I’d like to say I vividly remember playing this on the Xbox 360 back in 2010 having fond memories of really enjoying it and always wondering if they’d ever continue it. However, it transpired I remembered I borderline nothing. This isn’t a bad thing this time round as It meant outside of gameplay the story was somewhat new again. Plus it’s nice its available on a Playstation console this time.
The game mechanics fighting off the Taken, the poor unfortunate souls who had been possessed by the Dark Presence. The overall bad of the game is what I remembered most. Blasting the poor fucks with the light of your flash light or eventual lantern beam before filling them with lead. Turn this writer into a bona fide monster killer or just serial killer depending how the denizens of the fictitious Bright Falls reacted to hundreds of their fellow neighbours disappeared into nothing. As he hunts down this malevolent force in the hopes to save his wife who was abducted by this spooky old bitch.
Aesthetically this games narrative and setting are a superb mix between the Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks. With just a dash of some of that uncanny valley weirdness. This helps give this game its own sorta special horror vibe which helps let it stand out. With the intention of the game being released in an episodic manner much akin to a limited TV series you’d watch. It breaks the story up without actually breaking it up, it’s weird but it works. It really invites you in with it’s strong narrative and constant twists and turns.
The world that Bright Falls inhabits is a tight little area strewn together with a real sense of travelling through a part of rural America. You can tell that it was supposed to be an open world game as initially intended. I’m not entirely sure how that game would’ve felt but this more linear story driven experience was definitely the better choice.
To give it that extra spiciness to the horror aesthetics, most of the gameplay except a few small interludes takes place at night. Fully allowing the game light mechanics to shine (i’m not sorry for the terrible pun). Using lights is the primary way you fight off the taken, possessed machinery or objects that launch at you with no wanton care. They are kinda annoying as you can’t really deal with them in an orderly manner. Nothing major but can be a bit annoying when you’ve got 5 concrete tubes launching at you around mach 10. Every time you hit a light you get a checkpoint or save plus an instant top up of your health. The constant encroaching darkness closing in allows for a claustrophobic impending doom to always linger over Alan’s head, before some farmer with a sledgehammer or something appears from behind aiming to cave it in.
I’d say for the most part the combat and dodging you can do is functional at best and feels mostly satisfying when you finish them off. But at several points you lose your entire inventory, ammo can be sparse at some points and can be a bit tedious if you aren’t near a lamp post or flood light. You can dodge which causes a bit of a time delay to help you manoeuvre the camera in your favour. But as the enemies get harder to take down and some of them hit 3 times in a row which can’t be dodged or parried if caught and you can only take 4 hits before dying. It’s a bit unforgiving for no real reason. There is no way of upgrading weapons or ammo capacity or even your health. With each of the weapons, the revolver, either of the two shotguns or the hunting rifles being ammo capacity locked as well sometimes you think you’ve saved up a good amount only for a checkpoint to rinse you of everything. So you end up back at square one. The best items by far are flash lights and the mighty flash-bangs, they fuck shit up real good along with the flare gun. Which is ideal for taking out the many flocks of demon birds that pop up to ruin your night regularly. I just think one or two more guns just to pad the armoury out a bit more wouldn’t have gone amiss.
If you are aiming for the platinum trophy of this title it will take you a clean 2 runs minimum due to having to play it on the hardest difficulty and some of the collectibles are locked behind this which you have to find nearly all 291 on them. For me that was a no go, I just don’t have it in me for this particular game. It’s a bit of a cheap way to bloat gameplay for no real cause you don’t get anything for finding all of a certain thing whether it’s the manuscript pages which are narrated by Alan himself which is a nice way of reading the story for extra context. But there’s a few hidden TV shows which are fun to watch I won’t give them away to much, radio shows, can towers to shoot, signposts, some hidden chest for extra ammo or weapons and the biggest chunk the coffee thermoses. I’d probably say it’s not horrific to collect them all but without following a guide there’s a good chance you’ll miss a couple which even though each episode can be played at any point once completed. It’s always from the start with the basic set of weapons or flash lights not your previous loadout. So it’s always a bit of an annoying soft reset.
I did start the DLC for it but for whatever reason they decided to up the difficulty without any real way of balancing it on your end. The waves of enemies is upped significantly and usually padded out with the harder ones to take down. It also comes with a new mechanic for the flashlight activating the floating word and its’ following action. Which I think in principle is cool but in action it kinds didn’t work all that well. When you haven’t got the time to point or waste the limited amount of battery you have whilst your about to be gang jumped by scythe wielding maniacs and exploding the bang option also inflicts damage to yourself its a bit asinine.
The story is the strongest aspect of the game, its a nice twist from the standard sort of horror game by having an unravelling author who is trapped in his own work of fiction with his own words having a deadly effect to the real world he lives in. I’m not entirely sure how it all pans out into the expanded universe yet, I am working on that slowly. I have completed Control previously but prior to the releases of the story DLC and I’ve never played quantum break. I’m really looking forward to getting through most of these and wrap up with Alan Wake 2 soon. Hopefully before Control Resonant drops. So I can really get into the very expanded lore of this converging game universe.
Overall I’d rate this game a very high 7/10, Positively tasty.
I feel I enjoyed this more the second time round, so having very little memory of the story made for a more enjoyable time. The remaster elevates the graphics and textures a little bit more with enhanced character models but I’d probably say not enough to make it a must have if you have access to the original. The biggest highlight is having the extra DLC in one disc as well. I think if the game itself had a few more enemies and this was balanced out with a few extra weapons and 1 or 2 ways of upgrading Alan it could’ve been that little bit better. As it nots a fully fledged action shooter nor is it a full survival horror. It falls nicely in the middle but could’ve dipped its toes more in one aspect of it. But its a great story and a fairly compelling way to wrap it up, it’s a shame it took 13 years for a sequel but I feel it was worth the wait.
Released October 5th 2021 on Sony Playstation 5
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