izigame.me

It's not a bad game per se, and the story elements seem to be in place from Alan Wake for this to be a suitable follow-up, but where the main game was a horror-thriller, this is a thriller-horror. That sounds like pedantry, but you feel that scale shift. That may even have been intentional, as Alan is 2 years older now, and used to surviving the Dark.
The controls certainly feel smoother- more responsive, and Al's stamina isn't so pitifully small. The challenge fell right out the bottom of the game, though. Many of the aspects that prompted the most swearing from me in Alan Wake have been either tuned or removed entirely- possessed objects don't take so stupidly long to burn down, the flashlight recharges INCREDIBLY fast, and the birds (whose only response in the previous game was to stand still and wait for them to wheel back around so you could hit them) have been entirely removed in all but name. But what was put in to replace them- namely new enemy types- don't do enough to restore the challenge to where it was. That's fine, easy doesn't equal bad, just know what you're getting into. This horror title's followup is shifting a bit more toward a power fantasy here. There was a higher difficulty that might have restored some of that challenge and fixed some of the whiplash I was feeling coming straight from Alan Wake to this, but honestly I don't feel driven to play through a second time.
The story is serviceable, though it seems to have one or two dangling threads that work to its detriment. Not, "Ooh, what could it mean?" building intrigue, but rather "Why the hell is he doing this?" making you disconnect with the antagonist. To the writer's credit, they took the story and had the characters react intelligently. Once they get over their initial shock at what's happening, the characters actually start going out of their way proactively to assist you. The antagonist, on the other hand, feels like a cardboard cutout with the word "meanie-pants" written on it. The Darkness last game at least had the excuse through most of it that it was just trying to capture you; it had to hold back until you posed enough of a threat for it to summon the ghost tornado. Mr. Scratch here doesn't have the same luxury. It comes off as fairly weak; a conflict because there had to be a conflict for a story to happen.
We get to see live-action Alan Wake here, and the performance is serviceable (though the final cutscene definitely came off a bit hammy). You encounter three NPCs in the form of three women with various forms of- and distracting levels of- blatant sex appeal. They do manage to establish themselves as passable characters by the end of the story, but the voice actresses gave noticeably bad performances. Not "90s era, we grabbed whoever from the office" levels, but certainly notable enough to be worth mentioning.
The level design was half decent, but repetitive. I mean that literally; there are three distinct levels, each fine in their own right, but you play through the three of them three times, with slight variations. In later cycles, you don't have to do quite as much as the aforementioned characters start helping you out more and Alan himself starts skipping ahead using what he already knows, but you're definitely feeling it by the end. Still, the end of Alan Wake (with an entire final chapter that I feel like could have easily been cut out in favor of a final boss at the end of the previous chapter) had me bemoaning "Christ, how much longer IS this?" While I was feeling the repetition by the end, I wasn't nearly as frustrated. That counts for something.
Worth special mention: this game survived the port to PC much better than its predecessor. The physics weren't bugging out, and while the AI definitely felt like it had been scaled back to be less difficult to fight (they don't try to wolf-pack you NEARLY as hard and none of them throw weapons at you aside from a grenadier), I also didn't run into any instances where I'd hit one with a light, it'd attack me, then afterward reel back like a high school actor reacting to his stage instructions late.
If this were a $4 DLC to Alan Wake, I'd be a lot more forgiving. As its own thing, I just don't feel like I got $8.99 worth out of it. If you find it half off, it's worth a playthrough if you enjoy the Remedy shared universe (especially since this is apparently canon to Alan Wake 2, though what could possibly carry over I'm not sure), but otherwise just read the manuscript pages on the wiki and watch a lets-play.