Alan Wake II: The Lake House

To give a bit of context, I adore Alan Wake 2 and enjoy Control. In addition, I have enjoyed all Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2's DLC content up to this point.

But I am disgusted by "The Lake House." First, the mechanics are off here. The shotgun and pistol load slow and require a full reload to work. This leads to constant deaths for no reason other than the game deciding it won't work. This issue is particularly felt in the final boss fight, where the game's poor mechanics are the real boss. Collision windows don't work properly, you can't fire the best gun that requires a long warm up without getting peppered by instant damage. It is an unfair fight that you get lucky at rather than good at. Finally, the game doesn't offer anything new and feels like a reheated version of Remedy's far better base game content.

Beyond the abysmal gameplay, the moment to moment storytelling is awful. The main character has no personality other than voiceovers that often feel out of place. The worldbuilding is also suspect, relying on countless journals that add little.

In the end, this is a bad piece of content. Remedy is an amazing developer and this isn't just a letdown but is the type of effort a first time studio would put out. There is no excuse for such dreck.

Control 2 will likely be outstanding. But Remedy needs to up their game with downloadable content because this is well below the studio's standards.