What went wrong?

This desu.

Post yfw going off the main path to look for coffee thermos

>always the same shitty system to kill enemies

that went the fuck wrong. this was nothing but a chore after 1 hour

Just generic AAA syndrome.

Also ludonarrative dissonance.

Really liked the premise, though. Stephen King New England horror is comfy.

What went wrong?

Xbone/Win10/Microsoft/Gen 8 consoles "we want the Netflix audience".

Too action-y. I find it impossible to beat on the hardest difficulty because I can't properly evade the fuckers, but I have much too little ammo to properly defend myself.
Gameplay wise it's a 5/10, but I basicaly blazed through it because I wanted to know what would happen next.
And the big fight on the farm was pretty cool.

Not on steam

I don't watch tv, so I can't tell if it was advertised, but I don't even know what this game is about. I don't even know what genre, though I suspect generic tps.

Win10 exclusive cutting 80% of potential playerbase
DX12 game which remedy fucked up, it would've ran better and looked better if it was dx11
Windows store exclusive so it lost a lot of advertising and users willing dish out cash on steam
Gee.

Anything horror-related targeting a Teen/PG rating is inevitably going to be a soft hitter because of all the themes and concepts that are immediately off the table after making that decision.

Everything.

I got it from a 1 dollar humble bundle and I still feel ripped off.

Uninstalled within minutes.

It's a Stephen King/Twilight Zone sort of a deal though, harking back to what appealed to teens and young adults of a certain age.
It's not meant to be in your face gortastic terror extravagance, that would in fact have lessened it.

Not necessarily... You can make Teen/PG stuff that is absolutely terrifying. Implying things and hiding things is the source of true dread.

I think the themes and concepts were well enough. Losing in your job and then losing your SO is not something teens can understand easily.
And unnecessary brutaliy would have taken from the experience. I think they should have even went further in an even more shadow-y, psychological direction. I mean, the reveal with the switch completely fucked up the reality up to that point, so they could have gone crazy af.

Aiming for Teen means cutting back on a whole lot more than just the amount of violence that can be shown on screen, I didn't even mention gore to begin with. Just the threat of breaking the target rating looming over writers fucks with creative works - horror works, especially - pretty often.

it is on steam tho

All of this. Fun game, not much replay value. Would definitely play a legitimate sequel. Anyone played American nightmare and have any opinions?

CHILDREN OF THE ELDER GOOOOOOD
FIND THE LADY OF THE LIGHT
GONE MAD WITH THE NIIIIIIIGHT

I'd go to an Old Gods of Asgard concert.

I see; then I probably misunderstood you. Or I am already too tainted by this site that I automatically assume critique like this come from some edgy goretard.
But now I do want to know what exactly you mean. Gives examples plox.

everything after the first game. first game was mad.

Its fun. Its a nice experience.

Have you considered the fact they just wrote what they were aiming for and got rated afterwards, just like with almost every game that isn't aiming at controversy? Because they certainly didn't rate the game themselves beforehand. Wouldn't rate the Twilight Zone or most X-Files episodes beyond Teen/PG, or even most of Stephen King stuff where it released today.
Also, games that aim at an M and don't just arrive at it tend to be the most adolescent experiences out there. Mortal Kombat for example, I wouldn't call mature. Same with Hatred.
And if you're mentally comparing the game to something like Silent Hill, that wasn't the type of horror they were aiming for.

It's fine in some regard.
People wanted a horror game and they got a horror story instead.

The gameplay is pointless.
It's literally getting ambushed at every significant location from all directions by cookie cutter enemies; shine light > bang bang bang > repeat, continue until next cutscene.

What they should have done is put a little more thought into the taken encounters.

At the beginning you have the hitchhiker aka stuckey chasing you through the dream, he's saying creepy ass shit and swinging the axe as he's walking after you. then the game gives you the light, gun and shit goes downhill, he's a nobody again.
I don't care about muh defense and muh survival when weapons are in games but you get the impression that the guns are there simply because the sheer amount of cookie cutter enemies are there.
The game could literally have been a small amount of taken harassing you as you went through certain areas
Stuckey would have been fucking around with you in the log yards and woods up until the gas station
>Driving the log carrier to push the cabin off the hill like he did
>Rolling logs off log piles to crush you
>Swinging cranes around
>Throwing axes at you
>Chopping trees down to fall on you
>Rolling logs down cliffs
He could have been a proper named enemy that you struggle to get around and deal with.
Then you get to the ranger station after the police station. You meet up with Rusty; the park ranger.
He gives you the keys to the cabin and you do all that with barry, the crows and the kidnapper.
Then you go back and that goo shit is everywhere and he's near dead then you see him get taken and you fight him.
He's the first taken that's sanic fast and you fight him in a holding pen, after you kill him you walk off
Why? Why couldn't the next section have been all about him fucking around with you.
>Setting taken animals on you
>Being sanic fast throwing shit at you
Something that makes the encounters unique

Omega 3 fatty acids are good for your heart.

Given I followed development and they came out and said they were targeting a Teen rating about 2 years before the final release, no, I didn't really consider the idea that they might be lying about the rating they mentioned Microsoft wanting them to target in several press releases.

But that would make it a jump'n'run. Evading traps and shit and jumping around is really not better than shooting cookie cutter enemies. Of course it's worse if you have both, like Tomb Raider 2013.
Also, I totally forgot about Barry. Total bro.

It didn't end up being anything like the gameplay footage they showed at an Intel presentation.

I also followed the development and I pretty much remember that they arrived at that rating themselves before the deal the Microsoft was struck. Regardless, aimed or not, I stand by my claim the game wouldn't have benefited from the frivolities that substitute an M rating. At best, it just wouldn't have subtracted from it.

>tfw no Alan Wake 2
>tfw no comical expansion that turns him into a Garth Marenghi type character

It's good. More enemy types is nice, and it's a fun addition

Pretentious garbage from the first Stephen King mention at the opening of the game, to the idiotic Lost-tier tryhard ending.

Two more red flags:

1. Whenever a developer has to scrap an entire project and start over fresh

2. Whenever some idiot dev wants to frame the levels of a game as a DVD inter-episode sequence

I remember waiting so long, like several years after hearing about this game for it to come out then when it did I never played it. Also that game huxley which was going to be cross platform with pc, what happened to that? Is it worth it to boot up alan wake? It's been on my shelf since I picked it up for $2

Sequel bait ending and there's still no fucking sequel

That's where design comes in, you have light which is a useful thing. Floodlights exist, lamps exist, flares exist.

Instead of literally having you sprinting to the next cutscene while dealing with being fucked with have light be a key part of it, not in a puzzle kind of way but more of a "fuck you taken" thing, using floodlights to clear a path or even fuck the taken up so they have to back off

The key word is creativity. You can make anything you want to in a game, so why just repeat the same encounter again and again, get creative and work out ways to keep it fresh and inventive.

But now you're just running from light source to light source.
And weren't there some parts where you had to clear way with light? Wasn't that one bulldozer to be taken out with light?

It is on Steam and runs in DX11.

The issue isn't entirely with the rating itself, the issue is with the fact that publisher-enforced targeting of a specific rating, particularly one on the Everyone/Teen end of the spectrum, pretty much inherently comes with an extra degree of publisher interference in the creative process. It happens to movies, it happens to television and it happens to games.

I'm all for arriving at a rating, but the fact that they were targeting a Teen rating was something I knew about the game in 2007 and -differing opinion alert- even though I liked the setting and overall art direction, I felt like the game pulled most of its punches.

Fun during daytime, actiony nighttime got stale after the first few missions.

The only boss I thought was kinda cool and a little, just a little, memorable was that bulldozer. Sure, it was easy, but still.

The most memorable moment is that rock concert.