To be prepared to play Alan Wake 2, which is one of the most awarded games last year, I played the original title to catch up with the story.

I think the strengths of this game are his narrative and his charismatic characters. The plot is well written, as a real mystery novel, and is interesting enough to make you complete the game.

The adventure takes place in Bright falls, an seemingly peaceful village inhabited by strange people. The game invites you to explore his surroundings, rewarding you with collectible items almost every time you stray from the main path.

In therms of gameplay, it presents some original ideas, like the use of the flashlight to fight "The Dark Presence". But in the end the game can feel repetitive, due the lack of variety of enemies, weapons or puzzles.

Finally, this remaster includes two extra episodes which don't offer much more than more challenging zones

After experiencing a taste of what Remedy games have to offer, and because the general premise of Alan Wake sounded interesting to me (a writer whose work on a horror story comes to life), I decided to check out the remaster of the original game. Thankfully the remaster had just recently come out (well, relatively speaking). As far as I’m aware it’s the definitive way to experience the game, as it’s just the original Xbox 360 title but with improved visual features and 60fps. I was also looking forward to Alan Wake 2 afterward because it was a survival horror game (which is right up my alley) instead of an action thriller like the original, and because of how much praise it was getting. I won’t spend too much time on the plot as a lot of elements I didn’t understand until I read up on it via wiki pages and whatnot, but it was at the very least intriguing. Remedy is good at creating worlds you start to get sucked into the more you play through them, and this one is no different. As the game goes on you begin to question unfolding events the further you go. Granted, the manuscript pages you collect completely spoil later events that happen in the story, just in a haphazard order which is kind of bizarre. This game unironically also has Kingdom Hearts-esc dialogue and I love it for that. I kid you not towards the end of the game Alan starts going on about light and darkness like he’s arguing with Organization 13. Also Barry Wheeler rules, he’s just a mini Enzo who’s also Alan’s manager. Best character in the entire game. There were also mentions of TiVo in this story of all things which made me remember “Oh yeah this was made in 2010, forgot about that”. I guess if anything else, props to Alan Wake remastered for reminding me that TiVo is a thing that existed.

This game is the textbook definition of “flawed but fun”. The combat works but it’s a complete mess in a lot of different areas. You have to shine a light on the enemies and hold it on them until it breaks their shield, to which you can fire at them with regular guns and remove them from the equation. It gets a bit repetitive having to do the same technique repeatedly, especially with how long it takes to remove darkness shields from enemies. Still, in regular 1v1 encounters, it’s perfectly fine. You even get a variety of different weapons: close-range shotguns, hunting rifles, a flare gun, and flares. What’s odd about the weapons in this game is that you don’t keep them between chapters. You sort of just…lose all your equipment and get them back one by one at the beginning of a new chapter. You’re even able to swap weapon variants out at points; like you can swap between a pump action shotgun or a double-barreled shotgun at designated locations, and you can even change out the shotgun you have for a hunting rifle. There are extra collectibles in this game as well, but they aren’t anything to write home about sadly. Outside of the aforementioned manuscript pages, the coffee thermoses just exist for the sake of having things to collect, nothing more. They’re achievement fodder, and if you miss one beforehand (and you will), you’ll start to care about a majority of the other thermoses out there less and less. There’s just really no point in picking them up as they have nothing to offer outside of intrinsic achievement value.

The gunplay in this game is weird in that you don’t aim like a traditional shooter, the game sort of autoaims for you. This has admittedly been somewhat finicky for me as there have been times when I’ve readied my weapon but the gun still misses the enemy even when I’m facing directly at them, which is frustrating. Some things are just plain unfun to go against, such as the possessed objects that can only be destroyed by shining your flashlight on them and require that you use the dodge mechanic which…feels more like a drunken stumble than anything else. There are also the groups of shadow crows where you just need to shine your light on them to get rid of them, except that if you do it for too long they fly away and group up for another attack, meaning you need to kill them in one go or you need to wait for them to come back around.

However, I think the biggest fault with the combat lies in the structure itself. The gunplay is primarily designed for one, maybe two enemies at a time. When there are multiple groups of enemies onscreen this game completely falls apart and crumples under the pressure. The only way you’re realistically dealing with a group of enemies is either with the flare gun which can wipe out a group in one go, or with flashbang grenades which…pretty much do the same thing. The overly drawn-out flashlight takes a considerable amount of time to burn away the darkness shield for one enemy: in a large group it’s far too easy to get ganged up on. Granted simply shining your flashlight on a single enemy temporarily stuns them so there is a slight element of multitasking, but it’s just not enough. What’s even worse, I’ve often had recorded instances of enemies completely blindsiding me offscreen, either with some random axe that I would NEVER see coming or with a taken itself. Like, there was one time when the camera focused on 2 taken enemies coming towards me so that I could prepare, and then some random taken came up from behind me and completely cheapshot blindsided me unrelated to these other two. There is a way to know when there are enemies outside of Alan’s camera view but it’s way too subtle to even be noticeable. Not helping things is the sprint, it’s legit almost as bad as Sebastian’s sprint in The Evil Within 1. It’s not QUITE as bad but it’ll start to get on your nerves in the long run.

Outside of that though, I did still managed to enjoy myself for what it’s worth. I don’t think I’d replay this game again unless it’s years down the line; it’s incredibly flawed and is more of a “one and done” affair to me, but still: I didn’t hate it at all. It was repetitive and pretty rough around the edges at times (even on a technical level, I saw the giant red "missing mesh" error cubes inserted in geometry and just thought it was part of the actual game) but I still managed to finish it completely and even played the DLC afterward (which thankfully comes packaged with the remaster). If I were going to get to Alan Wake 2 eventually, this would simply be the necessary step forward.

something something lake something something ocean

Hello darkness my old friend
When I was a kid I used to be afraid of the dark and watched a LOT of Twin Peaks.
I got used to it so much that being in the dark felt like an old acquaintance always watching on my shoulders.
Playing this game felt just like that, though this time it's trying to kill you while sinking its teeth in your thoughts and doubts.

An amazing game overall.
A childhood welcome back love letter kind of game.
Alan maybe my favourite character in the Remedyverse games.
Also Old Gods of Asgard/Poets of the Fall fucking rock!!

Honestly one of the worst games I've ever completed. It tries so hard with its story to act like its deep and meaningful but it is simply a bad game that goes no where. All the crap with the clicker and darkness made me bored out of my mind. The protagonist is unlikeable and his monologues are so poorly written I felt like I was trapped in a highschool English class forced to read the same pretentious short story over and over again. There's constant references to other writers who can actually write but they do nothing and are included just to be references. Game is extremely repetitive with kill exact same 3 enemy types over and over to reach location, Alan has a bullshit monologue about things that don't matter then you're off to the next location. I can't think of anything I liked from this game, like seriously nothing. I've noticed a lot of these Remedy games try to be a movie and even include real recorded, horribly acted segments but they aren't movies anyone would watch. Not even if you were stuck in a motel with nothing but cable. The team should just transfer to creating crappy B Sci Fi movies for Tubi.

Such a interesting piece of work. In a lot of ways Alan wake isn't that good. It's gameplay is a bit repetitive and mundane, a lot of wandering around through the same woods (Which I don't mind), the funkiest movement system I've ever seen both when walking and driving but all of this is saved but what the game excels at.

The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic, all pieces of tidbits you can find make a compelling world that you can get immersed through, its main story, (including its concepts and characters) is really enjoyable with a lot of depth that made me so interested in all the game was revealing and left at the hedge of my seat. Also sidenote, the way the game is presented as a tv series is really nice way to approach its narrative even if sometimes ends in a bit of awkward moments.

Again, I didn't think I would enjoy the game this much at the end, since I wasn't really feeling in the beginning (Heck, I bought and played this game in february, and only now did I completed it) but if you are even remotely interested in its premise I would definitely recommend it trying it out.

It reminded me a lot of Deadly Premonitions, in both the good and bad way. It's a very engaging experience with a lot of cool gimmicks and a unique vision for the story. It's abstract and out there.

Mechanically it's super simple and slow. The levels are all mostly tedious, but they at least attempt to throw in variety with the driving, and the more open maps.

I think overall it isn't really a great game, but I just like something about it. It's very endearing. The story leaves you wanting to know what will happen. It's paced pretty well honestly.

I'd love to play the sequel some day, but this was decent in its own right. Any game that reminds me of Deadly Premonitions gets brownie points.

first things first: what was the coffee thermos ?!?!?! i questioned that during the whole game. ig health regenerates faster ??? i could never figure it out lol

i had to think a bit about how to rate this game. it took me a while to warm up to it. the beginning episodes don't do it justice, mostly because the story is just starting to pick up. the combat mechanics sound cool on paper, but they get repetitive REALLY quickly. i would say that was the main downside for me. it's tough to rate a game from 2010 with 2024 experience though, so i don't wanna focus too much on what it lacks in mechanics.

story is kinda interesting ? weird and surprising for sure, but it didn't really hit for me? the pacing was nice, a lot of diversity from the cinematics and the manuscript pages. it was enough to keep me going, but i was a bit done with it by the end. Alan has boring and generic straight-white-male vibes. some parts were so funny though, you can feel the Remedy humour and i love that! the hospital patient who was a game developer and has a breakdown about producers felt like such a meta-character. also, the QR codes ? i loved t h a t.

even though it has a couple of misses, i've never really played a game like it. it makes me super excited to play the second one tho, so it definitely did its job in my eyes.

I didn’t want to be harsh with Alan Wake, because i like the plot and Sam Lake's crazy storytelling. But unfortunately, this game is horrible. The first two hours are pretty cool, inviting, intriguing, some horror moments, but after that it's all downhill.

Eventually the game abruptly stop the story events to throw a big round of enemies to face, for no reason. The plot doesn't progress, it has no rhythm at all. The gameplay is EXTREMELY repetitive, boring, uninspired, and no story can hold this shitshow together. It's clear that they made a 4-hour game and Microsoft forced Remedy to extend the campaign to at least 12-hours. Because there are hordes and more hordes of senseless enemies ALL the time, a terrible gameplay loop.

Remedy lost its way in the proposal of its game. Alan Wake wants to be a intriguing storytelling game with shootaround and horror moments, like Spec Ops: The Line, Silent Hill or Resident Evil. But it fails miserably in every possible way. Besides being a bad game, it's also predictable. Extremely dated.

A game that's focused on being the light in the darkness is one that has very bright moments of brilliance among a pile of flaws. Okay, I needed to let that weird and probably inaccurate metaphor out of my brain. Let's actually break this down.

I got into Alan Wake by recommendation of my brother and any fan of Remedy's games I could find on the internet. So I decided to finally give it a shot! After FFVII Rebirth I wanted to play some shorter games to wind down from such a massive RPG.

Now, after playing it, my usual reaction to anyone who told me to try it out is a mix of “Why? Why would you make me do this?” and “I genuinely understand the vision, and I share it as well".

And that is born from the fact that playing the actual videogame is not very fun. And while I found the idea of having to break enemies' guards with a flashlight first before being able to damage them (not counting flare gun shots and flashbangs) very cool at first, I feel like as the game goes by, the concept starts becoming very repetitive as most enemy encounters feel the same. It quickly starts to become very, very annoying. Specially when you have the entire army of darkness throwing homing axes and machetes at you that you usually have to avoid by using the most unreliable dodge button ever put in an action game.

However, every time I would get into a section of the game where I could just watch the story unravel, read a manuscript, listen to a radio show, or watch the characters interact, it was delightful. It's a bizarre story that's surprisingly funny (whether it's intentional or not) at times, with interesting ways of preparing its plot twists and making the player believe they are going just as insane as Alan himself is.

What I'm trying to say, is that 1. I don't think that Alan is as unlikeable as a lot of people led me to believe, while he gives an awful first impression. It takes having to interact with a friend that has a creative hobby, whether it is writing, animating, drawing, you name it, you quickly come to realize that being creatively blocked fucking sucks, and I can also speak from experience with that. And 2. Barry is absolutely GOATED, I wish I had half of his charisma.

At the end of the day, even if I had my complaints with the gameplay itself, I found myself in more situations where I would go, “Oh, this is why people love these games,” and I want to see more of it. Soon I'll go into the DLCs, and maybe later this year, both Control and the direct sequel because I HAVE to know more.