Alan Wake

"Mirror Peak" is in chapter three. When you start towards Cauldron Lake, the timer starts—thirty minutes. Essentially, you'll need to evade every battle that you can, and the run will still be relatively tight. (You'll most likely come within five minutes of the deadline.) Try to only bother with the Taken/poltergeists DIRECTLY in your way. This run is good practice for doing Nightmare mode.

Technique-wise: (1) Complete the level once, first. You won't be able to reasonably collect everything AND make the time on your first run. If you do a second run right afterwards, you'll be familiar with the locations of the ladders and switches. I linked a great collectibles guide for other Alan Wake solutions. (2) When you replay the episode (from the title screen), set the difficulty low. This will reduce the amount of health for each Taken/poltergeist on the chance that you need to defeat one. (3) Hit up the supply crates that do not take you far off the path, as your flares and flare gun ammo are extremely precious. Hold flares for escaping packs of Taken and for burning away poltergeist walls while under attack. Most of the time, you'll need to just run for the next light. If it's a generator, always throw down a flare while you start it up. (4) Either fight poltergeist objects with an object in your path (so they don't hit you), or dodge them so you can make a run for it. This goes for the train, unless you need the achievement for destroying it. (5) The car will protect you, stay inside of it.

YES, you can pause the game, or even turn it off. It's counting the seconds you're running. I'm not sure how it handles deaths—you can certainly die a handful of times, and it has been said that your run times are based on your checkpoint times and not on your cumulative time in the level. This has been confirmed in the comments.

And if you want a visual, here's a three parter from YouTube by Flikffxi:

So as the achievement states, you have to make it from the Coal Mine Museum down to Cauldron lake in 30 real time minutes.

NOTE: I set a timer for myself as a way to keep track and to ensure that I would not fail. Whatever you choose will work.

This "timer" starts after you receive the phone call from the kidnapper and it pops up when the mini cut scene when Alan sees the flashing light once you are out of the mine and looking down on Cauldron Lake.

Another tip for this achievement is do it separately from your play-throughs. I did it on Normal, and whenever possible, bypass the Taken. When you have the car by the train tracks, drive to the generator to switch it off, but before you get out, park it close to the stairs so you can easily get right back in and drive back to the previously electrified fence.

Last note, if you get stuck or get lost, restart your checkpoint because it will also reset your time from what it was when you FIRST hit that checkpoint.

Hope this helps!

It is a good idea to have played chapter three through a few times so that you are familiar with the landscape, Taken attacks, and tricky sections. This way you will be aware of big ambush locations, bottlenecks, and how much you'll likely need to ration your ammo (as well as how much of the good stuff you'll end up with).

The key piece of advice is to handle this as you would the 'Gunless Wonder' achievement or a run through on Nightmare, i.e avoid every fight if at all possible, stay in the car as much as you can, and RUN. Large packs of Taken can be largely avoided through smart use of flares or by a well aimed/timed flare-gun/flash-bang shot, and poltergeist objects can be dodged and eventually outrun, so don't waste time and ammo on them unless you absolutely have to or have managed to get penned in.

Don't waste time on collectables or out of the way chests and only go for 'safe chests' - namely the ones which don't come with a nasty Taken ambush - if you feel you need to. When you reach the train yard, there is a car at the exact point where you drop down. Use it. It will shave a large amount of time off your run and save priceless ammo and risk of death. Hop in, drive to the end of the yard and park up. As soon as you hit the switch, jump back in, ignoring the poltergeist objects and Taken and drive for the end of the yard where the broken fence is, ignoring everything, but avoiding a head-on with poltergeist stuff if you can. Don't worry if your car gets bashed to hell before the end, just bail out and run... as soon as you jump over the broken section of fence, no Taken can reach you or will follow you, so don't bother fighting and just make this your goal. The dodge move will be your friend here!

The other big panic sections are the large Taken smashing down the door at the top of the mine (flashbang him for a swift exit, don't muck about) and Cynthia Weaver's old mansion. The mansion is the last big hurdle and is a royal pain if penned in. It will essentially be a bottleneck of Taken as you fall through the floor and have to get back up to the top again. Don't waste time fighting here... you won't need any gear from this point, so if you have flash bangs, then use them to clear your way to the stairs, or if you have flares, drop them. But don't fight, run. Head straight for the stairs (it can be easy to get disoriented in the confusion) and run up. Drop a flare behind you if you're panicky and keep going. Be careful how you jump the gap - you don't want to fall back down there - and drop down off the roof. Now breathe. And run.

The achievement pops when you get to Cauldron Lake and there's a short cutscene, specifically at the point of the "Wheels Within Wheels" achievement.

General anecdotal advice for this achievement: I played through on Normal, not looking out for collectibles and taking my time, I didn't get the achievement on Normal. Then, I played through on Hard, while making sure to get every single collectible, still didn't get the achievement.

Then, I played through on Nightmare, getting every single Nightmare mode manuscript page along the way, including in this section. I even didn't bother trying for this achievement. I took my time, but having gained knowledge of the level from my Normal and Hard playthroughs, I went through it relatively smoothly and quickly. I even stopped completely for the day, shutting down my Xbox and everything. Then I continued the next day, dying a few times and going out of my way to get Nightmare mode manuscript pages, as well as not really avoiding any fight (but certainly not going to find the unnecessary ones), and I was surprised when the achievement popped. It really wasn't that difficult to be honest.

An important tip is that if you're going for collectibles, like I was, then grab them, and afterwards restart the checkpoint; the collectibles are saved through that (even though you can still pick up manuscript pages after you've found them before, they are still unlocked even if you choose not to pick them up because you did so before).

Good luck! If I can do it on Nightmare difficulty while taking my time and getting collectibles, anyone can do it on Normal difficulty without trying for collectibles and actually trying to go quickly.

The achievement guide/solution is in the attached video:

(Disclaimer: May contain spoilers)
(Credits: Frozen Nut Studios & Gamerscore Whores)
(PM me for any achievement related to Alan Wake)