jumps at the screen and appears to be threatening the player. And, if you consider what you're doing at the time, well... she actually is threatening the player.
• Struggling to reach the light of a Safe Haven, only for the light to flicker out and/or the bulb to break as you approach. Many an expletive has been uttered out loud by gamers upon these moments.
• Manuscript pages dealing with every aspect of your life and other peoples' interactions with you, an unnatural force possessing people who did nothing wrong, having to kill half the town and have their blood on your hands, a woman with a hole where her effing heart should be, and two cases in which a dog dies. How the hell did this game get a Teen rating again?!
• The poor drunk guy you hear when you enter a cabin, screaming and firing his gun as he's being murdered by his Taken friend. Who then smashes through the window when you come back downstairs. Just the sheer terror of the poor bastard is palpable.
• The ending of "The Signal" DLC. The televisions Alan's been seeing of himself almost going insane actually are what's happening to him. He manages to fight off several possessed TV's showing him losing hope and giving in to the Dark Presence. He suddenly has a blinding headache and wakes up in Cauldron Lake Lodge, a ghostly Dr. Hartman standing over him and calmly telling him it's all in his head. As Alan struggles to leave his room, the camera moves out of his eye to reveal him lying on the floor in the cabin, twitching and mumbling incoherently to himself about being unable to escape. Cue credits.
  • And as "The Writer" reveals... it's entirely sane in it's insanity. You see... the rational part of his mind is trying to re-unite with the part of him that's ready to give up. So neither Alan you see or play as is the 'real' Alan. The real Alan is Narrator!Alan.
• There is one moment in the DLC where Narrator!Alan screams, and the tv distorts so that his gaping mouth is where his eyes should be.
• The game plays a sound when you shine a light on the light-sensitive paint that sounds a lot like heavy breathing.
• The poltergeist objects. They don't appear until you're a decent ways into the game, but they're really likely to catch you off guard. Unlike regular enemies they can't be killed by guns and are only vulnerable to the light. Plus, they almost always appear in large groups in hazardous areas (like the top of a bridge that slowly falls apart) where they can easily overwhelm Alan. Still, this is nothing compared to the massive poltergeist vehicle boss battles. If the idea of being chased by a possessed bulldozer that is only weakened by the light isn't scary enough, remember that you'll also need to fight several taken during some of these fights.
• The paintings in Hartman's office. Creepy doesn't even begin to describe them.
  • They're scary enough on their own, but the implication that said paintings are drawing on the power of the lake and may not be entirely fictional is something else.
• Some of the Night Springs episodes are really unnerving. Take for instance the "Dreamers Within a Dream." It starts out with two guys discussing the fact that they are in a dream and that they have to do everything they can to make sure the dreamer isn't shocked awake. Then a rumbling starts and one guy starts to panic when he realises it's an alarm clock. The last words as the dreamer wakes up: "Please, man! I've got a wife and kids! Please don't wake-" *static*
  • Then there's the one found in the fifth chapter. It's actually one of the lighter episodes (no one dies) yet manages to be really unnerving. It opens with a man running from two strange men. When they catch him they remove his free will and destroy it, leaving him a mindless drone. Who are these men? Are they working for someone or do they just go around making slaves for kicks? What are they gonna use him for? Why did the man's free will manifest as an organ that could be ripped from his body? Was the whole thing a metaphor for something? It leaves just enough unanswered questions and is surreal enough to really disturb the viewer.
  • Not to mention the "Quantum Suicide" episode where the guy shoots himself in the head in front of an audience as part of a probability experiment, thinking/knowing that he's going to kill an alternate universe version of himself. Of course, something goes horribly wrong...
    • Actually, this one is an ironic death. You see, he didn't take in the fact that HE may be one of the alternate universes in which he dies, and that the unplugging of the Quantum Suicide machine was just the way the Alternate Universe killed him. Very dark if you look into it.
  • What arguably makes "The Dream of Dreams", the first episode listed here, worse, is that there's no end of episode narration, was the narrator from the dream too?
• Nightingale getting dragged away by the Dark Presence, anyone? He replaces Barbara Jagger as the avatar of the Dark Presence. Possibly.
• Mr. Fucking. Scratch. What the hell are you smiling about, ya creepy bastard?! He's the Big Bad of Alan Wake's American Nightmare
• The taken hitchhiker from Alan's dream. He was the only one who could talk more then just a few random lines. This allowed him to yell death threats at you as he stalked you throughout the level. Compared to the other taken, who don't say much, he is quite possibly the most intimidating enemy in the entire game.
• The Taken yelling out random things as you fight them. Having no meaning to you, and gives off a huge insane feeling.

Taken: You get TWO PILLLLLLS IN THE MORNINNNNG and then YOU'LL BE NICE AND CALM ALL DAY LONG.

• • Made worse by the fact that these lines are all that's left of the person's personality.
• The image of Alice being dragged into Cauldron Lake by Barbara Jagger.
• Both of the 2 DLCs take place in a twisted world that is made up of the places Alan has visited as well as his memories, but everything is jammed together wrong. To make matters worse the entire place looks like something out of H.P. Lovecraft and appears to be falling apart. Not to mention that both the DLCs are harder than the main game and have far more platforming elements that can result in an instant death if you fall.
• This player experienced a disturbing glitch in Episode 2's Moonshine Cave. At the top of the hole in the roof, a Taken was merely standing there, just watching me below. I had never seen this before, and the lack of a scare chord told me this wasn't planned by the developers. The Taken disappeared after a few moments, but still...
• The beginning in the game is pretty creepy as well, when you go into the house and then all of the TVs turn on and all you can see is an eye staring at you, saying die about 15 times.
  • Hitchhiker: "DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. HEEEHEEYAAAHAAHAHAA!!!! HAAHAHAHAHHH!!!!"
  • All while he's sending out a tornado to rip your shit.

• Finding this manuscript page: "The flashlight was heavy in my hand, and each pull of the trigger sent a painful shock up my arm. But I was finally out of the woods and things were looking up. That's when I heard the chainsaw."

Alan Wake's American Nightmare

Despite dropping the psychological horror elements of the game in favor of pulp fiction action, American Nightmare has plenty of its own terrifying moments.

• The central concept is pretty horrifying. Imagine being trapped in an endless time loop for eternity where stronger and stronger monsters appear each time. Yeah, Alan finds a way to end it and save himself, but what if he didn't. If the Taken didn't kill you sooner or later, the madness and repetition would grind your sanity away slowly until you didn't want to survive any longer. It can be pretty scary to think about.
• The first time you encounter a King Hillbilly Taken. Up until then you've managed to overcome all the various other forms tricks and abilities. Then, out of nowhere, this lumbering brute shows up and knocks you down to one hit point with a single attack. No gimmick, no strategy, just a massive monster that can soak up a full chip from an automatic gun and keep coming.
• Mr. Scratch's TV recordings. The guy is a monster, and these show how gleeful he is about it. One of them features him slitting the throat of an unwitting fan, and being so happy about it, it's almost sexual. The last one is particularly chilling: Scratch talks about "big bastards" that live in the darkness, and how he's bringing them out.

They don't mind getting a bit of elbow room. All that chaos and madness, it doesn't really do that much down there. It's like pouring a glass of water into the ocean, right?
But up here? Yeah, you can really make an impact.

• • And at the other end of the spectrum, he can nonchalantly murder a man for being too noisy. Or show off his knife collection and describe why he likes this one for the style or that one for the non-slip grip and how you really need that traction when you're "wrist-deep in somebody", all the while sounding like he's talking about the weather.
  • Also, in one of his videos he starts out talking about how beautiful and talented Alice is, and how he's basically been stalking her, just letting her see him enough that she thinks she's catching glimpses of her dead husband. And then he starts talking like this:

So I'll go to her. It'll be an amazing moment -- "Oh my God, you're alive!" I'll be the good, loving husband for as long as I can stand it. She'll love it. And then, one day, somehow, it'll happen. Maybe I'll slip up and she spots something. Or maybe she just starts running her mouth. And then...I'll do it. *Slasher Smile* It's gonna be sweet.

• The main story may have dropped most of the survival horror elements, but the arcade mode resores it completely. Its basically Alan Wake's version of Nazi Zombies, only you have no teammates and the higher tier weapons can only be unlocked by finding manuscript pages in story mode, making it almost impossible for players who decided to try it before tackling the main game. The basic premise is that you fight off a horde of Taken until the sun rises in ten minutes. Each location is heavily isolated, very creepy (the first level is set in a graveyard, for example), and supplies are limited. Oh, and the best part? After beating all of the already difficult normal levels you unlock the apply named nightmare levels which send waves of Taken at you right from the very start. If you haven't mastered the controls and item placements you will likely die before even getting to the halfway mark. So yeah, have fun.