Thanks for that very valuble comment. Please, don't forget to trolololo in the future too.

Understood. Lets hope it gets released here one day then. First game is amazing... also:

...Just finished Alan Wake main game and its dlcs/special episodes (which are quite short) and this game marked me in a good and bad way at the same time, if that even make sense.
So depressing and deep in meaning and symbology.

Started American Nightmare and could not play it for more than 2 hour before issuing a refund.
Is this common with people who liked the first?

I really liked American Nightmare. It's not as good as the first game, but I still thought it was quite good. I thought the whole trapped in a "Twilight Zone" story was a clever idea, the gameplay was... well, more Alan Wake, which was what I wanted, and it had great music. But I know quite a few people were disappointed by it. It was definitely somewhat divisive among the fans.

Can't speak to how much people as a whole like/dislike AN, but it's obviously a weak entry. The content is repetitive and recycled throughout, there is a massive shift in tone, none of the characters you love and care for are really in it, the characters that ARE in it are cardboard cutouts (I'd say deliberately so, not that it makes anything better) and ultimately it doesn't really move the overall story forward. Combat is slightly better with more variety and responsiveness, and that's about it.

Heck, if I am completely honest, I don't like the direction Alan Wake 2 is going either, from what I have seen (I haven't played it, though). I can't believe a game unironically used "spooky faces" jumpscares, and what felt like a very personal story in Alan Wake 1 suddenly has dual protagonists and what feels like fluff mechanics thrown in it just to pad things out. I don't think we get to see much of previous characters (again) and it feels like it's buying time for the narrative, instead of continuing from where they left off (which I find inexcusable, given how long it's been from fhe original).

I am a grumpy old man, though, so what do I know? :p

That's something that immediately threw me off, as soon as the first trailer was released. Between that and my disappointment with Control I found myself strangely uninterested in AW2, which was for years my most awaited game of all.

Interesting...

I feel this game may have something more going forward, but I felt the gameplay was completely different from the first.

In the first the atmosphere is so focused in creating a tense environment in which you never know when the Taken will show up, and playing it without HUD for full immersion adds value to the gameplay. Map design also helped me play without HUD because its linear without being too obvious with straight corridors like Resident Evil 4 for example (A game much more focused on action than in atmosphere, psychological horror and tension.).

In the reviews of the first game some people hated how Alan Wake controls feels stiff and slow. I on the other hand loved that because it shows realistically that Alan isn't a trained soldier for combat. He is a writer. (Vulnerable and slow - thus a perfect control scheme for a horror game). He doesn't do sports (only shooting practice, as he explains when we kill the first Taken). He can't run for more than 15 seconds because he is a sedentary man, depressed and not even trying to come back his work because he lost inspiration to keep writing. Lost his faithful and lovely wife right after a fight where he acted like a spoiled kid that didn't want to do his homework when she was just trying to help him with all she had, lost his work and is without almost no energy left, using everything he have in his broken psyche to maybe understand whats going on in Bright Falls and where is Alice. (Thus - his mind is completely vulnerable too) A great set up with many good stakes for the story and gameplay overall.

First thing I noticed in American Nightmare was that the controls were more responsive and faster and also that sprint stamina was much larger. 5 minutes in and the game throws at you two of the strongest Taken from the first game with minor jump scares. Showing that there's no time to lose so lets go to the action already. But thats fine I think, just a different direction (which I did not liked personally), and it shows because the game is much more focused in streamlining. In 20 minutes we understand through Alan's conversation with Emma that hes pursuing Mr.Scratch, which uses his identity to gain access to normal world activities. Real question: But how did Alan escaped the Dark Place where he was writing the manuscript 'Return', after the end of Special 2 The writer and is already fighting Mr.Scratch in Nevada?

To be fair, this new control scheme could be explained by the time span, because, since I saw no explanation in the first two hours, I deduced that Alan was so much time in the Dark Place(places) fighting Mr.Scratch that he got used and trained to fight the oppression and psychological strain thus now he can run faster, aim and shoot better. But honestly, did not liked how it was done.

My problem is that I tried to play it like the first game: Disabling the HUD with focus on the map, atmosphere and tension. Just to notice minutes later that the first objective was to locate 3 objects in a big circular area without Takens spawning. After a while exploring and running around the Gas Station, chatting with Emma and collecting some manuscripts, ammunition and a shotgun, I noticed the game was designed to be played with HUD on in a "go here, kill 3 Takens, take item, now go there take item kill 4 Takens, repeat."... this killed the tension and gameplay fun for me. :/ Then the game crashed. After a while the game crashed again when I got a manuscript. I don't know. Wasn't much motivated after that to continue.

After reading the reviews of the game and noticing what was explained above, it seemed to me I wasn't going to enjoy the game as much as the first, especially because the only focused stake (at the beginning at least) is "Find Mr.Scratch and close his portals."

Got a bit of fun with the Arcade mode though, but it was not enough for me.

I've writen my response to Breja before reading your post. Its exactly what I felt, unfortunately, as explained.

My problems when gaming companies do that are two:
- It feels to me its just to virtue signilize to a general audiance. First game was made 14 years ago after all so they might be trying to attract this new generation with the character split.
- Devs waste too much time, money and resources on creating a new character that was never a part of the original story, therefore, spliting the story which should follow the first game's design: Its all about Alan Wake's mind and everything associated with his psyque and his internal struggles. If they waste too much resources doing that, inveitably Alan Wake's personal story will have less time of development and especially, gameplay.

I've only watched one trailer of Alan Wake 2. (The first released). So I don't know anything about it.

Yeah, I had been hoping for a sequel for a long time, but the more I saw of the game, the more puzzled I was, and my interest withered.

I actually enjoyed Control overall. The middle part felt a bit weak and repetitive, and the ending was also not as strong as it could have been, but I enjoyed the early and final parts. Some of the narrative felt a little too abstract (not necessarily hard to follow, just hard to care for).

They should have tried to make the combat "feel" better: weapons should flat out do more damage and/or take more uses before they require to cooldown, some powers should be reworked and no damn rockets flying from outside your view, curving around the corner and taking most of your life. Also reduce the horrible "random trinkets to slot in your weapons for minor upgrades" to a minimum. Give me a handful of things that really impact my combat without requiring copious amounts of babysitting, instead. Even then, there are quite a few cool things you can pull off within the current system.

Spoiler, sort of:

He didn't escape. That's kind of the point. It's never made explicitly clear (I'm going from memory here, been a while since I played it), but it seems the whole thing takes place at a sort of "intersection" of the Dark Place and real world, the town being something Alan "wrote into being". It's all a mix of fiction and reality, but mostly fiction. It's why the whole thing is framed as an episode of the Twiligh Zone-esque tv show. It's all Alan trying to break through back to the real world, and maybe sort of succeeding in the end a bit?


That's how I felt. I just couldn't care about any of it. It felt like all the abstract meta elements of Max Payne and Alan Wake that gave those games flavour, but were otherwise grounded by relateable protagonists on very personal journeys, completely took over.

I can totally see that. As I said, overall I still enjoyed the game, but there are a lot of flaws one can point to. I think I liked the setting, idea and overall mood enough that it carried me past the weaker elements.

I also feel like Jesse isn't a bad protagonist, but they start her on the wrong foot, so it takes more time for her to begin to shine: in some ways, she is "oh so mysterious" at first, and it doesn't help the narrative at all, since it already has all the mysteries you could ever need.