I appreciate some things that this game does, otherwise I would've dropped it like every other Remedy game I tried. I finished it thinking that in the end I would've rather watched an Alan Wake tv series.

When you make a narrative that strives to be very out there and meta, you should ensure that the gameplay matches the weirdness or you end up with a disconnect. That's exactly what I felt whenever the shift happens from story to gameplay.

There's nothing interesting about Remedy's approach to survival horror, in fact they watered it down in many aspects. The levels are mostly designed around linear progression, puzzles are rehashed more often than not, enemy variety is very lacking and the resource gathering is made boring by the amount of powerups that are utterly useless and the dynamic drops. There's just no flavour to the design here, nothing about the gameplay makes me recommend Alan Wake II alongside genre staples like RE or Silent Hill.

It's quite a shame, since when it comes to the storytelling I really fuck with their inspirations and I won't deny their great taste in music and visual direction. I wish I could just watch a film or series that is just an expanded version of whatever that finnish fever dream movie was in the cinema level.

Maybe one day Remedy will be brave enough to not only make their narrative weird and meta, but also the gameplay.