The game plays fairly well, although there really isn't much depth in terms of combat. Story wise it's quite engaging and interesting. Overall it's worth a look if you like these types of games, but it's by no means a must-play.
I wanted to play Alan in a looong time, because everyone praised the game as one of the best games ever.
It's not.
The game is linear, pretty standard gameplay BUT at first it seems like survival horror... just to become third person shooter later on... it has to, because Alan can't run more than 2 meters without running out of breath... there are also some compatibility issues etc. ... also good luck jumping over the ledges :)
It's not a bad game, it's just nothing special - if you want some horror game like this, Dead Space, Resident Evil 4 (does that still count as horror?) Evil Within ... those are just much better...
OK, It should actually be three stars because there are many things bad about the game but the story has its mood and is quite consistent and the ending is only a tiny bit disappointing so I give it a one star extra.
The good - the story, the mood, the visuals (for its time). The game quotes Stephen King and clearly draws from his works but does it well. You feel the heavy atmosphere that you can almost literarily cut with a knife. The in-game graphics are good for its time and are quite consistent in its design - although the overall feeling is a little... bleak. It could use a good counterpoint here and there, especially in the day episodes.
The bad - of course the main culprit - the camera angle. I understand that probably the idea was to give you more of the protagoinst than just his backside but it's so annoying to not be able to know precisely where you are going. Ugh. Hate it.
The gameplay is... interesting for a very short time. Then it quickly becomes simply tedious. You run around a lot, get ambushed from out of nowhere and you're always out of ammo. I get it, it's a survival horror (even though the authors say otherwise) and you're supposed to feel overwhelmed. But here there's no way to influence the game with your play style. You simply have to fight wave by wave of opponents. Boooooring. But maybe that's just that it doesn't fit my playing style.
And of course since it's a console-based game we have the annoying checkpoint-based save system. I simply hate it.
And the game is linear as hell. OK, you can walk around looking for radios, thermoses and alarm clocks but other than that it's simply following the dot on the "radar" and fighting enemies. With a trivial "puzzle" thrown here and there. And you have the "minigames" of clicking the mouse to push cart or jump-start a generator. And you have collecting the pages which doesn't seem to influence anything. Overall - playwise nothing to write home about. Luckily, the story saves the game.
After few minutes I've experienced all aspects of gameplay. Plot is not very complex, but it's revealed slowly so I could take more and more "unexpected" monster attacks. The game has no horror feeling at all. Technically it's made quite well, my playthrough was free of bigger bugs or glitches.
On 4K a couple of symbols are way too small. Some mechanics like reloading and so on feels notchy. The story telling is boring (watching TV, reading manuscript pages). Sometimes the distance between checkpoints is very long. The sound is very dynamic. I've set effect sounds to 20%.
It might have been precursor for a genre back then. But I haven't played it 2010. So I don't feel nostalgic vibes.