Spiders…why did it have to be spiders?

Nightmares are a weird business. In the worst ones, you’ll find yourself repeating a scenario over and over in hopes that at some point, you’ll get it “right.” That by changing some key detail, you’ll be able to alter the outcome and defeat that horrible monster to avoid some terrifying fate. And in this vein, flashlight-toting Alan Wake’s new journey trades in the malleable dream-like atmosphere of his first outing for the stuff of nightmares in a deceptively smart, stripped-down dash through the dusty Arizona desert.

Skipping the episodic pacing of the first game, American Nightmare’s five-hour-plus Story Mode actually focuses less on story and more on fights with shifting, lurching bad guys — the returning Taken. This isn’t to say that Nightmare doesn’t include all the head-scratching, twisting-turning plotlines of its predecessor: it still has plenty to spare, but it’s a much more concisely spun tale this time. As Wake, you find yourself trapped in an episode of fictional TV show Night Springs — the series’ in-game aping of sci-fi staple Twilight Zone. This episode of Night Springs happens to be one that Wake wrote early in his career, though, before he hit the big time with his Alex Casey crime novels. He may be vaguely familiar with the landscape he’s exploring (he says as much in his own manuscript pages and voice-over narrated bits), but the situations and characters continue to shift as they would in a work-in-progress script.

In each location, you’ll meet a character who holds a key to helping you beat Mr. Scratch.

Though the details of your situation may buckle and sway at times, your goal is always clear: defeat your sinister doppelganger, Mr. Scratch, before he takes over Wake’s life, leaving behind a string of Dark Presence–infused (or worse, dead) victims. And you’ve got one night to defeat him and his countless Taken henchmen before dawn breaks and he makes the moves on your real-world maybe-widow, Alice, in your place. In this battle, you’ll still rely on your handy flashlight to beat back and weaken the shadowy figures looking to hack you into little pieces, before gunning them down for good.

Both the journey and the combat are tighter-paced — you won’t have to worry about stuff like upgrading your flashlight to be more powerful or collecting nearly as much game-y esoterica like the first game’s coffee thermoses. Nightmare is built for arcade-like speed, and the game’s only collectibles (outside of TVs and radios, which are easy to find) are manuscript pages. These do double duty as narrative context and as keys to unlock scattered suitcases containing various firearms, including a Combat Shotgun and an SMG. Ammo isn’t as scarce a commodity this time, either — developer Remedy smartly provides you with “ammo restock” lockers in each area where you can reload your batteries and bullets in between tussles with Taken (flashbangs, flare-gun ammo, and flares excepted).

One of the biggest complaints gamers (including us) had with Alan Wake was the lack of variety in the enemies that haunted its forested environments. Apparently, Remedy was listening, and American Nightmare packs in a good handful of new ghouls to gank, including The Giant (shown above), a lumbering humanoid beast who’d like nothing more than to put his sawblade in your face. Having two of these horrors clumping after you isn’t our idea of a dream double date.