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Alan Wake II |OT| I'm blinded by the lights.........

Guys, I’m in chapter 3 now and really like the game.

Is there a way tho get ANY hints on the map telling me where the collectables are when playing with Saga? From what I can see Alan seems to have such ingame hints. Does Saga as well?

I really HATE that shit. Exploring Cauldron Lake and searching for that stuff killed the pacing big time for me. Who taught that would be fun? Do I have to resort to internet maps again?
 
Who is putting a gun to your head or making these rules?

You’re literally fucking your own life up with weird ass rules.

It’s a hobby to have fun bro. Your one sale has 0 impact on what EPIC, Remedy, or all these companies plan to do. All digital is the future anyway.

If physical ever happens, then buy it then again if you want.

Or if you want to sanely support a developer who got to make a dream game thanks to this format and epic support so you can then enjoy yourself in your free time, just play it.

Or don’t. Limiting your own enjoyment on the planet is your own call.
Saving money and being patient is now retarded? Well that's new.
 

Guntherlibby

Neo Member
I love this game but I feel like it needs to be a little bit of a better job of nudging the player in the right direction either in the game or when to use the mind space to advance the story. A lot of times where I've aimlessly run around trying to figure out wtf to do.

Also, it's frustrating that it's hard to tell what enemies will attack you. Some of them ignore you and some try and kill you.
 
Played a little last night. Upside is that it seems great and really reminded me of the Hannibal series; downside is that I had to restart after about 1 minute because the sound broke.
 

Assaulty

Member
15 hours in on series x. Game runs great on performance. I swap to quality during the quiet parts. Most beautiful game I've ever seen period. Was suprised to see it beeing sub 1080p on performance, it doesn't look THAT bad to me🤣
 
Is this game riddled with as many puzzles as RE2 Remake?
More, this is at least half a puzzle game.

I was looking at PSNProfiles, and the game debuted with just little over 1k players... this is really bad imo.

I think "digital only" will heavily affect the game's sales on consoles. Maybe it will do better on Xbox and PC, since Microsoft is pushing digital hard (and the og game was an Xbox console exclusive).

I got my hands on a free code, otherwise I would have waited for a sale. I'm not blaming anyone for bailing out bc of digital only, I've never paid full price for a digital game either. I wanna believe that if it was up to Remedy, it would have gotten a normal release. But Epic was the only company to fund their dream project, so that's just how it is now.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I’ve been playing a lot of it and it’s so weird. It’s no 10 by any means so these reviews can go right out of the window.

First of all - 30fps mode runs like crap on ps5 in saga forest levels and grainy ssr is really bad.
2nd hdr is weird. It’s so dim with hgig. A lot of shadow detail is lost. I find it better looking with dtm at least in some scenes.

Now to the game:
-very very very slow pacing. I like it but it’s upwards of an hour in between killing one or two enemies.
-the combat is kinda nothing. It was better In The original maybe even. The fucking wolves are the worst thing ever.
-the story is fantastic but it’s so disjointed. And the Finnish fan service is really thick. It’s getting annoying. Ahti would be enough but everything is Finnish lol.

But the worst problem is just the pace. You open new area with saga and run around for 2 hours there. In all this time you backtrack it 7 times and you’ve killed 3 enemies. It almost seems broken. Should the enemies be spawning?
This is an adventure game with shooting elements.

That said - I enjoy the pace and story. I even enjoy how rare the combat is. Alan sections are paced a bit better too. But I can’t imagine replaying this game. Maybe I am too thorough?
It’s an extremely slowly paced, bloated with padlocks game. It’s strange how little happens yet all the time you are running around and opening something or setting up clues.
 
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Luipadre

Member
Ok i just did the "we sing" chapter. wtf remedy you glorious bastards. Instantly goes into my "top 3 gaming moment of all time" category. I looked so good on OLED too like holy fuck this game man.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I love this game but I feel like it needs to be a little bit of a better job of nudging the player in the right direction either in the game or when to use the mind space to advance the story. A lot of times where I've aimlessly run around trying to figure out wtf to do.

Also, it's frustrating that it's hard to tell what enemies will attack you. Some of them ignore you and some try and kill you.
Yes it’s very weird. Most enemies disappear
As for knowing where to go. I was stuck few times only to realise that I had to do saga stuff for her to realise something while it was obvious what to do
 

Luipadre

Member
I love this game but I feel like it needs to be a little bit of a better job of nudging the player in the right direction either in the game or when to use the mind space to advance the story. A lot of times where I've aimlessly run around trying to figure out wtf to do.

Also, it's frustrating that it's hard to tell what enemies will attack you. Some of them ignore you and some try and kill you.

The game is really holding the player hands, i always know what to do, the game literally tells you everytime. I dont understand how some people having problems with this or with bossfights. And people wonder why devs paint ladders and stuff in games
 
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fffff then I missed it?
I finished the whole alan part with the city and metro tunnels and I never found a shotgun.
I've only just now unlocked the puddle switching.

By the way? what is my pace? I am taking my time and hope the game is not ending soon! I took 8 hours to unlock the puddle
Alan shotgun is much later, but also easily missable imo. Felt like luck that I found it.
 
I was looking at PSNProfiles, and the game debuted with just little over 1k players... this is really bad imo.

I think "digital only" will heavily affect the game's sales on consoles. Maybe it will do better on Xbox and PC, since Microsoft is pushing digital hard (and the og game was an Xbox console exclusive).
I have a group of about 22 PSN friends I play Hunt: Showdown with. A healthy portion of them buy any and all Horror games. Only two of them bought it and they both have been shitting on it for the past hour in our Discord group so definitely nobody else in that group is buying it.

Doesn't mean anything for the bigger picture but on a microcosm level, even people I know who play every Horror Point & Click and shit aren't hip to AWII.
 

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
I’ve been playing a lot of it and it’s so weird. It’s no 10 by any means so these reviews can go right out of the window.

First of all - 30fps mode runs like crap on ps5 in saga forest levels and grainy ssr is really bad.
2nd hdr is weird. It’s so dim with hgig. A lot of shadow detail is lost. I find it better looking with dtm at least in some scenes.

Now to the game:
-very very very slow pacing. I like it but it’s upwards of an hour in between killing one or two enemies.
-the combat is kinda nothing. It was better In The original maybe even. The fucking wolves are the worst thing ever.
-the story is fantastic but it’s so disjointed. And the Finnish fan service is really thick. It’s getting annoying. Ahti would be enough but everything is Finnish lol.

But the worst problem is just the pace. You open new area with saga and run around for 2 hours there. In all this time you backtrack it 7 times and you’ve killed 3 enemies. It almost seems broken. Should the enemies be spawning?
This is an adventure game with shooting elements.

That said - I enjoy the pace and story. I even enjoy how rare the combat is. Alan sections are paced a bit better too. But I can’t imagine replaying this game. Maybe I am too thorough?
It’s an extremely slowly paced, bloated with padlocks game. It’s strange how little happens yet all the time you are running around and opening something or setting up clues.

I can sound off a little more info on enemies. They seem to have a few fixed spawns in some areas but then will spawn new enemies RNG style.

I explored certain sections to full and ended up looping an area with enemies newly formed for an already cleared area.

Although I’m playing in hard mode so I’m unsure if that’s the reason why. Or if hard mode spawns more enemies. Even in hard though you will have plentiful ammo and heals.

This is being pretty far in the game reaching Watery.

This seems less combat than Control for sure but seems to follow Control that enemies can respawn when you revisit certain areas.
 

MaKTaiL

Member
Do people who hated Control enjoy this? I found that game to be a real uninteresting slog. Hated the character, location, and all the batshit stuff going on that made no sense.
It made sense if you stopped to pay attention to the story. It's actually not at all complicated.
 

Luipadre

Member
Im watching various reactions to THAT chapter since i finished it. I think im gonna dream about it too. To me this game just entered my top 5 of all time category, couldn't be more happier how this game turned out after 13 years and after it was almost never been made. Based on the trophy list i still have like more than half of the game left, which is incredible because i dont know where they gonna take this shit.
 

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Im watching various reactions to THAT chapter since i finished it. I think im gonna dream about it too. To me this game just entered my top 5 of all time category, couldn't be more happier how this game turned out after 13 years and after it was almost never been made. Based on the trophy list i still have like more than half of the game left, which is incredible because i dont know where they gonna take this shit.

That scene is what easily makes this the best game of 2023.
 

Flabagast

Member
Guys, I’m in chapter 3 now and really like the game.

Is there a way tho get ANY hints on the map telling me where the collectables are when playing with Saga? From what I can see Alan seems to have such ingame hints. Does Saga as well?

I really HATE that shit. Exploring Cauldron Lake and searching for that stuff killed the pacing big time for me. Who taught that would be fun? Do I have to resort to internet maps again?
It’s an adventure game.
 

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Jesus Christ.

I’m calling BS. The “puzzles” here are minor or not puzzles ?

Like you come up to a stash box that uses symbols , then the character says “oh the code is in this building.” So you go there and you see the 3 icons. Ok. Go back and put them in. Or you do a Simon says of 3 lights. Or you find a 3 number key combo for a lock written on a note. These aren’t really puzzles ? So you can easily just google them online to input right then and there lol.

The most “puzzle” thing is these little dolls you place in one of five spots on the ground but again it’s brain dead. The wolf sat in the forest. Ok put wolf doll on the tree drawing. Done.

They’re cool but calling them puzzles is… too much.
 

Ogbert

Gold Member
I’ll stick with it as it will clearly have some great moments, but I’m not really enjoying it. The combat is irritating (when it happens) and the pacing is off. It feels like ‘Remedy doing Resident Evil’.

Control was far more immediately enjoyable.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
I’m calling BS. The “puzzles” here are minor or not puzzles ?

Like you come up to a stash box that uses symbols , then the character says “oh the code is in this building.” So you go there and you see the 3 icons. Ok. Go back and put them in. Or you do a Simon says of 3 lights. Or you find a 3 number key combo for a lock written on a note. These aren’t really puzzles ? So you can easily just google them online to input right then and there lol.

The most “puzzle” thing is these little dolls you place in one of five spots on the ground but again it’s brain dead. The wolf sat in the forest. Ok put wolf doll on the tree drawing. Done.

They’re cool but calling them puzzles is… too much.
Extremely easy puzzles. I don’t enjoy doll puzzles at all and the reward is in different place often.
Default paddock puzzles are fine.
Nothing as good as gow environmental puzzles.
I’ll stick with it as it will clearly have some great moments, but I’m not really enjoying it. The combat is irritating (when it happens) and the pacing is off. It feels like ‘Remedy doing Resident Evil’.

Control was far more immediately enjoyable.
The combat is like 5% of the game. I am 15 hours in and killed like 30 enemies. It’s really not a shooter and I am struggling to remember that.
 

Arsic

Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Downloading now. Is anybody running this on a rtx 3080? Hows the performance?

You can get 4k, balanced, all RT off, max everything else I think will net you 60fps or it may be performance dlss. Still looking great.

I compared it to GeForce now ultimate with max everything and GNow is insane, and now going to be my preferred method of play for demanding games moving forward. Don’t see myself upgrading my rig in a long time now that this technology exists and works perfectly .
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Games that are 30+ hours take me months to finish. I recently finished TOTK after playing it exclusively since May.
With TOTK it took at least 2 month, I really did lot of exploring in that game even more than BotW. My first playthrough for BotW was 80 hours and for TotK was 200 hours.
 
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3 hours in.

Graphical showcase, definitely top 10 this gen.

Never played the first entry, and almost immediately regretted my purchase.

Kept playing, and it's sufficiently weird. It's not Resident Evil, but after RE4, TOTK, BG3, ACVI, Starfield and Spider-Man, this is exactly the type of game I didn't know I needed.

Hated the Mind Place until the game forced me to understand it.
 
Games that are 30+ hours take me months to finish. I recently finished TOTK after playing it exclusively since May.

With TOTK it took at least 2 month, I really did lot of exploring in that game even more than BotW. My first playthrough for BotW was 80 hours and for TotK was 200 hours.
Because you both mentioned it and I was in the same position...had about 130 hours in on TOTK since May; just had some more depths to explore and defeat Gannondorf.

My son came over the other day and I let him play the switch...

Overrode all of my saves somehow. I'm sick about it. I don't know if I can invest another 100 hours (probably closer to 70 since it won't be my first time). 😭😭
 

K' Dash

Member
Because you both mentioned it and I was in the same position...had about 130 hours in on TOTK since May; just had some more depths to explore and defeat Gannondorf.

My son came over the other day and I let him play the switch...

Overrode all of my saves somehow. I'm sick about it. I don't know if I can invest another 100 hours (probably closer to 70 since it won't be my first time). 😭😭
My son erased my Mario Odyssey file with 800+ moons on it when I was actively playing it.
 
Are you liking it?

Is the game overrated?
i'm at the beginning of chapter 3, &, personally, having deadly premonition 2 flashbacks (yes, i'm one of the dozen people who played it). like that game, this one feels more like one big, indulgent (loads of winking & nodding) serving of nostalgia than anything else - not necessarily a bad thing when the original game was so beloved, but not nearly as fresh, or imaginative, or distinctive as its predecessor. i mean, yeah, the game looks great, but i was much more invested in the original game at this point...

as a big remedy fan (note: i loved control), i'm still waiting & willing to be swept off my feet... but i'm not really sure it's gonna happen at this point...

&, yeah, aaliyah davis was a lot more fun to be around than saga anderson:

 
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ToneyJ

Member
I'm about 10 hours in, did the majority of Alan's story. Mixed feelings on this game. I really enjoyed the opening 2-3 hours as Saga, with the AAA adventure/detective work stuff. The investigation board is a cool storytelling device, and I love all the detail put into the game's world with environments and NPCs.

But the Alan Wake sections, dreadful. It's like the game went from a 8/10 to a 5/10 for once I started playing his section. The combat in particular is really bad:
- Movement is cumbersome in general
- it's not clear which enemies will attack you and which won't. You can walk past an enemy that appears docile, and then like 10 seconds later it'll decide to attack you from behind.
- enemies are hard to see and can warp in front of you point blank, forcing you to dodge to make space.
- The flashlight effects just further create messiness on screen. It's weird because this wasn't an issue in AW1.

RE4, TLOU2, Dead Space play so so so much better than AW2. And I actually enjoyed Alan Wake 1's combat back in 2010.

Couple other thoughts:
- They really dialed up the FMV stuff in this game. Most of it's well done and I've enjoyed it so far.
- The visuals for Saga's forest/real world town sections are beautiful.
- The visuals for Alan Wake's sections are kind of messy on PS5 in general (60fps mode), which further contributes to my issues with combat.
 

ToneyJ

Member
^^^ I had typed up the above impressions a couple hours ago (waited before posting them). I've since played a bunch more of Saga's sections and (as expected) it's turned things around for me. I just much prefer the more grounded, "True Detective" vibes Saga's sections have going on, and quite frankly wish the whole game was like this. Alan Wake 1 was also much more grounded and set in "real world", though I understand for story purposes it makes sense Alan's sections are in more surreal, evil environments.
 
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Sleepwalker

Member
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First time ever giving money to epic, hope it's worth it.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Oh man, these Alan chapters are fucking something fierce lol.

Be sure to read all the warning signs etc across the world, they have a lot of interesting manuscript style text on them.
 
Just got to first real boss encounter.

Much creepier than anything I've seen in RE in the last few years.

Game reminds me of a Mike Flannigan show with all the jump scares.

Not crazy about the Case Board and the detective work; some or all of it should be automated. I get what they're trying to do but it's just not fun or engaging.
 
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