I finished Alan Wake Remastered today. I like the IP and it’s got a good mystery/supernatural vibe, but
Oooh, oh man this game has not aged well. The story itself is captivating enough, but it is broken up by such repetitive, long, formulaic gameplay segments that make it such a bore to get through.
I was “lucky” enough to follow a 100% guide on the collectibles on this playthrough, just so I could get everything in one fell swoop. So, I was picking up new Manuscript pages every 5 minutes, and that at least broke up the pacing a little bit, so I could read along pages that teased future events or explained past events, or character things off-screen.
(Kinda reminded me of Control with how much lore-pages you’d pick up every few minutes)
But, yikes, the gameplay itself is just so shallow. The combat is extremely simple, the ways to dispatch enemies improves very little over the course of the game (burn away shield, shoot, rinse/repeat), and the amount of times the game finds a new way to force Alan to get lost in the dark woods, every episode, is agonizing.
The sections to get to the main objectives are just so long. Probably to keep some tension & mystery in where you go (hey, it worked when I was 12) – but honestly once you get stocked up, the game becomes such an action game it’s just tedious. But it’s not the kind of uber-powerful fun combat like Control uses so effectively.
The story itself is fun with some twists and turns in Alice’s disappearance and trouble Alan gets caught up in, but it doesn’t really get to the “hook” point until Episode 4 with Barry tagging along. Episode 2 & 3 are a series of ever-changing fetch quests (Go here. Oops, I lied! Go here!), and it’s annoying.
If I were to recommend this to someone else in the future, I’d probably find a nice recap of all the important story events, unfortunately.
This game needs a full modern remake. I feel like a lot of its pacing/environment issues are leftover from changing the game so drastically from its Open World design at the last minute.
