Alan Wake Review (Meon1845)
Critically speaking, this game is terrible. I heard other people describe it as "Best 6/10 game I've ever played" and I wholeheartedly agree.
The gameplay loop is basic and it overstays its welcome by about 6 hours. The protagonist mostly walks alone in a dark corridor and keeps commenting on every single thing that happens. Combat is sluggish, with about 6 types of enemies repeated in different quantities throughout 10 hours of gameplay. It doesn't really get better because no matter whether you shoot enemies in the head or their pinkies, they take the same amount of damage.
The voiceacting honestly just sucks, especially for the protagonist. He never, ever changes the tone he's speaking at, no matter the situation. He wishes his wife "Good morning" with the same emotion as he later expresses when he wants to torture her kidnapper. In most scenes, it seems no one was giving voice actors any direction and they didn't do retakes for obviously fumbled lines.
The writing feels like an inconsistently self-aware B-movie. You get these insane scenes like an FBI agent shooting at you for seemingly no reason, even though you're next to a civilian, as the FBI agent shouts the names of other famous writers at you. And he changes the name he shouts EVERY TIME. I honestly do not understand people who unironically praise the writing of this game, because it feels like they must've never even seen the inspirations the game draws from. The constant references to Stephen King and The Twilight Zone, in my opinion, drag the game down because it points out how much they just wanted to emulate something without having the skill to do so.
But honestly, at least I had quite a lot of fun with how terrible it is. The writing is campy, sometimes it is self-aware, sometimes it's just stupid. Tha game certainly hasn't aged well and I'd hardly consider it one of the greatest games of all time. Yet, it is kinda funny and fun at times.