Alan Wake

Sorry Alan Wake, as much as I love the setting and atmosphere, the gameplay became too repetitive to remain enjoyable. Solid 3.9 stars for the design and art direction but falls flat beyond that.

I really tried with this game, coming back to it multible times. but why is it like this? even when I used cheats to ignore the combat, I got an npc stuck behind a door cause I ran too far forward and now hes stuck, on the only save that I have. in order to undo this id have to start the entire game over again for the 4th time. I just dont get it. beyond that, great game. love the vibes I love the work that clearly went into the story and envirnment, if it only had more bug fixes

I am really confused that this games gets these extremely good reviews. Because it lacks in more than one regard. First of all, the positiv things. The graphics look nice and the game builds a nice atmosphere visually. Also, the gameplay is satisfying at the beginning, when you've just started and grab your first weapon. But that's about everything positive i can say about this game. The writing, especially for a game that takes itself as serious as this one, is extremly stupid. The dialogues are bad, the characters behave totally unnatural and over the top "cool" and pretty much nothing makes sense and i'm not talking about stuff that's about to be revealed later on in the game. And aside from that pretty important part, the gameplay, which makes a pretty good first impression, shows alot of weaknesses after a few minutes. Every "level" is a short and extremly linear with alot of checkpoints. We found ourselves just running through the sections to the next checkpoint without bothering to kill anything inbetween because you don't save ammunition or health at the checkpoints and after you die and get reset to the last checkpoint, every enemy that may have chased you until then will be gone. Also, the "horror-elements" repeat themself and are as bland as a black hole. All in all we couldn't enjoy the game at all and got only angry about the bad writing and bored by the stupid gamedesign. I can't recommend this game to anybody who wants at least a bit of satisfaction, fun, horror or excitement when playing a game.

I've been playing the Remastered version recently, but the only difference is a slight graphics upgrade- the original holds up fine and is highly recommended. Great characters, great music, great story, great voice acting, great atmosphere, fun game mechanics (these get criticized a lot and while a little basic, they're in no way clunky or awkward- if you find them frustrating, my advice is to not be stingy with ammo and use your best weapons constantly, as the game is quite generous in resupplying you). The game's plot is heavily inspired by Stephen King, Twin Peaks and HP Lovecraft while still being its own unique thing, and playing through it and unraveling the mystery piece by piece is a blast, with plenty of moments of intrigue, humor and horror. If you like a good story and bother to read text and immerse yourself in a game's atmosphere, you'll enjoy this game- though that's not to say it's slowly paced or unexciting, unless you're dead set on searching behind every tree for collectible coffee thermoses on your first run. Overall, a classic horror/action game and one you'll remember for a long, long time.

Fun Survial Horror Game.