Alan Wake

Loads of games do this. Control did it. But Control has a fuck load of combat and speedy as fuck traversal so I didn’t mind. This is plod plod plod plod find a symbol plod plod plod plod find another one plod plod plod zzzzzz

Yet half of me still loves it. The other half might win out by the end though. A lot of what Remedy have done here should be applauded. A lot of what Remedy have done here should be kicked off a cliff.

Switched to easy for the ending bit at the lake, just wanted it to be over. 7/10 for me. Actually 6/10 in terms of gameplay, but it gets an extra point for the eye and ear candy. Ran into some bugs, and by the end I had a couple items I couldn’t place on the board, just stuck on “for later”. Missed the petting of two dear heads apparently. The fighting never got fun, and changing the levels by rewriting and the light thingy felt like trial and error in most cases.
It’s a good looking game, but the more I think about the jump scares, the board bits and the endless typical Remedy ramblings the less I like it.

Finished.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I’ll be undecided for a while I think. On all of it. For everything amazing there was something awful.

Finished it with the Platinum tonight and reckon that's Game of the Year for me in what has been a fucking incredible year.

Not even game of the month for me

I was very hyped for this. I'm not going to lie though, I feel pretty flat after finishing it. The last part of the game had one reat section that took me back to the first game and then became mired in what I can only describe as the very worst aspects of the game. I actually felt my eyelids getting heavy at one point. It should have been picking up pace towards the conclusion but it was a fucking snoozefest.

+ Game looks fucking amazing
+ The music section
+ Some of the combat encounters and enemies were fantastically creepy
+ The mix of live action and game stuff - no one does this with as much pazazz as Remedy
+ FBC!
+ Some of the light puzzles in Alan's sections were well done

- Not enough action
- The combat in the Dark place was dire (so many shadows around but only some attack you - I was always getting caught off guard to the extent I just ran past them each time)
- Saga's combat was better but encounters so few and far between. There just wasn't enough of it. The wolves were shite.
- Too many collectables and exploration. Pointless pointless pointless. "Go and explore this area" only to have most of it be mindless plodding. Then combat with a ton of enemies, using most of your ammo and heals. The rewards for said exploration was more ammo and heals. So what's the point? better just to leave it.
- Cult stashes / pages / word spirals / nursery rhymes etc etc. Far too much of it. Rewards were just ammo and heals. Or charms. All pointless as there was hardly any combat and when there was you always had enough stuff anyway.
- Mind Place: whilst a good idea initially, there wasn't enough substance there for it to be engaging. Endless sessions of dragging and dropping and listening to stuff you already knew. By the end of the game I had well and truly had enough of it.
- Alan's story changes: Again, a good idea initially that gets wrung out far too long. Rsulting in plodding around back and forth for slight changes to advance the story forward.
- Pacing: All over the place. Huge stretches of game where nothing really happened. Just plodding around the place. Plod plod plod plod. The most frenzied combat enounters took place when exploring. Good fun but pointless.
- Repetition: I was on board with the story, the ideas, and all the crazy. I don't then need everything repeated five thousand times over the next 20 odd hours. It felt like everything was played a bit too safe.
- The last hour or so was incredibly shit.

I'm liking it quite a bit more than others. It isn't Game of the Year for me or anywhere really close (BG3, Zelda, SM2 and Mario Wonder are clearly much, much better), but I'm definitely not disliking elements that a lot of people are.

Combat to me has mostly been fine, feeling weighty and fitting nicely with the survival horror style they've gone with. Only complaint with that side is that enemies take too many hits to go down and it feels a little random how much damage I actually need to do.

I really like that they have gone with something that is a little slower paced, with not so much focus on non-stop fighting of hordes. I've always felt that there should be a game that makes the act of killing have the weight that it deserves. That isn't this game, as the kill count by the end likely will hit triple figures, but it at least feels like a step in the right direction to that.

As narrative device and tone setting, the mind place stuff feels good to me. I would have liked it to be a little more of a puzzle rather than just following the dictated path. As it is, it really just boils down to document/clue collecting that is fancied up a little more than a simple menu. I'm cool with that kind of framing device, although I get why some would rather that kind of thing to be sped up with a more traditional system.

The only real big negative I have is that there is too much reliance on the flash something on screen, accompanied by loud screeching noise, jump scares. I'm not even particular far (just been through Coffee World and reached the trailer park) and that is already grating. It was effective initially, but is now getting a bit annoying and actually having the reverse of the desired effect now that I'm expecting them.

I think someone went through the game and thought, this is boring section, better spice it up with some jump scares.
Something unexpectedly crawling out of a well, now that's how you do it.

Exactly. It just went into parody mode having a scare as soon I would start walking or picking up an item.

Reminds me of the reaction to Ragnarok last year.

Critics and users gushed for the first week or so and then the negatives started to creep into online discourse.

Does the game actually randomly flash images up on the screen? That's the very worst and most lazy kind of jump scare

Again, by the end, it's so constant any effect it may have had is just gone. Should have been used five or six times. Not fifty or sixty.

Knocked it down to story mode which has made the combat less tiresome, but it doesn’t make the puzzles any less old fashioned and shitty.

I think you take away the pretty graphics, nostalgia for the original and general goodwill towards Remedy, and there’s not a very good game left. Huge disappointment.