Alan Wake

I’m already looking forward to doing the musical chapter again. So good.

Good start! Just spent the last 20 minutes or so unable to solve the opening password puzzle, because the in-game "real" text of a document doesn't match up with the easy read text.

Hmmm, that doesn't sound great. That was my main issue with Control, every 2 seconds there is a new document to pick up and read and if you choose not to then you miss out on key story and detail.

I finished in one seating (about 3 hours). There is quite a bit of reading, but I think I got an achievement for reading them all (some achievement popped up when I looked at one towards the end, so assume I got all of them). It takes a while to crank up the action, but there is a fair amount of it when it does kick in, so I thought it was reasonably balanced. Certainly more of an explore'em-up for the first half.

I liked it overall, but did find some of the combat to be a tad frustrating at times. Interesting that the best of the episodes in the last DLC was the combat heavy one, but here I have to put the annoyances down to the tight corridors and maybe the reliance on just the pistol for much it. The new enemies are creepy, but also have a habit of jumping out at you from nowhere and knocking off a chunk of health.

There is a boss that closes out the DLC, which is similar to the main game in not being great and a bit of a pain. Once I got into a rhythm with them though, they weren't too bad.

Storywise, I thought the self contained elements were pretty well done and I enjoyed the rivalry between the two Marmonts. It fits in reasonably nicely with AW2, but I was surprised there wasn't more connections with Control and its sequel. There are some (literal) flashes to what I expect is referencing the sequel at the end, but not much more beyond Darling popping up once or twice and references to The Old House being in lockdown. So, if you are Control fan, but not an Alan Wake fan you probably won't miss much by sitting this one out. Tonally, it also sticks quite closely to a claustrophobic horror vibe, so that with the shortish running time doesn't leave much room for fun little moments like the We Sing chapter from the main game.

Overall, I don't think it quite hits the heights of the best bits from the previous DLC or the main game, but it is better than the weaker points. Well worth playing if you liked the original game, but not worth it if you were indifferent or didn't like the rest.

Doesn't the £15 get you the other DLC too? That was also about 3 hours or so.

Ah right, that's actually good then!

After I finished the main game I saw the first DLC was £15, assumed this was another £15 on top.

Made a start on The Final Draft this morning. Not sure how far I've got to go in the base game until I can access the DLC. Might be a wee while. That's okay though. As much as I want to see it, I think if I do it, I might then not bother with a new playthrough of the base game, and I kind of want to. So I'm just going to be patient and enjoy the game again. Equally, I'm not sure if I'll bother with the Night Springs segments but I guess I'll see what mood I'm in when I stumble across them.

Yeah, that was genuinely shit. Wrote in the what are you playing thread but take out the story and awesome environments and characters and vibe and detective angle and replace it all with Control environments, but without the Control combat, and you've got the worst parts of both games with so little weight behind anything it feels like one very small step up from horse armour. What were those enemies as well? Properly rubbish.

Last trophy was bugged as well so 98% and that's soured it even more.

2/10. 1 point for keeping it mercifully short and another on behalf Alan: he's no longer the worst character in his own game, so that's nice. I'm being generous though, I didn't like a single thing about it.

Didn't they tone the jump scares down massively. At launch it was pretty much take 2 steps aaaaand JUMP SCARE!!!

It just ended up being ridiculously annoying rather than scary.

That is a shame, as I really enjoyed Night Springs.

No, no, I loved Control and the environments suited it. But they don't work here for me, and the reliance on narrative delivered by upward of 40 text docs over a two hour run time killed any engagement I had with whatever narrative was there. I get there were likely budget issues, but I'd have rather had nothing.

I really liked the main game, so I think I was expecting far, far more than they ever planned on delivering and was disappointed.

Yeah, so I've actually had this pretty much since launch but never got around to sitting down and playing it properly -- was only up to the initial sections with Alan after completing the first few bits with Saga. Having now finished SH2 Remake, I thought it'd move onto this, and the DLC/deluxe upgrade was also half-price on Epic for Halloween so I picked that up too.

Got to say, despite generally liking the tone/aesthetic/setting etc., I can already feel a nagging sense of tedium for the re-writing of scenes mechanic. Bit annoyed with myself, really, as I'm usually quite charitable about these things, especially if it's at least trying to do something different in a genre or IP I've a soft spot for, but I finished up the early underground/cult hideout section, expected the narrative to shift back to Saga, but was put straight back into another Alan episode, so I just turned it off for now lol.

I'll give it another go at the weekend. Combat still feels quite sub-par to me, as it did in the original game, but possibly just need to give it some more time. The game does look good, mind. Would like to get back to the town with Saga.

It lets you jump back and forth as you want (mostly), so you probably can go straight back to Saga.

There are some good moments in the Alan sections and definitely plenty of atmospheric pieces that work well. The area can be a bit tedious though and there is a little more variety in the Saga sections.

Combat is a bit rubbish, so I wouldn't expect you to like it the more you play (although, weirdly, the combat heavy section of the DLC is great despite this).

I stopped myself from writing but you've said it for me regarding disappearing up their own arses. I like their stuff a lot but there's a clear difference between this and Control. One is where the gameplay was just standout and so confident with what it was doing that it just let it speak for itself and the other is where it's in ever so much danger of huffing its own farts and saying "look how clever we are".