Alan Wake

A lot of people love this franchise. I am a fan of Control. With everything I've seen of Control, I wanted to play Alan Wake to see what sort of story enrichment I could enjoy. Watching playthroughs never went anywhere for me. I hoped the gameplay would keep me engaged enough to get through the story but... it quotes people the writers clearly don't understand. Stephen King doesn't write characters like this. Insane people don't laugh like that and run around spitting factoids about their jobs while swinging farm implements. The setting is essentially a run uphill or downhill in a forest that looks half burned down. I hoped that I would enjoy this a lot more, but the first two chapters have been a SLOG. I started speed running this thing the second the wife was in panties and a crop top, afraid of the dark but SO in love with this completely immature and unlikeable protagonist. To be fair, the second it became a story about a storyteller I knew there was a real lack of direction to the story, but King saved that premise with Secret Window... I thought there would be potential. There is ONE task: Mow down people possessed by smoke with a blaze of gunfire and... light. At the very least I expected the remastered edition to have mouths that form phoneme shapes... but no. It's puppetry and gunning people down for an hour at a time while running through the woods to find a woman who seems too good for this guy but clearly isn't looking for someone even a sliver of a shade more qualified and caring. Idk... hard to care about. I hope I get through it fast for Control's sake.