uncharted 2 vs alan wake

[Reasonable]

I'll let you know when I get to play Alan Wake and evaluate what it does and why.

I'd advise people to remember you have to consider the aims of the engine/game. For example, in Alan Wake lighting is key, but, but the environments might be fairly statis, or the focus might be on open world vs linear flow, how many enemies onscreen are we talking? What is the focus on enemy AI complexity? All this has to be understood to really compare the results.

I could write some code which would look beautiful visually, particularly if I could have all static backgrounds, no physics and simply focus on rendering and lighting. Now, I'm not saying that is Alan Wake or Uncharted 2, but I am saying obvious similarities aside I see these as games that nonetheless have different goals which may mean very different underlying engines.