Playing on PC i7, 3070, '4k' on balanced with geforce experience auto setting everything else looks real pretty and runs smooth.
Remedys long awaited follow up to Alan Wake, American Nightmare and Control. I have fond memories of AL1 back on the 360 being a decent 3rd person shooter with interesting characters and world setting, AM was a nice bit of DLC and i liked Control which i played early 2022 when it hit PSN service for 'free', a fairly hardcore 3rd person shooter which went much deeper on lore dumping the Alan Wake universe with the agency set up to basically do x-files stuff.
Alan Wake 2... After initially being wowed by the graphics and liking B-film like acting, tropes and writing to the very early Saga parts, it just find it deeply flawed, from the gameplay and the story/characters, no idea why the major sites giving it such high scores.
Gameplay, I'll start with it now being a survival horror more in line with low intensity Resident Evil 4, gone is the action from 1 and Control, no where to be found. Replacing the action is walking around clicking 'A' in barely interactive world to find a couple dull puzzles sparsely dotted around which are mostly, can you read this number your flash light can see, put thing on thing, or turn light on or off. It really doesn't hit home how empty and plastic the world is until you get to Bright Falls, a small town, a couple of npc's with 1 line of dialogue, usually no interaction, usually nothing to say on the out of this world stuff happening around them, something even NPC in JRPG's improved on. Other little things like the main characters turning the flash light off when interacting with stuff so you can't see what they are doing or picking up, a clear example of this is interacting with the deer trophies.. it's really embarrassing. Next flaw is no compass, i'm ok not having a mini map with the small/no UI they are going for, but they could at least add a small compass so i don't need to keep opening the map to find my way without the ability to way-point stuff, just knowing i'm going north or east would help alot.
The no way-point stuff doesn't matter to much until you get to Alan's sections, they open up the puzzle area bit and it's up to you just walk around triggering cutscenes for puzzles which then require you to go to the mind pace to slap the collected puzzle piece in the right place, and you'll be doing that alot with Saga.
Gunplay is fine, it's typical Remedy, so if you have played AL1 or Control, it just that but much slower and getting hit makes a massive mess of the screen so just mash the dodge button till you get some breathing space. Also add it doesn't checkpoint well, so expect to lose 15/20 minutes of progress if you die to a ambush or respawning Taken (takes about 3/4 hits to die from Max HP, limited healing), which means redoing cutscenes, replacing puzzle bits in the mind place, recollecting items you found, this really ticks me off, why not have the game save after every cutscene, the save rooms don't feature limited saving so why do i have to run back to save room if want to go out exploring for hidden items and ability upgrades.
Next is the story which at first i thought 'this is ok', a little stupid with when meeting the 2 deputies the first time and Saga never having to explain to others why they should go along these deductions, i'll give it some space, maybe Remedy is hiding stuff for now that would be cleared later on, but it just keeps getting stupider and stupider when you reach the police station and dinner. Full murder witness interview in a crowded dinner, Saga not in the slightest phased or interested in what Rose said, both Casey and Saga acting like nothing much happened to the vanishing and dead cops, the police station not giving/reacting a damn about gun shots, 2 dead cops, the damned Sherriff missing in small town, letting the 2 witnesses Saga and Casey just walk out without so much of word on her hunch that they need to be elsewhere, what a bag of boiling piss. The Alan section isn't much better past the interesting opening.
I can only assume people defending this say it's suppose to be intentionally bad writing as Alan tries to write his way out of the dark place, but that shouldn't excuse characters treating everything very matter or fact or barely effecting them, they just come off like psychos.
as for changes to Saga
Remedys long awaited follow up to Alan Wake, American Nightmare and Control. I have fond memories of AL1 back on the 360 being a decent 3rd person shooter with interesting characters and world setting, AM was a nice bit of DLC and i liked Control which i played early 2022 when it hit PSN service for 'free', a fairly hardcore 3rd person shooter which went much deeper on lore dumping the Alan Wake universe with the agency set up to basically do x-files stuff.
Alan Wake 2... After initially being wowed by the graphics and liking B-film like acting, tropes and writing to the very early Saga parts, it just find it deeply flawed, from the gameplay and the story/characters, no idea why the major sites giving it such high scores.
Gameplay, I'll start with it now being a survival horror more in line with low intensity Resident Evil 4, gone is the action from 1 and Control, no where to be found. Replacing the action is walking around clicking 'A' in barely interactive world to find a couple dull puzzles sparsely dotted around which are mostly, can you read this number your flash light can see, put thing on thing, or turn light on or off. It really doesn't hit home how empty and plastic the world is until you get to Bright Falls, a small town, a couple of npc's with 1 line of dialogue, usually no interaction, usually nothing to say on the out of this world stuff happening around them, something even NPC in JRPG's improved on. Other little things like the main characters turning the flash light off when interacting with stuff so you can't see what they are doing or picking up, a clear example of this is interacting with the deer trophies.. it's really embarrassing. Next flaw is no compass, i'm ok not having a mini map with the small/no UI they are going for, but they could at least add a small compass so i don't need to keep opening the map to find my way without the ability to way-point stuff, just knowing i'm going north or east would help alot.
The no way-point stuff doesn't matter to much until you get to Alan's sections, they open up the puzzle area bit and it's up to you just walk around triggering cutscenes for puzzles which then require you to go to the mind pace to slap the collected puzzle piece in the right place, and you'll be doing that alot with Saga.
Gunplay is fine, it's typical Remedy, so if you have played AL1 or Control, it just that but much slower and getting hit makes a massive mess of the screen so just mash the dodge button till you get some breathing space. Also add it doesn't checkpoint well, so expect to lose 15/20 minutes of progress if you die to a ambush or respawning Taken (takes about 3/4 hits to die from Max HP, limited healing), which means redoing cutscenes, replacing puzzle bits in the mind place, recollecting items you found, this really ticks me off, why not have the game save after every cutscene, the save rooms don't feature limited saving so why do i have to run back to save room if want to go out exploring for hidden items and ability upgrades.
Next is the story which at first i thought 'this is ok', a little stupid with when meeting the 2 deputies the first time and Saga never having to explain to others why they should go along these deductions, i'll give it some space, maybe Remedy is hiding stuff for now that would be cleared later on, but it just keeps getting stupider and stupider when you reach the police station and dinner. Full murder witness interview in a crowded dinner, Saga not in the slightest phased or interested in what Rose said, both Casey and Saga acting like nothing much happened to the vanishing and dead cops, the police station not giving/reacting a damn about gun shots, 2 dead cops, the damned Sherriff missing in small town, letting the 2 witnesses Saga and Casey just walk out without so much of word on her hunch that they need to be elsewhere, what a bag of boiling piss. The Alan section isn't much better past the interesting opening.
I can only assume people defending this say it's suppose to be intentionally bad writing as Alan tries to write his way out of the dark place, but that shouldn't excuse characters treating everything very matter or fact or barely effecting them, they just come off like psychos.
as for changes to Saga
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