I quite liked the manuscript - it didn't give too much away but left you with a feeling of impending doom - a bit like in a TV series when the camera shows you something that you know is going wrong in the next few episodes.

No offense taken, I'm sick at the moment and my paychec is again a week overdue. And I don't feel like running after my boss again. No wonder I feel so grumpy. :/

I'll gladly shine some light on that statement. Sadly, I have no idea if [*spoiler] Blablabla [/*spoiler] works here, so beware of spoilers.
My problem with Alan is, that I consider him a sociopath. It's probably not in the story writers intention, but there are many things in the story, that give me this impression. and I know that I won't find many friends for writing this.
As we know, whatever is written in the manuscripts does happen and Alan wrote it.
during the events of chapter 2, we meet the kidnapper. He read pages of the manuscript and tells Alan something about the line "We all do what the manuscripts want us to do", where my Alarm Bells started to ring. My first thought: Alan altered reality by creating the manuscripts and Mott is well aware of it.

Then I started to notice a pattern: Bad things happen to multiple people, that rubbed Alan the wrong way.
First, there is the kidnapper. We meet him on the ferry, where he makes his dislike against town people quite obvious. In the end, the darkness kills him/take him away. And just so can Alan push his ega further, he writes in the manuscripts that Mott, the kidnapper, is a loser like no second one. Oh, and he's jelous of Alan for his success.
Conmsidering that the manuscript/Alan makes this real, the real Mott might have had a different life. For all we know, there's even a chance that Mott isn't even his real name and he never worked for Hartman.

Second, there's the doctor himself. Alan makes it perfectly clear, that he doesn't like that docor, despite only knowing his face from a book cover. Granted, he has this slimy and smug smile, but does it make him evil? According to alice, Alan does seem to have sonme kind of problem and she wants to solve it. Hartman, being quite competend invites her to come over after a telephone call.
Of course, Alan doesn't like that idea and he gets very angry. The first time Alan meets Hartman, he punches him in the face for offering alan to stay at the lodge. In front of the Sheriff. In the end, alan put the doctor in his story as well and made him a villain.
In the end, Hartman is taken by the darkness and Alan kills his taken while escaping the garden of Hartman's clinic. Bonus points for Alan writing, that he smiled when the doctor met his end.
Again, I say that it was Alan's manuscript that turned the doctor evil.

And last but not least, there's Rose. She ruined Alan's vacation by telling Bright Falls on the radio, that he was in town. Instead of calling her out for this (or at least could have asked her to be quiet about it in the first place), alan makes her a character in his manuscript and... she's quite on the receiving end.
If the Alan Wake-wikia is true, she only has one friend, Rusty the park ranger. It's said they have feelings for each other (warning: reality warping is possible), but Rose considers him to be too old for her. In chapter 2, Rusty is first almost blown up, breaks his leg, is taken by the darkness and then alan kills his taken.
In short: Alan wrote the death of Rose's only friend and shoots Rusty's taken, so it would look like self defense. On the long run, Alan killed Rusty. What for? Because he liked Rose, a woman Alan considers to be annoying.
And because Alan thinks he needs to punish Rose even more, he makes her posessed by the darkness/Barbara Jagger. She calls alan, claiming to have his missing pages of the manuscript only to lure him into a trap, so he has an excuse to like her even less. In the ending, we then see her clutching to a lantern.

Ther kick is, during the events at Hartman's clinic, we see a television broadcast showing that Alan was all the time well aware of what he was doing. This makes me see Alan as a dangerous threat, who tortures people for minor insults and being annoying.
Funny is, Alan seems to be well aware of this problem and put trigger-happy Nightinggale into the story. Of course, Nightinggale is still offed by the darkness/the manuscript.

It's for the best, that Alan ended up in this puddle he calls an ocean. If it weren't for this short flashback, I wouldm wonder what Alice sees in him. Then again, their mariage isn't a happy one, if Hartman's record is to be believed.
And that's one of my main problems with the story.

I see what you are getting at now. It probably wont surprise you to learn that I had an entirely different interpretation of the story.

+++WARNING+++SPOILERS +++WARNING+++SPOILERS +++

The way I see it Alan wasn't fully in charge of what he wrote, aware yes but not in control. I think the darkness has a lot of input into the story, it just needed Alan's creative spark to give life to it's own wishes. For example in the very beginning during the tutorial Alan describes his dream as "It was wild and dark and weird, even by my standards." Which suggests that the darkness has already taken some control over his subconscious mind. The darkness can take what ever creative fiction has been created and make it real, but it cannot create anything entirely on it's own. Once it has found a creative mind it can influence that mind to a certain degree. Too much influence and it has created something by itself which is useless, too little influence and the creation is not what it wants. This is the issue that Dr. Hartman was having. He purposely setup his clinic on the lake hoping that he could tap into the power of the darkness to shape reality to his whims. He calls in creative minds from all over and they come to the lake and suddenly they are struck with a new found creative influence. From that point it's a 3 way battle between the darkness trying to write itself back into physical existence, the doctor trying to achieve his goals and the artist who clearly already has issues and is now trying to make sense of the thoughts in their head that do not actually belong to them. Alan is different because he outright rejects the doctors input and therefore gives the darkness more power in a 2 way struggle.

Later in the game he tells Barry: "The lake, it, it does something to the works of art created here. It makes them come true. But there's a catch. The dark presence, whatever that thing is twists it to its own ends." Which makes me think that the darkness doesn't need for Alan to write out every little detail, it just needs enough of a framework to get started and then it begin to fill in details of it's own. The perfect example here is Rose. The part of the darkness that was still Barbara Jagger could have given Rose her fate as some sort of vicarious revenge against Cynthia Weaver. The triangle of Barbara, Cynthia and Thomas Zane mirrored (to an extent) Alice, Rose and Alan. Had Alan failed the same way that Thomas had then Alice would become a permanent part of the darkness, Alan would forever be stuck lost in the Darkness and Rose would be the new guardian of the light. But Alan went in an unexpected direction with Alice alone coming out okay but both himself and Rose stuck in their roles.

Could Alan have done more to save Rose and the others? I don't think so. I think that Thomas Zane failed because he tried to save everyone. He is even trying to save Alan. This is revealed when Alan comes to the conclusion of: "I understood what I had to do now. I knew how to write the ending to Departure. There's light, and there's darkness. Cause and effect. There's guilt and there's atonement. But the scales always need to balance. Everything has a price. That's where Zane had gone wrong." He must let the darkness add enough to the evil side of the karmic ledger so that he can use the balance from the good side to stop it. Some got killed so that many others could live. As to the choosing of the victims it could have been Alan, the darkness or a mixture of both. Alan really didn't like the doctor, but if he was trying to twist the power of the lake to his own ends that the darkness had a reason to get rid of him as well. Mott knew of Hartmans' plans so he to was targeted by the darkness, remember Alan had no idea who he even was. As for Rusty, well if he really cared for Rose as much as we have been led to believe then it's possible that he could have helped her after the whole indecent and that would have ruined Taken Barbara's whole let's-turn-Rose-into-Cynthia plot. Agent Nightingale was taken but is not necessarily dead. You see him in the shadows at the end behind Rose with her lantern. Nightingale had tried killing Alan on two occasions, but on the third he instead takes Alan into custody. It may be that Alan wrote himself an "out" by being arrested and brought back to town and then let Nightingale get Taken so that he is out of the way. If Alan didn't write a specific fate for the agent then the darkness is free to do what it want's with him. There is some speculation that when Darkness Barbara says "I will find a new face to wear" just before she is defeated, it means that the darkness plans to take the form of Agent Nightingale and he will be part of Alan Wake 2.

Controls are bad, writing is silly. But it's got some nice graphical effects and is an interesting change from your normal shooters. Kind of escapist I guess.

I actually bought it in the humble bundle weekly sale and the post above sums up my feeling so far! It's not exactly grabbing me like i thought it would, i grew up on horror and scifi so i thought i would. it is atmospheric and a bit creepy but once you've dealt with a few taken it becomes a bit predictable and i lose interest. I'm wondering if it's worth continuing with it or just diving into AN.

The batteries and the bullets running out every 10 seconds is frustrating as well. So currently i just play a checkpoint every couple of days to see where it's going.

One of us must be playing wrong. I never ran out of ammo and rarely even used up any batteries.

I agree.
Ammo and batteries never were an issue in AW.
At the end of each episode, I had plenty of stuff left.
(Too bad you can't carry over leftovers.)

Sorry i meant during combat, bullets run out and i reload but it only reloads one bullet and the flashlight runs out at the same time so i run and then gas out and can't dodge quickly enough, really frustrating. I do wanna give the game a chance but i'm having a hard time with the combat mechanics. I know i'm not the only one but i'll perservere. I'm using a 360 controller with xpadder fwiw.

You have to keep hitting the reload button, you load one bullet per tap. The faster you tap the button the faster you reload. This was done to add tension. If you are out of ammo and a Taken is just a few steps away do you load one or two bulletsand hope it's enough or load up four or five bullets and risk getting hit? Also you just need to focus the flashlight while the Taken are protected by the Darkness. Once the shroud is gone lay off the flashlight and let it recharge. In very thick fights you may have to swap out batteries but if only 2-3 Taken attack you should be fine with the one battery.

I thought it was something like that. I'm at lovers peak and finding it very difficult, dodging the taken coming from each side while focusing the flashlight and reloading the gun takes some coordination! I keep getting hit anyway! then i'm outta bullets and there's 7 and i can't get away. :lol:

When you start to get overwhelmed flares are your friends. You can light one and hold it while you run if there is a safe light source nearby or you can drop it to the ground and reload both the gun and flashlight while standing in it's glow.

No flares! :( I've got 12 bullets, no batteries and 7 taken ... I must be doing something wrong cause when i destroy the shroud i just keep shooting the taken and they are like bullet sponges so i've got is a flashlight and a pair of legs haha! it's a little bit unsettling being surrounded by the taken but Alan Wake really needs better cardio to be able to reach the next light given the odds.

That definitely sounds wrong. The second chapter has lots of flares and batteries, they are in boxes next to just about every safe zone light. Also the taken should die in 2-3 shots once the shroud is destroyed. Are you sure you're destroying them completley? I would suggest starting that chapter over again and trying again, you may have run into some wierd kind of glitch.

I may do, i found it too frustrating having to insert a battery while fighting off the taken and control the camera to keep going back and i don't mind a challenge, i've been playing Dark Souls lol! But i started playing AN recently and i found that a lot better, either the controls are better or it just clicked for me though there is more space to run around but the controls felt a bit more precise.

I'll replay the chapter and try to be more sparing with the weapons and bullets, there's no way to pass the section i'm at, not enough bullets and i even ran back to get as many as i could. :-/

Sometime the Taken just spawn non-stop. I felt cheated at first because i kept firing at them, but minutes later i figure out i just need to run at the nearest safe haven / light. Usually when you're massively overwhelmed, that indicate you have to make a run, not fighting them. Just drop a couple of flare off to the ground to buy yourself some time.