Not really a guy who often goes for 1000/1000 but it still took me 30 hours to finish.
A few notes:
Obviously, the game appealed to me. Otherwise I would not have played the last stretch of the game until 5am. That said, I’m still quite conflicted about it.
While I think the combat is more fun than the repetitious nature of it in the first game, the general clumsiness (in some ways intentional to heighten the tension) can be a bit infuriating, especially during a bit more hectic moments like that attack stand-off at the shore near the end. You end up spamming that dodge button and hope for the best. Other survival games like RE4 or Dead Space this year do have better combat controls while still making you feel claustrophobic and vulnerable. I also get that Alan Wake 2 is not so much a game about combat as it is a pure narrative experience. In this case, it is a bit like Hellblade where the combat and puzzles seems almost like an afterthought.
I liked puzzles in this. Most of them are super easy but there were a few that took me a while. I like that there is no hand holding.
I started to enjoy the game more when I didn’t divert too much from the story. All this wondering around the forest looking for lunch boxes hurt the pacing and the propulsion of the story.
The story is, all in all, pretty good. Obviously a lot of thought has been put into it. It’s also way up its own ass and I don’t mean it as a diss. Actually, it is not often we get games that are self-indulgent ego trips with all the meta layers and what not. This is so much more interesting than your typical hero’s journey shit. But I’m still not entirely sure if they managed to nail it. The game tries to balance itself between being a meta piss-take on American crime fiction, a spooky Japanese influenced horror story, almost a Lynchian mystery, a jokey trip into Finnish eccentricity. Usually when an author makes, let’s say, a meta movie, it helps to know where he is coming from as an artist. I have no clue who Sam Lake is and what makes him tick other than the fact he likes to put his mug into his game and makes silly constipated faces. So, yeah, the whole theme about artists and the power of their creation is in general told well, but also somehow doesn’t feel entirely genuine. It just feels like somebody watched too many obscure films and thought he could make his own version of it. It never really feels entirely personal (Other than all the Finnish stuff).
But as I said it, I would rather play a game like Alan Wake than a more typical fare with nothing interesting to say at all.
It sounds like I complain a lot and make it look like I disliked the game more than I liked it, but it is not entirely true. I think it a very good, sometimes amazing game with noticeable flaws.
Wouldn’t be a happy camper if this happened after dropping $70
