I came out of this one a little mixed. I loved the Oldest House and it’s weirdness, austere and striking style, and how it hints at depths and strangeness you can only imagine. There are so many cool ideas here, and I loved discovering through its documents, video and audio clips, and terrifying puppet shows. This game is seriously unsettling at times, even when it might not mean to be. The writing and voice acting is great, and like Alan Wake has a tone and style all its own. It respects your intelligence, and isn’t afraid to be weird, abstract and wryly humorous. More than anything that might be what I loved here, a game with a style and tone all its own, that I’d love to see more of.

I enjoyed the slower sections of this game, the exploration, the light puzzle solving. The combat wore me down though. It starts out quite fun, particularly as you gain new abilities. It eventually became a persistent roadblock for me, another tedious wave of enemies to mow down so I could get back to exploring. There was just too much of it, and for the DLC I put on the cheats so I could enjoy it unencumbered. I would’ve preferred if there had been more of the abstract puzzle solving, kinetic movement and exploration than shooting. It felt more appropriate for this game. Still, I’m very interested to see where Alan Wake 2 goes from here, as the final ‘AWE’ DLC was excellent.