I do want to preface this with the fact that even after this I'm still hopeful about Alan Wake 2--I think being a decade out from the shlockiness of early 2010s shooters, with the addition of being undoubtedly influenced by Twin Peaks: The Return (which is unwatchable if approached with the same lens original Twin Peaks is approached with here) will both help a lot to making this actually good. There's glimpses of good ideas here, there's some passion buried here somewhere, and from what it sounds like AW2 is a lot more out there of a game than this is which means I'm still gonna try to play it pretty soon.
But this is just kind of a complete mess. Others have dissected this in much more detail than I feel bothered to right now, but in short:
- The combat sucks, like REALLY bad. I legitimately think Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days plays better than this. The combat and encounters here are played out within the first hour and it pretty much never evolves. The light mechanic is so fucking bad, dude. In addition, the few tiny miniscule things that get added to it throughout the game all somehow make it even worse, I am glad I probably never have to sit and wait for 10 seconds for a circle to shrink on a garbage can ever again. This is what you spend like 80-90% of the runtime doing, btw, just largely pointless busywork fighting the same group of enemies over and over again so they can stretch this to 10 hours long or whatever.
- Soooo much of this shit is ripped directly, verbatim, from Twin Peaks, with functionally zero understanding of what made it work. Alan Wake's got it's own copyright-safe versions of the Bookhouse Boys (helmed by a character filling a role that feels suspiciously like Harry Truman), there's a character who is basically pre-development Albert, they've got the Log Lady, they've basically got the fucking Black Lodge, like come on now, do SOMETHING new. But in copying all of the proper nouns from Twin Peaks they completely missed that a lot of the draw of TP is atmosphere, not the sequence of events. Yeah, I'm sure Twin Peaks would have been a lot better if there was more action and it had, fucking, zombie fight scenes. This is part of why I am still hopeful for AW2, because you simply cannot approach The Return with as shallow of a mindset as you can with the earlier seasons. It's so much slower and you're pretty much required to think about it, which either didn't happen here or fell to the AAA curse of being edited out by suits trying to make something more marketable. The story isn't nearly as bad as the gameplay, not even close, there's a lot of pretty cool moments in here all things considered, but it was too little delivered too sparsely and shlocky to even remotely begin to make up for how bad the gameplay is here.
- This is one I haven't seen many people mention, but man, I fucking hate this game's soundtrack. What a bunch of Blumhouse bullshit. I expect to hear this type of played-out vague symphonic "Epic Music" drivel from the 18th Exorcist movie or whatever, not from a fuckin psychological thriller. Get a better soundtrack guy pleeeease.
That's not to say there is nothing of worth in this game--I really really liked the scattered notebook pages and their position in communicating a lot of the story. For all of the "this could have just been a movie/TV show" takes, it's important to note that the best bit of this is something that is just intrinsically very video gamey.
And again--there is potential here in what didn't end up working, there is something to be mined, but this just isn't worth your time. Once I play 2 I'll come back to this review and say how much you really need to know (it seems common for people recommending AW2 to also give a list of half a dozen other games and movies you should watch first lol), but I get the feeling like you can probably get away by reading the notebook pages online somewhere and watching some interspersed cutscenes. You are not missing anything by skipping the gameplay, which is easily the worst bit here.
post-aw2 edit: sadly i think you have to play this game, sorry. This game still sucks ass but there's so much shit in AW2 you won't be able to appreciate without context. You can probably skip Control though, I didn't play that one and knowing "the FBC is basically just SCP" tells you all you really need to know.
But this is just kind of a complete mess. Others have dissected this in much more detail than I feel bothered to right now, but in short:
- The combat sucks, like REALLY bad. I legitimately think Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days plays better than this. The combat and encounters here are played out within the first hour and it pretty much never evolves. The light mechanic is so fucking bad, dude. In addition, the few tiny miniscule things that get added to it throughout the game all somehow make it even worse, I am glad I probably never have to sit and wait for 10 seconds for a circle to shrink on a garbage can ever again. This is what you spend like 80-90% of the runtime doing, btw, just largely pointless busywork fighting the same group of enemies over and over again so they can stretch this to 10 hours long or whatever.
- Soooo much of this shit is ripped directly, verbatim, from Twin Peaks, with functionally zero understanding of what made it work. Alan Wake's got it's own copyright-safe versions of the Bookhouse Boys (helmed by a character filling a role that feels suspiciously like Harry Truman), there's a character who is basically pre-development Albert, they've got the Log Lady, they've basically got the fucking Black Lodge, like come on now, do SOMETHING new. But in copying all of the proper nouns from Twin Peaks they completely missed that a lot of the draw of TP is atmosphere, not the sequence of events. Yeah, I'm sure Twin Peaks would have been a lot better if there was more action and it had, fucking, zombie fight scenes. This is part of why I am still hopeful for AW2, because you simply cannot approach The Return with as shallow of a mindset as you can with the earlier seasons. It's so much slower and you're pretty much required to think about it, which either didn't happen here or fell to the AAA curse of being edited out by suits trying to make something more marketable. The story isn't nearly as bad as the gameplay, not even close, there's a lot of pretty cool moments in here all things considered, but it was too little delivered too sparsely and shlocky to even remotely begin to make up for how bad the gameplay is here.
- This is one I haven't seen many people mention, but man, I fucking hate this game's soundtrack. What a bunch of Blumhouse bullshit. I expect to hear this type of played-out vague symphonic "Epic Music" drivel from the 18th Exorcist movie or whatever, not from a fuckin psychological thriller. Get a better soundtrack guy pleeeease.
That's not to say there is nothing of worth in this game--I really really liked the scattered notebook pages and their position in communicating a lot of the story. For all of the "this could have just been a movie/TV show" takes, it's important to note that the best bit of this is something that is just intrinsically very video gamey.
And again--there is potential here in what didn't end up working, there is something to be mined, but this just isn't worth your time. Once I play 2 I'll come back to this review and say how much you really need to know (it seems common for people recommending AW2 to also give a list of half a dozen other games and movies you should watch first lol), but I get the feeling like you can probably get away by reading the notebook pages online somewhere and watching some interspersed cutscenes. You are not missing anything by skipping the gameplay, which is easily the worst bit here.
post-aw2 edit: sadly i think you have to play this game, sorry. This game still sucks ass but there's so much shit in AW2 you won't be able to appreciate without context. You can probably skip Control though, I didn't play that one and knowing "the FBC is basically just SCP" tells you all you really need to know.
2 Comments
You do need to legit play, or at least watch a LP/cutscene compilation of, this game because jumping into Alan Wake 2 straight away gonna leave you real confused. 2 is indeed a massive improvement though.
Also I would recommend playing Control as well because its a great game that's a big improvement over Alan Wake 1 and 2 also expects that you're familiar with what Control established.
Also I would recommend playing Control as well because its a great game that's a big improvement over Alan Wake 1 and 2 also expects that you're familiar with what Control established.
falcorito
5 months ago