The game description says it has puzzles, platforming and story, but it's more of a story/exploration/walking sim with 3 tiny platforming challenges and 1 part you could barely even consider a puzzle, The story was a little bit cliche and the voice acting wasn't amazing but judging from the credits, the whole game was done by a guy and his wife so I can't give it too much crap As for the gameplay, it's got a nice world to look at and decent (licensed) music but the levels are way too big, it just felt like padding at a certain point, so while you are running to the next dialog or collectable, there's just nothing but the, while nice, still simple and sometimes even crude looking environments The game is fine but $10 is a VERY steep price for this, I only paid 1$ which is more than fair, I'd have been ok paying 2 or 3 dollars but the game is very short and nothing to really write home about it, 3.3/5
The game started off pretty fun, breaking in to peoples houses and finding a way around their security, climbing up fences and through windows, it was a fairly immersive but still fun, later on the though, the difficulty ramps hard and the cracks start to show I had so many times where a tenant was supposed to leave but just got stuck pacing back and forth, I say pacing but the walking animation broke more times than I can count at this point and people would just slide around, I've been randomly dectected from miles away (Not from something I left behind, actually me being detected) and tased through walls and while inside cars, I've also been detected just because I used my gadgets and game mechanics, Turned off the cams? Cops called, Open window shutters? Cops, left a door unlocked? COPS! but a garage door or car gate is open? opened a window? left loot laying on the ground in a now suspiciously empty room? or even turned off the power with also disables the security systems??? no one cares And those cops they call over seemingly random things? they show in less than 10 seconds, you almost no time to run or hide unless your car or a hiding spot is right next to you, good luck driving away anyways with the stiff ass turning The game is just makes no sense at times, and is just generally janky as well, the jump is borderline useless, you can some how jump on top of your van but you can't hop a shin high wall, the crouch is so slow and unlike most other stealth games, it doesn't seem to make you harder to spot, just harder to hear, and don't you dare park you car anywhere near a road or sidewalk because cars and pedestrians will get stuck on it with 2 feet of clearance and get suspicious And to top it all off, I've learned while writing this the devs have abandoned this version of the game, it's not up to date with the steam version and the DLC aren't even on GOG, I was going to give this game 3 stars before I learned that but scummy devs don't deserve even that
There's no good progression to be made from what I can tell, you buy 3 new tables and that's it, you can decorate but that's not super interesting, leveling up just unlocks things that take forever to take apart and repair and more decor, and the one cool thing that I unlocked, which lets you take your time and completely refurbish items, doesn't give xp and isn't worth the time investment for the money you make from it, especially when you just lose $500 a month because of rent, so splurging on decor or putting money to in restoring tiems isn't something you can really do until later if you don't want to be broke or want to gain XP
I played the first game years ago on Xbox 360 and remember loving it, buying digital only games wasn't easy for me (Being a child with parents who didn't trust putting their card info in anywhere) so I never got to play this one back then, Alan Wake still holds up to this day, great game but with a few minor problems, the story is good but the voice acting is pretty hit and miss, the dodging felt a bit inconsistant but the game was pretty easy so it wasn't much of an issue, I didn't use grenades until 2/3 of the way through the game and I never even used the flare gun It's a fun shooter with good enviroments and characters with a little humor mixed in, it's a game of its time and I really enjoyed it for that reason
I was a little iffy at first but the game quickly grew on me, it was really difficult in the beginning, I had to avoid most enemies if I couldn't get behind them or ambush them for a quick insta-kill but it was pretty fun finding ways to clear out locations Over time you get quite a bit more powerful making it a lot easier to sweep through locations by just shooting everything in the head with your pistol or shotgun, but even if you are more powerful, getting in to open combat is such a detriment that you want avoid it at all costs and not even bother putting point skill points in to stuff that doesn't make stealth easier or mitigate the difficulty of open combat (Such as more health), stealthing is pretty easy after maybe 2 hours of playing and does get slightly more challenging in Chapter 2 (In a fun way imo) but Chapter 3 is just tanky enemy spam to the degree of point blank headshotting something with both of your Double Barrel shots from stealth and it still not dying, annoying but I didn't die a single time through out the entire game so I can't complain too much I guess The inventory management also got pretty irritating, mostly because you get so many items and weapons that just aren't super useful, and the ones that are useful are locked behind a huge price tag from a trader so you have to carry that stuff back with you to sell if you want to good stuff, and not to mention that your stash is also limited in space so you can't just hold on to much stuff to try later, you have to sell it or use it, you do get bags you can keep in your inventory for extra space but most of that ended up being taken up by ammo with how many different types there are that don't stack The game isn't super nuanced but blowing creatures heads off from the shadows is satisfying and the useful items and weapons that are there, are pretty fun to use and *can* be a big upgrade over what you had previously IF they don't have some awful debuff to go with it
My rating would probably be closer to 3.5 stars It's repetitive and had LOTS of back tracking, most of the objectives come down to "Activate thing to unlock door to activate thing to unlock door" while shooting alien bugs repeated for 5 levels, which take around 30-40 minutes each, It got pretty boring toward the end and I just turned off the games "Music" and put some metal on and sped through mowing down aliens, made it much more enjoyable, so I'd recommend playing that way.
