Alan Wake: new screenshots, plus date!

Okay, if you're anything like us, you might want to sit down right about now. What was once one of the most eagerly awaited games on our radar, Alan Wake was one we were on the verge of giving up on. Years after it was first announced, there were nothing in the way of further details, a lack of new screenshots, and just the odd insistence that it was still coming.

Call us impatient if you like, but we could have bought a copy off them the very day the project was announced. Remedy, its developer, gave us the first two Max Payne games, which this writer at least classes as some of the finest gaming entertainment of the past decade.

But Alan Wake? A psychological thriller from the same people, about a suspense author who escapes to the town of Bright Falls from dreaded writers' block, only to see his fiancée disappear? And then the whole notion of finding the central character's creations coming back to haunt him? Heck, they could have had our money there and then.

But then the project disappeared for years.

And yet, just weeks after seeing Duke Nukem Forever fall after a prolonged period in development hell, Alan Wake has suddenly risen. In fact, more than that. We've got a trailer (which you can find here), fresh screenshots, and we now know when it's going to be released. Microsoft and Remedy has confirmed that it'll be heading to the Xbox 360 in the Spring of next year, although there's no mention right now of the planned PC release.

But there is the small matter of these brand new screenshots, the first to be released from the game in genuinely ages. Click on any of them to make them bigger, and then let the countdown to next Spring begin...