Wake is an author suffering from writers block so at his wife's insistence he takes a holiday trip with her to the picturesque rural town of Bright Falls - but when she goes missing he soon finds himself slipping into a nightmarish world of paranormal events, being stalked by shadowy killers as he tries to find the kidnapper.
The story is classic Stephen King style pulp horror and while there are some great ideas at play with interesting twists and turns, it's slow to make any narrative progress across the game's 6 episodes. There's a harsh divide between story and gameplay with story only progressing in short day time sequences while the night sections make up the bulk of gameplay. Annoyingly this means the story gets put on hold for most of each episode to repeat the same night time events in each chapter: roam around the wilderness, fight shadowy enemies, and pass through an abandoned landmark.
It's also frustrating how repetitive and dull combat is when it's leaned on so heavily to fill the time. The 3 or so types of foes are all handled the same way - either the flashlight hurts them or it weakens the foe so you can shoot them. There's a bit of resource management involved, some cinematic sequences where you drive around, a puzzle or two, but mostly you're just wandering in the woods and fighting shadow people / birds. It starts novel but after a few episodes of the same mechanics and enemies it grows stale.
Overall the ideas at play are genuinely interesting and there are some fantastic set pieces and sequences buried in an original and interesting story, but there's 2 things Remedy consistently have trouble with: innovating around stale gunplay and coming up with an interesting cast of enemies. There's a lot of potential here with the whole light and dark motif it's just a shame they couldn't figure out how to keep innovating past the initial ideas. With the sequel finally on its way and given how strong Control was I'm looking forward to seeing how they can improve on this strong IP.
The story is classic Stephen King style pulp horror and while there are some great ideas at play with interesting twists and turns, it's slow to make any narrative progress across the game's 6 episodes. There's a harsh divide between story and gameplay with story only progressing in short day time sequences while the night sections make up the bulk of gameplay. Annoyingly this means the story gets put on hold for most of each episode to repeat the same night time events in each chapter: roam around the wilderness, fight shadowy enemies, and pass through an abandoned landmark.
It's also frustrating how repetitive and dull combat is when it's leaned on so heavily to fill the time. The 3 or so types of foes are all handled the same way - either the flashlight hurts them or it weakens the foe so you can shoot them. There's a bit of resource management involved, some cinematic sequences where you drive around, a puzzle or two, but mostly you're just wandering in the woods and fighting shadow people / birds. It starts novel but after a few episodes of the same mechanics and enemies it grows stale.
Overall the ideas at play are genuinely interesting and there are some fantastic set pieces and sequences buried in an original and interesting story, but there's 2 things Remedy consistently have trouble with: innovating around stale gunplay and coming up with an interesting cast of enemies. There's a lot of potential here with the whole light and dark motif it's just a shame they couldn't figure out how to keep innovating past the initial ideas. With the sequel finally on its way and given how strong Control was I'm looking forward to seeing how they can improve on this strong IP.