really cool and i love the characters. the visual presentation is incredible, like nothing else! remedy is using its big budgets to push the medium like no other major studio right now, and that rules.
but i still can't help but feel it's missing some of the critical juice that Alan Wake 1 had which made it instantly click with me. i prefer the action-game combat and shooting in 1, where the combat in 2 takes the form of generic survival horror shooting but without resident evil's refinement. the exploration, too, feels underwhelming, because while the environments are detailed and interesting the rewards are abstracted into upgrade points, useless little charms or a surplus of health kits. it's better than Control's tedious "+5% chance to save ammo when shooting a Blumbo" stuff but combined with the slow movement that make detours into bigger time investments, there were many times when i could have explored larger sections of the map and chose not to because i didn't think it'd be worthwhile.
and then there's the story and the mysteries. i liked them, on the whole, and i was compelled all the way through, but i felt like i was butting heads with a couple of mechanics as i tried to piece it together. saga's case board and profiling mechanics are used for a couple of fun moments near the end, but they actively interrupted my attempts to organically piece together the mystery throughout the adventure by making them required to progress. the annoying thing about this is that it makes sense thematically - this isn't my story, i'm not saga, alan wants this methodicalness and he's not a great writer - he delivers exposition in clunky, unintuitive ways, and his characters often speak with the same abrupt cadence as his prose and it's kinda annoying! but it's all intentional, right? can i really criticise the game for asserting its own control over the story, over the mysteries, when that's so thematically appropriate? even if a significant part of the appeal of a mystery story, the number one thing a writer is taught about writing mysteries, is to Show Don't Tell and let the audience infer things for themselves?
i feel like Alan Wake 1 has a tighter grip on its goal. the linear levels, the fewer mechanics leading to them feeling more focused, the single-track story without digressions - it's a funny idea to make a sequel bloat outward with ideas like a vain writer who killed his editor with a light switch, but that still results in it feeling bloated. i like Alan Wake 2 a lot, i think it's better than Control and will be easier for most people to get into than Alan Wake 1 with its rough edges, but it doesn't quite hit the spot like 1 for me.
also saving the ending for your story till the DLC is kinda shit!!
but i still can't help but feel it's missing some of the critical juice that Alan Wake 1 had which made it instantly click with me. i prefer the action-game combat and shooting in 1, where the combat in 2 takes the form of generic survival horror shooting but without resident evil's refinement. the exploration, too, feels underwhelming, because while the environments are detailed and interesting the rewards are abstracted into upgrade points, useless little charms or a surplus of health kits. it's better than Control's tedious "+5% chance to save ammo when shooting a Blumbo" stuff but combined with the slow movement that make detours into bigger time investments, there were many times when i could have explored larger sections of the map and chose not to because i didn't think it'd be worthwhile.
and then there's the story and the mysteries. i liked them, on the whole, and i was compelled all the way through, but i felt like i was butting heads with a couple of mechanics as i tried to piece it together. saga's case board and profiling mechanics are used for a couple of fun moments near the end, but they actively interrupted my attempts to organically piece together the mystery throughout the adventure by making them required to progress. the annoying thing about this is that it makes sense thematically - this isn't my story, i'm not saga, alan wants this methodicalness and he's not a great writer - he delivers exposition in clunky, unintuitive ways, and his characters often speak with the same abrupt cadence as his prose and it's kinda annoying! but it's all intentional, right? can i really criticise the game for asserting its own control over the story, over the mysteries, when that's so thematically appropriate? even if a significant part of the appeal of a mystery story, the number one thing a writer is taught about writing mysteries, is to Show Don't Tell and let the audience infer things for themselves?
i feel like Alan Wake 1 has a tighter grip on its goal. the linear levels, the fewer mechanics leading to them feeling more focused, the single-track story without digressions - it's a funny idea to make a sequel bloat outward with ideas like a vain writer who killed his editor with a light switch, but that still results in it feeling bloated. i like Alan Wake 2 a lot, i think it's better than Control and will be easier for most people to get into than Alan Wake 1 with its rough edges, but it doesn't quite hit the spot like 1 for me.
also saving the ending for your story till the DLC is kinda shit!!