Hyped for Alan Wake 2, and thought I'd play the original game before playing that one (and then I found out you should apparently play Control as well, and maybe Max Payne and Quantum Break, so I still haven't gotten to it...), and I can't say I'm super impressed by AW1. I mean, it's not a bad game, but I had hoped for a lot more considering the praise it got back in the day, when I wanted to play it but didn't own a 360.
Alan Wake does start out fun, with nice Twin Peaks vibes and an intriguing, trippy mystery where Alan has to find his suddenly missing wife, but I feel like the plot is really interesting during the first chapter, and then it doesn't really go anywhere interesting until maybe the second to last chapter, and that's a lot of game to not have that much happen other than Alan being confused in the woods. The game keeps being fairly weird for its entirety but not in an interesting way, and more like Sam Lake wasn't really sure how to progress things so he just threw things in that were vague enough that they'd sort of work in a way where you'd just accept the weirdness and move on. This does result in a couple of really cool ideas, to be fair, but most of it just feels like a very watered down David Lynch, without his abstract artist's mind and dream logic, and more weird for the sake of being weird. I do love the idea of collecting manuscript pages telling you about the lives of the different townspeople, though.
Actually playing Alan Wake is sort of the same, I guess. It has a lot of good ideas, but execution leaves a bit to be desired. Chapter 1 is pretty cool, where you're running around the dark woods and scrambling to light up the shadow enemies before shooting them, but then you get to chapter 2 and it's basically the exact same woods, and then chapter 3 where... it's even more woods, and I was getting so tired of running around in these very samey looking environments, with enemies spawning constantly, and even more often when going off the beaten which is a shame since the game often wants you to explore at least a bit to find collectibles and ammo stashes, but I just stopped doing that since I couldn't take more of this tedious combat where enemies would just show up from every direction and waste my time. Not like they're difficult to fight either, just very tedious when they keep on coming and you always have to shine enough light with a flashlight (that uses the worst batteries in history) in order to hurt them, and Alan's piss poor stamina ensures that you can't really run away from most encounters without constantly having to dodge attacks coming from behind.
Luckily, the game does get better at chapter 4. Still a lot of combat, but we get some new environments that aren't just completely open forests and much smarter encounter design where you can really take advantage of area layouts during fights, and also really trap yourself in smaller spaces which at least adds some tension to the battles. Enemy variety still sucks, but it does feel a lot more fun to play when there is a bit more variety, and there are even some fun set pieces thrown in that really livened things up whenever they showed up. I do wish there was a bit less combat and a bit more of that nice, Finnish atmosphere with a touch of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness that the game does have sometimes, and definitely more during the final three chapters than the three preceding, but there is definitely too much shooting and too little cool exploration overall. There're also some very weird driving segments that don't really add anything, but I guess anything that isn't shooting at yet another shadow man is a plus in my book.
God, I really sound like I disliked Alan Wake, Don't I? I really didn't, to be clear, and I don't even think the core gameplay of lighting up enemies in order to then shoot them is bad, it's even pretty clever given that the game was made at a time when every other game was a pretty basic third person shooter, but there's just too much of it when I was mostly interested in finding and reading more manuscript pages, having Alan get more and more confused the further into the game I got, and explore some cool places without constantly being interrupted by enemies. I mean, Uncharted was never exactly the thinking man's game, but it at least had light puzzling and platforming so as to not constantly have Drake in combat, and Alan Wake really could have needed something similar just to give some moments of relaxation and variety here and there. The story is intriguing, though, and I do want to play Alan Wake 2 even more now to see how it continues and if some of the cool things this game does are fleshed out a bit, and if Alan has worked on his cardio since 2010.
The DLC episodes included with this remaster sucks, though. They add nothing of note to the story, have way too much combat and even throw in some pretty terrible platforming to make matters worse.
Alan Wake does start out fun, with nice Twin Peaks vibes and an intriguing, trippy mystery where Alan has to find his suddenly missing wife, but I feel like the plot is really interesting during the first chapter, and then it doesn't really go anywhere interesting until maybe the second to last chapter, and that's a lot of game to not have that much happen other than Alan being confused in the woods. The game keeps being fairly weird for its entirety but not in an interesting way, and more like Sam Lake wasn't really sure how to progress things so he just threw things in that were vague enough that they'd sort of work in a way where you'd just accept the weirdness and move on. This does result in a couple of really cool ideas, to be fair, but most of it just feels like a very watered down David Lynch, without his abstract artist's mind and dream logic, and more weird for the sake of being weird. I do love the idea of collecting manuscript pages telling you about the lives of the different townspeople, though.
Actually playing Alan Wake is sort of the same, I guess. It has a lot of good ideas, but execution leaves a bit to be desired. Chapter 1 is pretty cool, where you're running around the dark woods and scrambling to light up the shadow enemies before shooting them, but then you get to chapter 2 and it's basically the exact same woods, and then chapter 3 where... it's even more woods, and I was getting so tired of running around in these very samey looking environments, with enemies spawning constantly, and even more often when going off the beaten which is a shame since the game often wants you to explore at least a bit to find collectibles and ammo stashes, but I just stopped doing that since I couldn't take more of this tedious combat where enemies would just show up from every direction and waste my time. Not like they're difficult to fight either, just very tedious when they keep on coming and you always have to shine enough light with a flashlight (that uses the worst batteries in history) in order to hurt them, and Alan's piss poor stamina ensures that you can't really run away from most encounters without constantly having to dodge attacks coming from behind.
Luckily, the game does get better at chapter 4. Still a lot of combat, but we get some new environments that aren't just completely open forests and much smarter encounter design where you can really take advantage of area layouts during fights, and also really trap yourself in smaller spaces which at least adds some tension to the battles. Enemy variety still sucks, but it does feel a lot more fun to play when there is a bit more variety, and there are even some fun set pieces thrown in that really livened things up whenever they showed up. I do wish there was a bit less combat and a bit more of that nice, Finnish atmosphere with a touch of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness that the game does have sometimes, and definitely more during the final three chapters than the three preceding, but there is definitely too much shooting and too little cool exploration overall. There're also some very weird driving segments that don't really add anything, but I guess anything that isn't shooting at yet another shadow man is a plus in my book.
God, I really sound like I disliked Alan Wake, Don't I? I really didn't, to be clear, and I don't even think the core gameplay of lighting up enemies in order to then shoot them is bad, it's even pretty clever given that the game was made at a time when every other game was a pretty basic third person shooter, but there's just too much of it when I was mostly interested in finding and reading more manuscript pages, having Alan get more and more confused the further into the game I got, and explore some cool places without constantly being interrupted by enemies. I mean, Uncharted was never exactly the thinking man's game, but it at least had light puzzling and platforming so as to not constantly have Drake in combat, and Alan Wake really could have needed something similar just to give some moments of relaxation and variety here and there. The story is intriguing, though, and I do want to play Alan Wake 2 even more now to see how it continues and if some of the cool things this game does are fleshed out a bit, and if Alan has worked on his cardio since 2010.
The DLC episodes included with this remaster sucks, though. They add nothing of note to the story, have way too much combat and even throw in some pretty terrible platforming to make matters worse.