Happy Monday, folks! Welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread.
This weekend, alongside pouring over footage of Donkey Kong Bananza and experiencing that normal existential 2025 dread we all love, I restarted Alan Wake. The last time I played this one (and one bit of DLC, I think?) was a couple years after its 2010 release—in fact, I’m playing my original Xbox 360 copy, meaning I get to listen to the licensed music that was cut from the remaster. And although I could probably go into Alan Wake 2 on its own, that seems poorly considered given how long ago it’s been and both games’ connection to Control, the replay of which I’ve kept putting off in favor of other writing projects. So no more; now it’s gonna be Alan Wake 1, Control: Ultimate Edition, and Alan Wake 2, plus whatever DLC came with the copies. Also The Legend of Zelda, which has nothing to do with Remedy Entertainment but c’mon. I spent three months almost exclusively playing stuff on Game Pass. Gotta play more Nintendo.
I did not like Alan Wake back then. I don’t really like it now, which might seem strange given my years-long excitement about its sequel, but anyway. I don’t like Alan, I don’t like his narration, but while those are things I dislike, my biggest frustration is for something that isn’t that bad. In fact, it could be pretty great given more time. Specifically, it’s the main mechanic of the game: that you scare the shadowy enemies to make them visible, then you shoot them. This is pretty solid of a core. It makes aiming a more interesting part of the combat, and by having your flashlight’s batteries—Duracell, another thing that’s cut from the remaster—be a resource to manage, it makes aiming something that you shouldn’t or can’t always do. Plus, it also lets this horror game play around with light, which is also a safe space, the only way for you to heal, and a core theme in the story.
The problem is that this is basically it. There may be slightly different versions of the Northwestern small town folks who antagonize you, but the enemy cast list is very small. Resource management is more limited to individual chapters and isn’t persistent (though in Chapter 2 tonight, I was caught with no ammo and had to jog to a forest cache for ammunition, so that was tense). But mostly, it’s just that this never really evolves past “shine light, then shoot.” It feels like a really cool Game Jam idea that’s just begging to be taken further, adjacent to potential greatness but never reaching. Perhaps Alan Wake 2 does, and to be honest, I’ve been on pins and needles since 2023 waiting to find out myself. And so here’s an unusually negative prompt from me: tell us about a game mechanic you’ve found in your life that isn’t bad, it’s definitely good, but also could be so much more.
And while you’re doing that, what did you play this weekend?