Years of playing with mouse and keyboard have made me a complete inept with pads. Frankly it's so frustraiting that i'm thinking of getting rid of my 360 and stick to PC gaming.

Alan Wake should get an award for the best song written for a game ever. It blows efforts like Still Alive and The Donuts Song out of the water.

Don't be discouraged, you'll get the hang of it soon enough. The 360 is not worth getting rid of because you have some issues with the controls. You will learn to use the gamepad eventually, but if you will get rid of the console you'll be missing out on some great exclusives.
Practice a bit and the gamepad will be like a third hand in no-time :)

Oh please, I used only keyboard and mouse (with the rare joystick) since the 80s till 2006-7 when I bought my first console. One month of gaming and I was like I was using a gamepad all my life.
My point is, if you decide to learn using a gamepad, you will learn and get used to it. If you don't want to, you will never learn it.

The book that comes with it is pretty cool as well. If you're a nut for extras that add a little more depth to the characters and story then it's well worth the read.
I'm still relatively early on in the game though. Once I'm done with the RDR story I'll probably dive back into Alan Wake.

The collector's edition is pretty awesome. I especially like the fact that you can actually play the game with a video commentary from the developers. Awesome.
This is how a CE should look like. Something EA should think about - after crap like Mass Effect 2 CE. I mean the Making of... video is a just the worst ever - "EA TV Presents: We made an awesome game. It's awesome, because it's awesome."

The manuscript collection is the best in-game completionist collectible ever! It fleshes the story out and gives you information about the characters that you never would've found out otherwise. Even though collecting the pages can telegraph what will happen next to you, it's still great to pick them up and read them. I especially liked how the two pages you find for "The Dead Stop" let you know that this guy's books are basically about Max Payne, even though in the game he's referred to as Alex Casey.

Well I got this today and so far have been enjoying the hell out of it. It starts a bit slow and the time jump is a bit confusing but the story is weird, the atmosphere is creepy and there seems to be just enough fighting creepy guys to maintain the suspense but not so much that it feels like a regular 3rd person shooter.
I managed to officially get too into the game. about 10 minutes ago I had a freaky 'environment is against you' moment (the train bridge for those who've played it) and just after I finish, I move my leg slightly and the blanket I'm under slides down my leg and scares the crap out of me
About the only thing I find really weird is the episode endings. The "End of episode 1" slide that just stays on there for a good few minutes whilst it plays a song. Its kinda like an intermission from back in the days where the cinema had that, when i finish an episode I have a strange compulsion to go to the lobby to get some popcorn

PC is always my first gaming love, but I've always been a console fan as well. Still, I dropped Xbox 360 for exclusive PS3 attention to drop my support for being nickel-and-dimed for everything under the sun. Online access, $99 wireless adapters, ludicrously expensive hard drives... and so on and so forth.
I would pick up Alan Wake for sure if it was on PS3. But likewise, if it does come out on PC, sign me up.
P.S. I'll never forgive Microsoft for stealing the original Halo and making it an Xbox exclusive.

Well you get nickel-and-dimed for everything with the 360 or forced to buy everything at once even if you don't want it for the ps3, wireless is a prime example, I don't really want it on my ps3 because I'm a crazy old man who thinks that broadcasting information to anyone within range might not be the best way to run a network but I have no choice, I get wifi whether I want it or not.
Also don't complain about the xbox wireless adapter, it's 2 NICs in one, a 2.4GHz and a 5GHz so it can support 802.11 B/G/N and also support 802.11 A. Presumably they made the business decision that it was easier to make a combined unit rather than confuse noobs who don't know what wireless standard they run.

PS3 comes with wired AND wireless (come on, not forced to use it like the Wii. You can disable it), and no matter any way you slice it, $99 is a ludicrous price for a wireless adapter. If you do your homework, you can find a wireless adapter for a fraction of the price that will fool the Xbox into thinking that it's MS's model and work with it, but that doesn't change Microsoft's intent.
Charging more than twice the price for a NIC to make it "easier" sounds like BS propaganda in just the way we've always known from MS. Actually sounds like something more like Apple would do.

The 2 standards are not interoperable, 11a runs in the 5ghz band and 11b/g/n run in the 2.4ghz band and you can't have a NIC that just jumps between them, you have to have 2 seperate units in one.
Also you're not FORCED to buy the wireless adapter, you can use the superior medium of cable and save yourself money in the process. I'm not saying you're forced to USE the wireless in the PS3 but that there's no option to not PAY for it

I know how the wireless standards work, but no one is screaming to high heaven that PC wireless adapters should cost more and be all-encompassing. Instead of coming out with two cheaper models of wireless adapters, there's one model that's ludicrously expensive.
Even so, the option to choose whether or not to use wireless connection would be the one saving grace on MS's part in this, apart from the whole pay-to-play-online and charging unreasonable amounts of money for hard drives. And even then, you're charged $99 for the glorious wireless option if you do decide that you want/need it.
I fail to see these as positives on MS's part.

Sweet. I just finished this game a few weeks ago. Definitely a good one.

(I should mention that the above article says that Alan Wake is coming to PC in a few months and it has screenshots)