For what it's worth, it seems to me he's right, because I got that feeling immediately when starting to play the game. The game is not as good as I hoped for, standards feel lowered, and there's so much on rails.. I have no idea where the fuck all the stellar reviews are coming from. Anyway, I really want to like this game so I'll keep playing and see what happens.
Completely agree. One of the most overrated games in recent memory for me. Can see why it has an audience but for me it was a 6/10 at a push. Story was ridiculous, writing was not great, gameplay was fun in places but none of it made any fucking sense and surely they could have come up with a better name than The Dark Place, felt like horror for kids half the time. The acting in the live action parts was not even b movie quality.
FsR made the game look like shit half the time. The case file parts were pretty cool, but the mind place, I mean wtf is that all about, probably some far fetched explanation for it but all the wierd fuckery was so hard to follow I gave up trying to understand by the time I got to that rock music video level.
On a plus side, Bright Falls was brilliantly designed, and really atmospheric, really pulled off the small backwater town vibe, I thought it was exceptional. Made it all the worse when you go from that to some boring underground station with enfuriating level design. In fact most of Sagas 'saga' was excellent, the Alan Wake bits were a headfuck and not even well implemented imo. Felt like they were going for the alternate universe Silent Hill 2 type vibe but for me, felt like they didnt really know how to do it and we got this instead.
I felt similar with Control to how I do about this. There is obviously something about Remedy games that appeal to a lot of people, but goes way over my head.