unfortunately doesn't really live up to the works it keeps reminding you it's inspired by. i love twin peaks, and i like the twilight zone a bit as well, but what i like about both of those works is the dense symbolism, story beats that work emotionally before logically, and the societal messaging. alan wake's story doesn't really have any of those things? it's not flat-out badly written at all, but i was left disappointed with the story because it shoots really high and keeps reminding you of that... but it doesn't really pan out into much more than a pretty uninteresting dark vs light contemporary fantasy story. there's some interesting stuff it could get into regarding writer's block and death of the author, but alan wake doesn't get too far into that, which is a real shame. i'd be able to get past this stuff if the game wasn't so obsessed with reminding you that it's supposed to be like twin peaks (seriously? the lamp lady? cmon), and i'm not holding this stuff against remedy's future installments bc there are definitely some flashes of brilliance occasionally here, just not enough to carry the story above average to me. character writing is great here though, very enjoyable and likable. when the game takes itself less seriously and allows that stuff to shine, the story is pretty fun.
as for gameplay, alan wake is a mixed bag for sure. the light system is innovative and a pretty cool idea, but enemies take too long to kill for how many the game throws at you, and the game pretty frequently forces you to kill a group of enemies before moving on. i don't think making a survival horror game more actiony is a bad idea inherently, but the waves upon waves of enemies feel present more to waste your time than to provide scares, and i never really found myself running out of resources and feeling unempowered. the hordes of enemies also feels very awkwardly integrated with the story, as it's a suuuper corny zombie-movie esque gameplay style that is being put up next to a (generally) dead serious surreal horror story. outside of the combat though, there are some interesting ideas here. alan wake is much more open than you'd expect for a cinematic set-piece type of game, which is pretty cool. i don't really find the forest setting most of the game takes place in to be too fun to explore, but i do respect the effort and i think the player is well-incentivized to engage w their environment through stuff like the manuscript pages.
always cool to get more story in a game like this, especially considering the focus of the story here.