The current state of gaming is buying a game on PC just for it to be unoptimized as all Hell, then refunding it and having to buy it on console with an extra $10 "fuck you" fee added on top. I opened this game to the audio just straight up not functioning no matter what I did to fix it. It definitely set the scary tone of the game, that's for sure.
I really badly wanted to like this one. I played Alan Wake 1 when it was originally released and while I didn't remember most of what happened, I did have fond memories of it. There is a lot to like in this game, but also a lot to really despise, personally.
First I want to give this game a lot of credit for telling it's narrative in ways that I truly did not expect. Both of the characters that you play as have their own unique abilities that help progress the story and dig a little deeper into the mystery of what is going on. Saga has the more combat heavy sections where she's constantly asking the questions, while Alan uses environmental puzzles to answer those questions in his own chapters. It was an intriguing way to sift through all of the confusion that was elevated by Alan's literal interpretation of environmental storytelling. The FMV movies are quite goofy at first, but help sell the surreal weirdness of the conflict at hand. It's so unserious and serious at the same time and I give them props for going all in with it. The meta scenes didn't always hit, but when they did, they were quite fun.
I wish that the gameplay and level design would have matched that level of quality though. This game had a lot of awesome ideas on paper that just didn't quite stick the landing and that's where most of my gripes are. The characters when they're in active combat feel so excruciatingly slow, like there's zero urgency. You'll find yourself waltzing down a windy path, just to get bum rushed by 4 Olympian athletes who take 15 bullets each to drop. The dodge is barely effective and the time it takes to reload your guns is way too long. It's hard to enjoy some of the more fantastic scenes in this game when they're bogged down by the horrendous last stand combat sections. I love the aspect of having to blast bad guys with a light source before dealing damage, but it feels like a chore here. There's no way to cancel it out once you've started doing it, and half the time it takes more than 1 bar to eliminate the darkness on a single enemy. I just found it incredibly tedious. It's definitely the worst part of the game. Also, there are a lot of jumpscares that really did nothing but cover the screen for a few seconds.
Alan's chapters were less combat oriented and more trippy, but his segments were also annoying as shit in their own right. I feel like both characters suffer from similar things, where the chapters really establish this effectively spooky tension just in look and atmosphere alone, but then they're eventually ruined by the fact that most of the level design leads to stumbling around in pitch black hallways for way longer than you intend. I get that being extremely confused is the point, but it turns the horror into annoyance rather quickly. Alan's main ability of changing his environment is a fantastic idea, but his changes are often so subtle that it just leads to you rewriting the scene over and over again while he keeps saying "Bro, I think I'm onto something." At that point, you realize you're just trapped in this dude's awful writing and want to end it all.
Saga's detective board was also a good idea in theory, but it also lead to being somewhat groan-inducing as well. The problem with it mainly is that I was putting the pieces of the story together at a much faster rate than she was, and I don't know if that's just because I played one too many Alan segments before hers or what, but there were often times where I couldn't progress the story because Saga wouldn't let me without putting her evidence on the wall first. I would be exploring around and seeing important items that come into play later, only to be roadblocked from getting them because she didn't have her "A-ha!" moment yet. It was a really weird mechanic that didn't seem to take the player's diverging exploration into account, which was a bit of a time waster when you accidentally found things out of order and get invisible walled.
This was just sort of not my cup of tea overall, but it gets a lot of points for the genuine creativity. The narrative is really interesting up until the end, where it kind of just gives off "middle sibling in between a trilogy" vibes. I want to see more ideas like this in games though and I'm interested in seeing where Remedy goes from here. They have something nice cooking up so I hope they lean even further into the madness instead. The fun meta singy songy meme bits were a really creative way to dump exposition after 13 years, but it was not enough to save the rest of the game for me, which bored me to tears.
I really badly wanted to like this one. I played Alan Wake 1 when it was originally released and while I didn't remember most of what happened, I did have fond memories of it. There is a lot to like in this game, but also a lot to really despise, personally.
First I want to give this game a lot of credit for telling it's narrative in ways that I truly did not expect. Both of the characters that you play as have their own unique abilities that help progress the story and dig a little deeper into the mystery of what is going on. Saga has the more combat heavy sections where she's constantly asking the questions, while Alan uses environmental puzzles to answer those questions in his own chapters. It was an intriguing way to sift through all of the confusion that was elevated by Alan's literal interpretation of environmental storytelling. The FMV movies are quite goofy at first, but help sell the surreal weirdness of the conflict at hand. It's so unserious and serious at the same time and I give them props for going all in with it. The meta scenes didn't always hit, but when they did, they were quite fun.
I wish that the gameplay and level design would have matched that level of quality though. This game had a lot of awesome ideas on paper that just didn't quite stick the landing and that's where most of my gripes are. The characters when they're in active combat feel so excruciatingly slow, like there's zero urgency. You'll find yourself waltzing down a windy path, just to get bum rushed by 4 Olympian athletes who take 15 bullets each to drop. The dodge is barely effective and the time it takes to reload your guns is way too long. It's hard to enjoy some of the more fantastic scenes in this game when they're bogged down by the horrendous last stand combat sections. I love the aspect of having to blast bad guys with a light source before dealing damage, but it feels like a chore here. There's no way to cancel it out once you've started doing it, and half the time it takes more than 1 bar to eliminate the darkness on a single enemy. I just found it incredibly tedious. It's definitely the worst part of the game. Also, there are a lot of jumpscares that really did nothing but cover the screen for a few seconds.
Alan's chapters were less combat oriented and more trippy, but his segments were also annoying as shit in their own right. I feel like both characters suffer from similar things, where the chapters really establish this effectively spooky tension just in look and atmosphere alone, but then they're eventually ruined by the fact that most of the level design leads to stumbling around in pitch black hallways for way longer than you intend. I get that being extremely confused is the point, but it turns the horror into annoyance rather quickly. Alan's main ability of changing his environment is a fantastic idea, but his changes are often so subtle that it just leads to you rewriting the scene over and over again while he keeps saying "Bro, I think I'm onto something." At that point, you realize you're just trapped in this dude's awful writing and want to end it all.
Saga's detective board was also a good idea in theory, but it also lead to being somewhat groan-inducing as well. The problem with it mainly is that I was putting the pieces of the story together at a much faster rate than she was, and I don't know if that's just because I played one too many Alan segments before hers or what, but there were often times where I couldn't progress the story because Saga wouldn't let me without putting her evidence on the wall first. I would be exploring around and seeing important items that come into play later, only to be roadblocked from getting them because she didn't have her "A-ha!" moment yet. It was a really weird mechanic that didn't seem to take the player's diverging exploration into account, which was a bit of a time waster when you accidentally found things out of order and get invisible walled.
This was just sort of not my cup of tea overall, but it gets a lot of points for the genuine creativity. The narrative is really interesting up until the end, where it kind of just gives off "middle sibling in between a trilogy" vibes. I want to see more ideas like this in games though and I'm interested in seeing where Remedy goes from here. They have something nice cooking up so I hope they lean even further into the madness instead. The fun meta singy songy meme bits were a really creative way to dump exposition after 13 years, but it was not enough to save the rest of the game for me, which bored me to tears.