Roman P

While having played the original Alan Wake, Alan Wake II left a lot on the table for me. The list of items are as follows: 1) infuriating combat mechanics and camera controls - your characters can’t run when in danger, they just waddle a little bit faster like some overweight German spitz dogs. You can’t spot enemies coming - they’re moving too fast and bullet sponge you. Reload times are taking 3-5 business days on any weapon, healing is taking even longer. You can’t roll. Enemies are both repetitive and boring. 2) Graphics, on OLED, while beautiful for the most part, have a lot of aliasing and some visual level barrier breakages on the PS5 - some visual bugs are present, and no mirror reflections. Red Dead II (a bigger, more complex game) that came out way back in 2019 looks 10,000 times better. Facial animations and acting look good. 3) Story - this is the single most derivative, bloated and dull story I’ve ever experienced. Same points keep on repeating themselves over and over again. Same locations visited, time and time again. Mind cabinet - yet another cause for endless repetition. Worst of all - (spoiler alert) there is no closure or proper conclusion by the end of it. Seconds before the credits rolled I was saying to myself "please no cliff hanger, please no cliff hanger" and they did this 2 cent trick like they do at a shoddy county fair. There is no meaning to the journey you undertook for 50 odd hours. No dichotomies or real lines between THE real and surreal - just an endless spiral of corridors and levels filled with cold boxes filled with items you need to keep playing. The world doesn’t feel "lived in" - this is unlike your Witcher 3 or RD II not even on a small scale, so after completing you base set of "press X" tasks you’ll be seeing NPCs endlessly consuming their cherry pies or drinking from endless cups of coffee to oblivion. In conclusion - This game is a complete let down of the year I forced myself to finish because I already went far enough into it I might as well