Anybody play it? I got it along with Red Dead Redemption and I've just started. So far the combat mechanics seem pretty okay. My thoughts -
The game starts off with "Stephen King once said..." and that right there pretty much lets you know where the game's going. Alan Wake is essentially a pastiche of Stephen King touchstones (writer protagonist + small town setting + supernatural evil), with a hefty bag of nods to other defining horror / mystery media. The Pacific Northwest setting and sense of the woods being a home to supernatural evil are straight out of Twin Peaks, as is an old woman character who cradles an inanimate object with her wherever she goes and who seems to have a greater knowledge of what's going on than anyone else (though she speaks in riddles). There's a smoke monster. Etc.
This is boilerplate stuff, so far. And it's fun for the moment, when I can pick out all the references, but I'm 99% sure that the fun will wear off. As the AV Club noted in their review, the telegraphing of plot points and stupidly literal narration is a hindrance. When a maniac strikes a door with an axe the narration states "the man struck the door with an axe just like Nicholson in the Shining". The main character's VA is passable but not great (the other characters seem better). One of the central conceits of the game is that you go around and pick up pages to a manuscript that sort of narrate the story in advance, which I guess is supposed to be spooky but all it does is deflate tension, since you know several minutes in advance when and how a character will die, or a momentous plot point will be revealed. Again, this being in the early game (I'm on the second chapter), they could turn this around. There's been one or two instances where you'll find a page in which the future will be foretold but key info will be left out, and that's somewhat suspenseful.
This is from the same team that made Max Payne and they share a lot of elements, to Alan Wake's detriment. The VA is one such example - the pulpy overwrought humor of Max Payne lent itself to the hardboiled PI narration, but here, where an attempt is made to convey actual suspense and drama, it doesn't really work. There are also some common gameplay elements - you can turn on TVs and watch a Twilight Zone-esque show called "Night Falls", ala Max Payne's immortal "Lords and Ladies".
Really the game feels like a full-length game made up of the dream sequences from Max Payne. It's a fun game to play, but I doubt I'll remember it much after I'm done (Alan Wank, more like). It may yet surprise me. For now, though, it's more silly than creepy. Every time you encounter an enemy it's exactly like you're up against a game full of the drugged-out mental patients from Max Payne, doing the typical "yell mundane things in a crayzee voice" maniac thing. Ho hum.
Anybody else play it?