Seeing all the excitement around Alan Wake II forced me into the realisation that I've never played a Remedy game! As its sequel is the one I'm most interested in, I figured the first Alan Wake would make for the best starting point (though apparently I should play Control too before Alan Wake II?).
The problem with making myself write a review for every game I play is that sometimes I'm not really in the space for it, though this is game-dependent. I finished Echo Night 2 on the morning of the day I finished Alan Wake, yet while I had very straightforwardly positive thoughts on that game my feelings towards Alan Wake are disorganised. Its points of reference are less common, its genre and tone are more difficult to pin down. It's a unique, fantastic game with a lot of major issues, and I'm just not down to the task of trying to say anything coherent about it.
So I won't! Instead, I'll praise it for being an oddly fun game to sit and watch other people play. My girlfriend and I don't really watch each other play games much, but for some reason Alan Wake has proved to be the exception. I think it hits that balance of genuine atmosphere and intrigue vs jankiness and camp. There's a good amount of fun to be had acting like a total freak in the walk-and-talks, with plenty of weird platforming opportunities and physics objects to play around with.
The problem with making myself write a review for every game I play is that sometimes I'm not really in the space for it, though this is game-dependent. I finished Echo Night 2 on the morning of the day I finished Alan Wake, yet while I had very straightforwardly positive thoughts on that game my feelings towards Alan Wake are disorganised. Its points of reference are less common, its genre and tone are more difficult to pin down. It's a unique, fantastic game with a lot of major issues, and I'm just not down to the task of trying to say anything coherent about it.
So I won't! Instead, I'll praise it for being an oddly fun game to sit and watch other people play. My girlfriend and I don't really watch each other play games much, but for some reason Alan Wake has proved to be the exception. I think it hits that balance of genuine atmosphere and intrigue vs jankiness and camp. There's a good amount of fun to be had acting like a total freak in the walk-and-talks, with plenty of weird platforming opportunities and physics objects to play around with.