good

I bought Alan Wake for Xbox 360 over 10 years ago and played the first 2-3 hours or so. I got stuck at some ridiculous QTE under a windy bridge, and never played again.

I recently purchased Alan Wake on sale to try it out again, mostly because of the success of the sequel and its connections to CONTROL- a game I enjoyed.

How can anyone play this game without throwing up in their mouth at its smug obviousness.

The narration of this game is completely sterile and obvious.
I want to choke this smug bastard and his stupid tweed-suit-jacket-with-elbowpads-over-a-hoodie-because-I'm-a-writer-trapped-in-my-Lincoln-MKX-in-a-waify-bayside-townlet for telling me how to feel every f*ck!ng step of the way without presenting anything ACTUALLY compelling.
It's like the word MYSTERY is written in big poofy cartoon bubble letters on the screen the whole time. This game's proud lack of any subtlety is offensively patronizing.

If you truly have no imagination of your own- or cannot even fathom what it's like to have one- then perhaps this is entertaining and intriguing.

To sum up the gameplay: Luigi's Mansion did all this flashlight crap 10 years before, and did it much better. Shadows constitute the game's enemies- and they are the most unsatisfying opponents to defeat. Shooting or shining a light on a fog man feels about as substantial as lettuce on a plate being called a salad.

I don't know if this is just a game with a rough start that gets more compelling or profound... I cannot get past what feels like a very ditsy Silent Hill knockoff with chunky Western writing. This movie game reeks of the modern smugness of early 2010's TV dramas.

I am left wondering if this game is actually successful as a piece of art or just a well-published product.
Epic Games' exclusivity of the remaster and sequel certainly encourage me to believe the latter.

This game's success reminds me of how James Cameron's Avatar films always break records but no one gives a damn about them in between releases and there is nearly no fan following of that franchise- just the "critics" who 10/10 each installment.

I played this game wanting to understand Control's purpose better, but this game has mostly ruined Control for me as well- because now I know there isn't a real CORE to any of this. Just the cool setting of bureaucratic supernatural. All intrigue with no substance.

This franchise's entire premise rests on the shoulders of Alan Wake's literary imagination- but he's not even a good writer. There are no poetic moments or well crafted prose- just blocky statements. I think he's above adjectives or something.

To paraphrase Alan Wake's own stupid blunt words:

"In a horror story [...] there can be no explanation, and there shouldn't be one. The unanswered mystery is what [...] we'll remember in the end. My name is Alan Wake; I'm a writer."

In conclusion, I now think Sam Lake is a hack and this whole "Remedy Connected Universe" is held together by the loose conjecture of the audience, to fill in the blanks with their own interpretation of the paranatural.