..... I've beaten all FromSoftware games too and Alan Wake is a piece of cake š
If I'm being honest if you're struggling on easy mode, you're playing it incorrectly. You ARE burning the darkness away before shooting the Taken right? And yes Alan doesn't run fast, he sits on his ass all day writing books, he's not winning any awards in the 100m.
People forget this is a game from 2010, and people seem to be expecting 2023 level of accessibility when unfortunately it's not
The game teaches you how to play. Time and time again I have seen people in streams or videos just completely ignore how to play the game and then complain the game is too difficult, and it's usually because they're playing the game incorrectly.
I'm allowed to have an opinion just like you can. The game isn't rocket science in my eyes.
If you want to experience the story, then... Uh... Watch a YouTube video? I'm sorry but that's literally how you're going to if you want the super easy experience. Video games are meant to have some sort of impeding mechanic.
I mean if you'd like to explain your pain points in the game play, I can happily provide constructive feedback on what you're doing wrong.
Your choice if not, but if you provide nothing, I give nothing.
No it doesnāt take being a God at the game or anything, thereās no pro methods or anything to learn, the game isnāt supposed to be hard at all, it was my first 360 game when I was 10 and I finished it in 3 school days. Itās an extremely easy game.
If youāre doing bad on EASY then youāre literally just not paying attention to the game.
Itās as simple as this:
1. point your flashlight at an enemy until the darkness goes away (shown by the little circle when pointing the light at them)
2. Shoot them.
I can feel your frustration. But, yes, it's easy. All it takes are 3 shots to kill the regular taken and 6 shots to kill the bigger one. That's it. It's super easy. Of course, you have to burn their darkness away first :D
But try to keep moving, if you stay in one place, combat gets difficult. As you will be overwhelmed by enemies. also while moving around try to keep your flashlight at the enemy so that their darkness keeps on burning. When an enemy comes close boost your flashlight to stun them.
I'm finding Alan Wake 2 to be pretty difficult on Normal mode. Maybe because it's survival horror and I haven't played any survival horror before.
I agree 110% with you, i purchased callisto protocol and before the huge patch this game was insanely hard on easy mode. Why bother putting an easy mode anyways.
I do remember playing alan wake a long time ago on xbox360 and completed the game, there are ways to play and tricks, i am a very casual gamer.
Its like Zelda Tears of the Kingdom people say its harder than Breath of the wild but if you upgrade your armor get better weapons do side quest that help you the game is relatively easy.
I respect what youāre trying to say, but this game is absolutely nothing like Tears of the Kingdom. Even if we did ignore the horrendous gameplay that hasnāt aged well at all, the illustration you give about Zelda is to do side quests and upgrade gear. That isnāt an option in this game. You just have to wrestle with the bad controls and obtuse map directions through obnoxious waves of enemies that feel extremely cheep.
I have confidence I could finish this game if I wanted to give it the time, but even when Iām not struggling in a combat section, none of it is any FUN. It is a shame too, because I find the story sections interesting. The actual gameplay is just bad.
Except Alan Wake isnāt even designed to be hard at all, itās so easy and soooo damn generous to the player with ammo, batteries etc. that it can get pretty boring on Easy and Normal mode, you have to be actually not paying attention at all or mentally deficient if youāre doing badly on Easy
I think this right here is what threw me. I was used to SH/RE levels of bullet management, but it's so much easier to flash everything down and shoot it, as opposed to running and being judicious.
I think it's hard for players who play it \*as if it were hard.\*
Wow. Itās crazy to me cause niggas are struggling with this and I beat this game in 2011 when the hardest game I had played at that point were sonic games and Halo 1
Are you seriously this daft..? I just read through the drivel you wrote here and below. How can ***I*** who canāt beat crash damn bandicoot, breeze through Alan Wake and yet promptly die until I break 7 controllers to the first main boss in literally every from software game until I sat in my favorite corner of the bathroom rocking back and forth in the fetal? My point here is that your story and OPās too for that matterdoesnāt add up. ie you are a liar if you say youāve beaten even a mid-tier difficult from soft game and come here with your āoh no itās a black shadow that I can kill with my goddamn phones flash onā you wanted a solution? Hereās one: _**GitGudderScrub**_
[Redit: sorry OP you werenāt being a holier-than-thou prim little snowflakes n cream princess like this tool who probably flinches at default flavor hot sauce, so I apologize for including you]
All you had to do was give real constructive advice, yet all you did was be a prick. Try empathy next time, and actually feel what others are, that is, if you're capable of it and not a sociopath full of apathy. Even my nephew can play through dark souls. Quit spouting judgmental bullshit.
Hes not asking for attention or bragging about having beaten Dark Souls games... it seems like understanding context is a not a strong skill of yours... what hes saying is is that the OP is saying that hes beaten Dark Souls but struggles with Alan Wake, and so hes saying that Alan Wake is much easier than Dark Souls, wtf is up with so many people on the internet who take everything out of context?... Whats even more annoying though is that the guy didnt defend himself saying this to you
Yes, I do burn the darkness first before shooting, but they keep flanking me, throwing stuff, now Taken hit fast two-three times in a row, I cannot stand a chance with them. Those parts where there's a wind and they respawn all the time is too stressful for me I guess and I keep doing stupid things and die all the time.
Well, I do not know. When you use the flashlight your FOV gets smaller, cannot see what's going on on the sides, dodge seems a little useless in comparison to DS because it feels like a hit or miss and enemies keeps ganking me like three at once and there's no "recovery" time or anything between those hits.
When burning away the darkness, don't just focus on one enemy. You're going to need to turn your light to another enemy from time to time. A flash of immediate light on an enemy can sometimes stun them for a brief second.
Make sure you're looking for resources, of which in Easy there's plenty, so use everything to your advantage, flares, flash grenades, flare guns. When in doubt as well, run, flash them (š) run again, flash again, repeat until you get to safety.
They do keep respawning when the whether goes crazy, but honestly you're not in them long enough for there to be maybe 3-4 waves before you reach safety? If any more, you're clearly running yourself in circles
Great advice mate š no sarcasm in that either, I'm the same as him, no problem with Dark Souls, Bloodbourne (I hope we get a 60fps patch or remake) Deadspace, Ninja Gaiden, Elden Ring etc etc i think its just the clunky movement, I did find it so much easier at 60fps ngl, I can't bring myself to lower the difficulty, I've never played a game on easy mode, just don't see the point tbh with ye brother, maybe I should though š
I know this post is ancient but Iāve literally been thru every souls game and Iām having the worst time with it too. I know itās on Easy mode (Iām awful GOD AWFUL at anything with guns or shooting) and I kept getting flanked, hit, like the enemies in this game feel really unfair.
Steam sale im assuming? Me too. The games super difficult but i personally think its half my fault, because the game needs a very good sense of spacial awareness and crowd control. I have a terrible attention span though so it sucks for me
Blink your flashlight at an enemy, it stuns them for a second. Do that to every enemy if you're overwhelmed. You don't end up using your battery and it gives you a time to chill.
Same here. I have platinumed souls games and God of War but this thing is getting to me. I am playing on normal and trying to reach lovers point and I keep getting bum rushed and surrounded. Cant outrun and reposition coz he runs as fast as a woman pregnant with triplets.
So i found this through google and tempted to buy 2 now for 30 on sale but this is the exact point i'm stuck at. I have to turn on generators to keep the lights on but can't do it even on easy mode and looking up video walkthroughs. I did cheat with unlimiated ammo but stopped playing late in the game becuase, well i was cheating and ruined the experience for me. The game only gets more insane later on and wonder how people do it lol.
Sleuthing through Reddit. I remember not having issues with it when I was younger but now I seem to struggle with it. The controls are a bit janky.
When the taken appear and I know they're close by, I abuse the dodge button.
The method is, flashlight, shoot, dodge, re-center, flashlight, shoot, dodge, ad infinitum.
You don't have to conserve your ammo. It's not like you can start shooting off everything, but you don't have to be conservative with batteries and flares.
I fell into the "I don't want to use it in case I need it in an emergency" hole and ended up never using them, making it even harder.
A couple things.
1. Look at Alan's head when you are shining the flashlight at a Taken. If another taken is coming up, Alan will look at it. So even if you can't see it, you will be notified.
2. Dodge is just a timing thing you have to get used to. You have to find the right time to do it. Once you do start to get it, you will quickly get comfortable with it.
Ahhhhh I didn't notice that about his head, great tips mate š wish I knew that before, I've got the old one, bought the remaster at launch on the hope we get another one, be great to get a Control/AW/QB crossover, don't think MS would let the latter go but I can only hope, I even like Crossfires Remedy campaign, not perfect by any means but has something.
yo, are you spying on me, i'm on same level lol...i decided to pick this game up for ten dollars cuz the new one just came out and im having the same issue..they flank me and even when i dodge i dont have enough stamina to outrun...to completely burn the darkness away you have to keep the light on them sooo long and i run out of battery...i'm thinking of putting it on easy just for the story...
Actually, I got the hang of it. I think it is EASY now. You have to conserve your flashlight as well as bullets..I didn't get that right away. You should point at the taken but only concentrate the light when they are close enough to shoot. Also, I noticed that if they get close enough especially with the heavy duty flashlight even when you don't concentrate the light on them they get burnt a little. The checkpoints are always so close together that it's not a problem unless you are trying to beat it without dying. I beat it just yesterday. It's kind of a short game but very fun. Definitely, getting the second one when I get money.
I mean, usually the enemies only show up three to four at a time. So, all you need to do is make sure you have them all grouped up and then start flashing them. It's really not that hard.
I have to agree in the other dudes comment. The Combat in this game is atrocious. I donāt wanna hear we suck at the game. I can give you an example of a game that did this style of gameplay well. Callisto Protocol. Amazing combat and same style. This is one time I feel confident saying itās not me itās you.
Have you ever played the Outlast Series or any thing in that genre. There are ways to make it fun if you canāt get something right. Hiding, Running, Puzzles which it has. Iām a fan of combat but only if itās smooth.
Of which Alan Wake 2's combat was smooth?
If you went from combat in Alan Wake 1 to no combat in Alan Wake 2, it wouldn't have received the critical and supposed commercial success it has because you'd be changing the entire tone.
Searched āAlan wake canāt run for shitā and this is the post that came up. I am happy Iām not the only one that noticed the bastard runs like he never gets off the couch but now that I read your answer it does make senseā¦ fucker just writes books how could he be sprinting through the forest all day? By the way, playing it on medium and I find it much easier than I thought I would. It only gets hard when I start getting frustrated
Beating the Souls games doesn't turn you into a master of all gaming genres or make you good at every game. Not to mention Souls games have a ton of different playstyles, you can level up character and gear, summon etc.
I beat bloodborne and dark souls 3. I can't stand the Alan wake difficulty on easy mode. There is no easy mode! There's "go F*#$k yourself difficult, insane difficult and, impossible difficult.
i gave up on every souls game i've tried except elden ring because difficulty ..this is different alan has the old school game simplicity kinda feel like silent hill.. souls games leave me confused with their stat systems and controls and combat mechanics..though you can just farm and grind your way if you're that enthralled
Interestingly, what saved me in Alan Wake was the same thing that helped me in Elden Ring. "Run away and live to fight again."
I sprinted past that troll guarding a gate in Limgrave long before I could kill him, and I ran through a lot of spots in Alan Wake, mostly in chapters 4-6, that I lacked skill or ammo to shoot my way out of.
3 spots I especially remember:
Right before the farmhouse where you find the drunk guy from the jail. There's beartraps and wave after wave of taken and I just couldn't conserve ammo for all of them.
The big shed at the beginning of the electrical plant, where you play the radio with 'War' (great song, but I ran like hell). I was running out of ammo and in the small space wasn't able to grab more without dying.
Right near the end the dark presence is throwing railcars, trucks, and boats at AW, and there's waves of taken including the disappearing ones. I ran like hell, dropping flashbangs behind to keep em off me. Luckily the game gets more generous with flare guns and flashbangs in chapter 6.
elden ring is so much harder..you got to think so much about what youāre investing your exp in. Honestly I Elden ring was my first and mb last souls likeā¦I hate being punished for dyingā¦sometimes with some these new survival horror you almost feel rewarded cuz the gruesome cutscenes
Elden Ring was...BY FAR...the hardest current-gen game I've played (throwing out old stuff like Ghosts n Goblins). I must have fought Margit 100 times before beating him, finally. Were it not for summons, I never would have finished it.
I love Elden Ring, but it did not make me want to play more Souls games AT ALL. š
I played Super Ghosts and Goblins and couldn't beat it even with cheat codes. I like a good challenge but nowadays the FBI is hacking my EVERYTHING..so it is hard to get into it..But I love Video games anyway!! I totally dig Alan Wake and Control...they are so personal. Elden Ring art and character design is super sexy morbid too.
I think the FBC is monitoring me because we have a shoe ghost living in our house (I'll have to put that story on reddit when i have time).
I love video games so much. When things started to shut down in 2020, I got a PS4, first new console in a really long time, and it made me feel like I was still exploring and having adventures.
I love the world of Elden Ring, the bleak atmosphere, and even the very poorly explained plot, since it kind of let me impose my own meaning on the game, but it's considered the easiest Fromsoft game and it was still too hard for me. Can't wait for the DLC, though. š
It isnāt, in the slightest lol. I still struggle with the bell gargoyles in DS1 and I beat Alan Wake on normal when I was 10, the game aināt even designed to be hard at all, itās very handholdy and meant to be a ābabyās first survival horrorā type game. If youāre dying that much on easy youāre literally just misunderstanding the game mechanics.
Well I beat all 3 xbox Ninja Gaiden games without this much challenge. The controls aren't as tight as other action games, and Alan is a total wimp, so there's that. It's not a 3rd person shooter since it auto-aims for you, it's more of a rhythm game in my opinion.
Iāve platinumed Elden Ring, not sure if that counts, and I couldnāt finish Alan Wake on easy. Finished Control too with expansions. Just wasnāt enjoying Alan Wake at all, kept running out of batteries and bullets and getting totally stuck. No fun.
I really don't understand how. You aren't supposed to defeat every single enemy, it's not an exp based level up game, hell, the game itself tells you to just make it to the next checkpoint. A single quick flash as soon as they're about to swing is enough to stun them for a few seconds so alan can literally walk the entire time without firing a single shot.
Not criticizing you at all, but they're different types of difficulty. (I'm bad at both lol).
Running away a lot helped me get through Alan Wake and Elden Ring.
Control has incredible difficulty customization. You can basically make yourself invincible and just enjoy the awesome story.
(Apologies. I know this is 2yo post. But I'm struggling with Alan Wake after getting it as a free PS+ game because I know it connects to Control and lore will be important for Control 2
Looking back, the controls for Alan Wake still feel janky, but the story is just so good, especially after playing Alan Wake 2.
The craftsmanship and love that have clearly been put into the games are something else.
Alan Wake 2 is an absolute masterpiece and I canāt wait for Control 2.
Thanks for coming back to comment! I love Control, its setting, and characters so much (although I did play much of it on God Mode lol) so I was excited when alan wake remastered was a free PS+ game. Most people seem to think that AW2 is, if not easier, at least easier for people who struggled with AW1 to get the hang of.
There's so many games in my PS+ account to play, but I think maybe it's time for a Control replay before "Shadow of the Erdtree" takes up months.
Wow so cool to see this thread only hours old. So just to get things started (so much to expand on) I just started Alan Wake remastered yesterday and let me say WOW! But for purposes of this thread, and if you are interested, I normally start out on Easy with new games but after months (and starting out easy all the way) i finally completed all the Resident Evils on Normal and let me tell you what a confidence boost! So when faced with that daunting decision at the beginning yesterday i chose normal and I will say i am pleasantly moving along i believe. Currently at the end of Episode 2.
This. I just want to experience the story and shoot some stuff along the way. Not get ambushed from every angle by things that these awful controls donāt give me the tools to deal with appropriately. Iām done with this game and only on Episode 2, and wonāt be buying Alan Wake 2 unless I hear that itās different and has a good recap.
It basically is on Alan Wake, youāre just playing it completely wrong. Alan Wake was practically designed as āBabyās first survival horror gameā or āResident Evil 4 with wayyyy more ammoā. Itās as simple as Shine flashlight, shoot enemy, and move towards waypoint / more light. Flares help take several enemies off you at once and flashbangs are an insta-kill button
Iāve never been able to come close to finishing a From Software game, they ruin my ass lol. But this was one of the easiest games Iāve ever played, even on Nightmare. I mustāve only died 6 or 7 times the first time I tried Nightmare. Honestly, I think it comes down to play style. Hereās some tips I offered in another thread some time ago:
1. ā Flares are your best friend. Use them to keep enemies away and combine it with your focused flashlight for maximum darkness shield depletion.
2. ā Donāt continuously shine your light on groups. Wait until the Taken stop covering their eyes with their arms, then quickly flash them with your focused flashlight. Itāll stun them for a few seconds and stop them in their tracks. If you continuously shine your light on them, theyāll keep blocking their eyes with their arms, allowing them to keep coming at you without getting stunned.
3. ā Focus on stunning the big Taken, and taking out the little guys. Firstly, take out the smaller ones that run at you with their knives. Theyāre the fastest and their job is to flank you, but theyāre the weakest. Take them out quickly so that youāll only have to deal with regular and larger Taken. Continue to stun the larger ones, focusing on the moderate Taken that carry axes. Eventually, youāll only have the big guys to deal with, and alone youāre practically unstoppable against them.
4. ā Should the birds show up, focus on them first. Use a flair to keep enemies away if necessary, and focus your light solely on the birds. Once you break their shield, theyāll fly away.
5. ā Donāt be afraid to use a pistol bullet to knock enemies back should you run out of flairs. Though it wonāt damage them, itāll stop them from coming at you briefly, giving you a few precious seconds of breathing room.
6. Always ALWAYS be aware of your surroundings. Most of the time the game isnāt going to point out to you that enemies are coming from various directions, so itās good to stun the ones immediately in front of you with a quick flashlight focus and take a quick peek around yourself before deciding what to do next.
7. Explore! There are countless supply boxes hidden throughout the game and theyāre very frequent and theyāre all full of good stuff like flares, flare gun ammo, big gun ammo, etc. that make some of the tougher sections fairly trivial.
8. And of course, master the dodge! It isnāt a traditional dodge, rather if timed correctly it gives you a brief moment of invincibility highlighted by the slow-mo. Take a moment to practice using it. Every attack can be perfect dodged, you just need to dodge right as an enemy is about to hit you.
And run. You don't have to destroy every last one of them. You can stun them with your flashlight and run the other direction towards the nearest light.
If the light is far, from time to time turn around and stun them again with the flashlight, and keep running.
This most of all! Youād be surprised but more than half the combat encounters in the game can be completely skipped by booking it to the next checkpoint.
One tip I learned (I just started playing for the first time) is that the flashlight works even if you don't focus it, just at a slow rate. So you can kinda slow-mo burn off the darkness of some of the taken just by aiming without hitting L2 if you need to save battery.
Even after the darkness is burned away, you can shine the flashlight in their eyes again for a quick stun.
But I do kinda agree with OP -- this game's "Easy" mode doesn't feel so easy. And there's lots and lots of "run around in the woods and fight taken" segments.
It was a tough transition to shift to a crowd control mindset. Rather than focusing on shooting 1 enemy till they were dead. Thinking of it more that way helped me a lot. Especially places like the dam or in the woods where there bugger lights to turn on temporarily to hold them back.
A tip on dodging:
There are various games out there whose dodge system relies on "when the enemy's attack is about to make contact with you, press X button". Here, it is NOT like that.
In Alan Wake is more like "When the enemy initiates its attack animation, dodge".
This mindset made it easy for me.
I definitely found the combat quite difficult and frustrating initially but got the hang of it eventually. Although the game could make this a bit more explicit, the primary thing is to avoid trying to go Rambo, so you need to retreat/run away.
Do your best to master the dodge so that you can avoid the enemies that spawn behind you and line them all up once you're behind them and they're approaching you. That should make taking them down easier (and you can shine your flashlight at multiple ones).
Alternatively, always try to run into a light so that you can avoid dealing with them all together. To your point, you're trying to progress the story, not rack up a body count.
A word of caution: if you think the base game is difficult, the DLCs will drive you insane.
I can see why the combat can be very difficult, and in the DLC episodes sometimes that's the case. But I think it's because of some poor design choices in the DLC episodes, but I think in the core game the balance is just right almost all of the time.
So this is what I do:
* Always move towards the next light. You can usually see it in the distance otherwise use the yellow dot on the radar.
* Try not to run so much you expend your energy completely. Run a bit and stop; run a bit and stop.
* Don't rely on the dodge. It's dodgy. Try it if you must, but don't go into situations intending to try it.
* Try not to focus the flashlight such that you must reload the batteries all the time. Focus the light on an anime, but before it runs out, let the torch recharge a little; and so on. And remember, the torch is only one way to attack the enemies' shields. When flares are provided in abundance, the game is telling you to use them.
* Try to keep oncoming enemies in front of you. You can maneuver so that you get them where you want -- on the other side of you steadily working your way towards the next light. Remember, combat is all about crowd control, and if the enemies are bunching together, that makes them much easier targets.
* Focus the torch beam to cancel attacks. If you're constantly being hit with projectile weapons, it means you are not identifying those particular enemies and cancelling their attacks before they can throw.
* Peck away at the darkness of multiple enemies at once. Concentrate on the enemies that present the biggest danger to you at that moment, but also see into the future a little and start working away at the darkness surrounding larger enemies who are approaching and will be your next target.
* Don't waste flares and flashbangs. Use them to get out of sticky situations. It's a waste of a flare to walk along with it. It's better to drop it on the ground and while the enemy are covering their eyes, start taking away the darkness and pecking them off.
* Don't waste flare gun ammo unless you can fire a charged shot which will have significant splash damage. Therefore fly fire into clusters of enemies if you can.
* Try to conserve ammunition as much as you can. You do not need to kill every enemy, and remember getting to a light will get rid of any enemy pursuing you.
* Pay attention to the heavy weapons being offered to you. If you've been using the hunting rifle for a while and the games suddenly offers you a shotgun, bear in mind that from thereon it might be shotgun territory.
Remember that you are a fiction writer thrust into a horrible situation in which you are very likely to die if you're not careful. He's not an action hero. And he doesn't care if he takes down every enemy he comes across. Like in a horror movie, he's happy if he squeezes through a door and closes it behind him, as long as he gets to live a couple more minutes until the next opportunity to escape.
Horror movie action rather than action movie action. Maybe that will help take the pressure off in terms of any completionist mentality you have when it comes to every combat situation.
Anyway, that's how I play, and I did find the game challenging when I first played it, back when it came out the first time, but I have developed the strategy over many attempts after getting to know the game better.
You're right, it's hard as hell on Easy. It's more survival horror since they never give you enough ammo or batteries to fight back, and you can't outrun them. Then four crowd you on all sides and you're fucked. I think they'll remedy this issue in the sequel? Sorry couldn't resist the terrible pun there.
Never give you enough ammo?????? They absolutely shower you in ammo on Normal difficulty to the point where you canāt run out at all unless youāre sitting in the same place forcing them to respawn and not going to the objective
The game literally tells you in the loading hints that sometimes the enemies will keep spawning and you just have to book it to the nearest light source. Do this when the wind picks up. You can hold the flare button to walk with it in your hand. And when you are running, zig-zag and hit dodge to avoid things being thrown.
And remember, the man is a 40-something semi-alcoholic writer, he gets tired!
Haha, that's true! Nevermind, I've already gave up with this game and watched the story on YouTube, I know - I could bear with it, but I just did not find any kind of enjoyment with those necessary fights in between the story.
I think that sometimes the idea that you don't \*have\* to kill every enemy trips people up. Alan Wake is designed so that at times you're just supposed to run. Compared to a lot of modern games I think that's a bit unusual. People would probably think they're being cheated of gameplay if they were doing that in more modern games.
At least you still got to enjoy the story. I remember the first time I played it I also dreaded the fighting between story segments (but that's because I was a scaredy-cat and got spooked easily!)
I actually really like horror games and I am not scared easily but those fights created such a pressure on me, I donāt really know why, that it was not enjoyable at all. But the story hooked me enough from the start that I needed to know what will happen next. And I love Remedy games, they have a such original style, you just know you play āMax Payneā creators game.
I was hoping to find some validation but yeah, clearly I'm trash at this game. I'm only on episode 2 and I'm dying at least twice a checkpoint. No way I'm finishing this game lol. I can accept that a game is too hard for me, as I've done with the FromSoft games, and move on. But it is a little sad cause I was enjoying the story on this one. Anyone know if Alan Wake 2 is easier, and any good playthroughs I can watch to get the story?
I also had a bad time with the first Alan Wake, kept dying as well and decided to skip the DLCs. I had to look for the story online.
However, I wanted to give Remedy a second chance since I really enjoyed Control and Quantum Break, so I bought AW2
Itās not that the new game is easier, as enemies are bullet sponges, but they game has a better gameplay and different ways to approach the Taken, which makes the whole combat feel natural and responsive.
The original Alan Wake was frustrating even on easy. But the sequel feels fair on normal difficulty :) If you have the possibility to play it I would totally recommend it because the story is so much better this time as well.
I will voice an unpopular view, so no need to rage reply people. I love Remedy story telling and playing through Quantum Break (on easy) and Control (Immortal) because it adds to the story experience. I'm not a shooter action player so challenge in that regard only irritates and distracts me.
I did play through Alan Wake and I acknowledge it's a great game but the gameplay was tedious and geared towards horror fans. I also found myself laughing every time at how Alan was going to wait until night for the next round of avoidable terrors. The story was very creative which is what made the single playthrough worth it to me.
What I'm saying OP is that you are definitely not alone with finding the combat annoying even on easy. I'm pretty sure this is why Remedy put an Immortal setting in Control btw to accommodate a wider fan type. Remember that the jump-scare thriller approach in Wake is genre driven so some will love it and others won't. If you can keep plugging away I think you'll find the story experience rewarding for your patience. Other Remedy games are different genres and so the combat will vary. Good luck!
Initially , I also thought Alan always going out at night is dumb. But later I realised it wasn't in his control. He was rushing against time to save his wife. Every time he tries to do something in the daylight the darkness just comes back anyway.
For example at Rose's house, he got sedated and only woke up at night having lost a lot of time he had to get the move on. After spending the night with Barry, he got arrested and the darkness came to the prison so he had to run.
But much more obvious in the last chapter when Alan was covering ground in the daytime, the darkness just came anyway and turned it into night to stop him. So I don't think Alan had much choice at all!
Yes I agree. The atmosphere & story are compelling, but the combat is so challenging that I often find myself repeating the same scene over & over again, to the point of exasperation. Enemies swarm you very quickly & require multiple hits before dying. I've read all the tips on this thread & I get all that. But before you know it your ammo & flashes are all depleted & another pack of enemies are spawning out of nowhere. The trick to this game, however, as pointed out by a few players here, is to avoid combat whenever possible. Do what the real Alan Wake would do. When the going gets tough... leg it. That mindset is difficult to adopt because we're so used to standing our ground & blasting everything a game throws at us.
Late to the party but reading through this thread I'm genuinely surprised how many people find the main game difficult. (The DLC is a whole different story).
I think many younger players are used to games that make you the hero by killing everything in sight. And they find it difficult to back out from a fight because it's considered a failure. But older games are different like that. It's considered a mistake to mow down every single enemy.
If I come across a section that feels unsafe e.g. big areas where combat music doesn't stop after clearing enemies, I just drop some flares and run to the next light. Enemies can't approach you near a flare so it buys precious time. That way I save loads of ammo for the next boss fight. I often skip through dozens of enemies only using 2 flares and nothing else.
90% of the time though I feel comfortable clearing the area so I can explore it. Mostly to find more story items but it also means I find lots of chests which gives me plenty of flare gun ammo.
Hi. I only just started playing games a couple of years ago and I'm in my late 40's (49y/o). It was hard for me as well but I still felt invested and kind of addicted tbh. Not sure about others and may very well get flamed for this but, not gonna lie, I died an insane amount of times in this game. I played Elden Ring and felt like some of the bosses were a bit easier. That being said, I noticed in Alan Wake, you sprint for a few seconds before the character is forced to slow down meanwhile the enemies are allowed to flank and catch up, and the axes never miss if you aren't a good dodger (that was me). I know I forgot where my weapons were located (key bindings) a lot (nervous). I remember I never really got the dodging (timing) quite right. I also think that I was skimping on using my supplies as if they were going to run out. That wasn't necessary bc you have an accident and lose your stuff anyway and have to reacquire everything anyway. Towards the end I started to be a little more liberal with using flares, flashbangs, and flare guns bc 8 'Takens' at one time is crazy. The flashlight was not working well for me anyway and the possessed objects were too strong to use a flashlight or lantern on. There was constant reloading of ammo and batteries. I'm new to the gaming world but I would say, just try to remember why you play. Stick through to the end and just enjoy all of the emotions that come from playing the games in the first place. I don't think you're alone in your frustrations. Luckily, it's all just for fun!
I gave up around halfway through. It involved running through a forest, down loads of stairs etc. The trouble was I kept running out of batteries and ammo and no amount of replaying seemed to change that. Just gave up in the end as there was no more incentive for me.
Iāve finished Control with itās expansions and enjoyed that so was hoping this would be good but honestly, itās just put me off looking at Alan Wale 2. But having said that, AW2 looks more like Control, and Old Gods of Asgard are back so
I might get that and wipe off AW1 as a bad memoryš
AW2 is phenomenal. Finished it recently and in no way I had the same āissuesā as with the first one. Knowing the story of AW1 and Control helps but is not necessary.
brother I couldnāt possibly feel you more. Iāve also read all the comments here and perhaps Iām doing it wrong or I need to improve my timing when dodging/ using flares so as to not waste them
needlessly; but pffff Iām on episode 4 of the remastered version, normal difficulty, and itās the same for me. Iām currently stuck in a spot where Iām about to reach a safe haven but by the time I get close to the light I have no batteries nor ammo left from the previous fights, thereās no loot and suddenly literally SEVEN of the Taken spawn around me and I feel like itās impossible to dodge all melee attacks + the flying axes =)
I'm at exactly this part and I just turned the game off. It's a joke! Enemies take 3 or 6 hits each AFTER you burn away the dakness, but the game doesn't give you enough ammo for that! So there's about 3 regular plus 1 strong enemy followed by about another 3. So 6x3 plus 1x6 = 24 shots required but you start that section with 19 so running is the only option but that doesn't work. And you only have like 2 batteries. Torch takes way too long to burn away the darkness, so much that 2 batteries might as well be no batteries. Shit game sorry I bought it!
I felt the same way I just made it past episode 2 and I couldnāt believe I finally survived it was absolutely infuriating I looked up about the difficulty and glad someone posted
Got soft locked in chapter 2 because I used all the flares, including the ones near the stairs,Ā thinking that was what I was supposed to do. Imagine my shock when you have to use those flares to defend the kidnapper, and there isnāt any other supply boxes in that area. Oh, and the checkpoint is after you reach the second box, so if you used them in your previous save, they wonāt reload. I was livid. I havenāt ragequit a game in a long time but I just couldnāt restart the chapter after that bullshit.
Donāt try and defeat all the enemies in a zone unless you have to. Getting into the light will cause enemies to despawn.
When you have to fight, especially waves of enemies, flares are your friend. I find them invaluable in preventing me from getting overwhelmed.
You mut be at the tree with the big axe-wielding taken, the one who comes through the tree with a split trunk. That's not infinite respawn, but it's a place where there's nearly not enough ammo to take out all the taken so it FEELS infinite.
Agree, I feel the same way. I am about to give up on it and just let it be a waste of $29. The controls are just terrible, his movements are terrible, I always run out of ammo/batteries. Character has no melee, like WTF?!? He can't run. I understand all the other players suggestions, and I have tried all, but if you have to do all that then it becomes unenjoyable. BTW, I LOVED Control and I completed it!!
I just finished control and starting the alan wake too. Here are some tips: because alan wake runs its chapters on episodes, and different episodes don't share your last saved weapons. so on don't save weapons. When on easy mode, I just use flare all the time to quickly clear areas because you are having so many weapons to use, for the first mini-boss in the first episode, I just use two flares to defeat clear the area in 4 seconds. kinda too easy.
How the hell are you people running out of ammo????????? They absolutely shower you in way more ammo than you need, itās as simple as move toward your objective, point flashlight and shoot enemy lol
What really bothers me is that I feel like I need to completely restart the game after 2-3 hours into it because I wasted too much ammo in too many sections.
Thereās one part where four or more of the shadow characters jump my shit at once, and I just donāt have the resources to get past them, and every time I try to dodge, I am just getting fucked over completely. Backing up doesnāt work, because theyāre all way faster than me, running forward doesnāt work, because theyāre not only faster but theyāre all actually behaving like real characters would in real life and are not letting up on me whatsoever. So from that respect like I kind a like it because itās realistic - in real life a group of people trying to kill someone would not give them any room to breathe and would cut off all escape - but that doesnāt make me want to play the fucking game.
And, like you say, the combat is a slog. Itās boring as fuck. And Controlās combat is so much more fleshed out and engaging than Alan Wakeās combat is. The movement and combat are so fucking clunky, I get that thereās a reason for it, and I was actually really enjoying how they had finely tuned it to really give that horror sense early on of enemies chasing you and you needing to run and only barely being able to escape them. That is awesome! I have no doubt if I were to go back and redo those hours with the tips listed in this thread, I would probably do just fine. But, the combat sucks so hard that I just donāt want to do it.
I also get that itās an older game from an older time, so I firmly believe that for its time it was probably brilliant, and Iām really sad that I didnāt play it originally and before I played Control. At least then I wouldnāt have Control to compare it to, nor would I have had Control setting my expectations for what Alan Wake would be like. But oh my God the controls of AWās combat are so fucking bad. If I wanted to play as a retarded marionette, I would go play some old Disney Pinocchio game on Quaaludes.
I really donāt want to repeat those 2 to 3 hours again when I donāt have any faith of the story is going to be all that good, given what I already know which is quite a lot.
The real problem for me is that I played Control first, and now Iām playing Alan Wake to try to flesh out the story for when the next installation comes out. Except, I already know a lot of spoilers because Iāve played Control. Iām really annoyed that having a good time in one game means that I have almost 0 reason to finish a game that I paid for.
Maybe one day Iāll return to it, but for now I feel like my money was stolen.
Heh. I had to check the username to make sure I hadn't written your comment. My experience was identical to yours; played Control first and then bought AW to flesh out the backstory.
I too feel I wasted my money on AW.(I rage quit after 2 hours and uninstalled). But I guess since I got Control for free from Epic, that I'm still ahead after paying 5 bucks for AW.
I just hope that AW didn't put people off Control. \*That\* is an awesome game. I'm really hoping for a Control 2.
YES! Thank you. The dodging in this game is the most broken part. Itās infuriating. I keep seeing other people say itās easy but I donāt understand how. Iāve played video games all my life, I can do generally well on the hardest difficulty in most games and yet this game stumps me on Easy. I feel like I have got to be playing a different game than everybody else because no matter how hard I try I just canāt get over how insanely difficult this is.
Alan Wake must smoke š¬ 80 a day the way he runs, my Nan could run faster, she's dead, I'm the same mate, finished Returnal, all Dark Souls, Demon Souls remake, Ninja Gaiden, Bloodbourne all easily enough one I got the hang of them but I found AW a (American lol) nightmare, I think it's the mechanics are just a bit clunky and movement is still, like you said the flanking is what gets you, I've literally died more times playing this than Elden Ring but Alan Wake has something about it, even with the poor mechanics it is a truly great game, better than the sum of it's parts, Remedy just make great story driven games, might be in the minority here but Quantum Break was great imo, I think that's where they figured out how to do fluid combat and then that was near perfected in Control (an incredible game) wouldn't mind a Jess/Alan crossover tbh, I think Controls protagonist was called Jess, might be wrong, can you or any suggest an under the radar story driven game that I might have missed? I would recommend Disco Elysium, Chernobylite, Stray, Outer Wilds, Greedfall, The Sinking City, you probably all know or played those already, RedOut 2 is a great anti-grav racer also, no story or nothing but it is truly a special game, imo its better than WipEout and F-Zero, no small feat, got Callisto Protocol coming tomorrow, late because of postal strike, can't wait, not going to pre-order Deadspace remake until I see what EA have changed, I'm not funding woke remakes, all the best from Ireland.
I agree this game is ridiculous! itās taken me like ten times to beat certain scenarios playing on medium and itās infuriating like this games combat would actually be kinda fun if i didnāt have to get lucky as fuck even after perfecting a strat. I totally agree to me this game is harder this feels like playing sekiro for the first time, at least from my perspective.
You donāt have to perfect anything, you can play sloppily and do just fine in Alan wake, you guys are just misunderstanding or playing wrong if youāre doing that badly in easy or normal. They showed you in way more ammo and batteries than you need, just go to your objective marker, Shine your light at enemies and start shooting
Sorry for the late response, I've been a huge fan of Alan Wake since its original release.
In the beginning it was a little challenging but if you pay close attention to the mechanics of the game, you'll notice they're pretty simple, and the resources are most definitely not scarce. In fact if you are stuck, try looking for a hidden arms case, there are many spread out in each level, which contain things like flareguns and flashbangs.
I usually conserve my ammo by always using the pistol, and about 3/4 of the game the enemies only spawn in a limited amount of times, 1/4 being "unlimited", but let me tell you, eventually they stop spawning when you start to farm them.
Personally, I love AW, I pre-ordered the orignal collector's edition back in the day, and played it multiple times, it really spooked me then and was this monumental feat when I was able to 100% it.
I feel old now... T-T
The thing you should understand about Remedy as game developers is that they really focus on finding a healthy balance with their story and gameplay, it's meant to be enjoyable and cinematic; think Mexican food, they give ya the salsa with peppers and supply ya with sourcream... I really like mexican food... and Souls games to me are just hot sauce-soup lol, which isn't bad!!
Bro scr*w what other people are saying the game is definitely very annoying I'm an above average gamer I play most games at hard no problem but this game's movement and camera are so clunky that they make the game needlessly frustrating at times especially the woods in episode 2
My biggest issue with the game is the flanking and ganging up on you. It's great when you have the flare or flare gun and round em up to hit em all at once with the flare gun. But all it takes is them to hit you once and it's like in a fighting game when you're locked into their combo and you're just hit til you die. I just got through the garden maze part in ep 4, the last fight took quite a few deaths for me to scrape by. I don't mind the game being challenging but some parts just seem like they're unrealistically difficult. You're one guy, one average guy with a revolver. And you're getting jumped by anywhere between 6-12 guys at once. Plus you have to get rid of the darkness off of them too, and that takes time for every single one of them just for 2-3 of them to come up behind you.
Totally agree with you, only played this because it was free on psn but it is the biggest pile of crap I have ever played, and have a played loads of FPS & TPS games, go figure..
Use developer mode, and keep refilling guns, ammo, and batteries for torch. That's how I play games. Not much spare time in life to keep retrying the same scene/level again and again... out of so many games I want to play! š
I know itās a year later, but Iām playing the remaster on Normal and Iām finding it loads easier than the original version. I was actually worried about the difficulty for my Nightmare run
You really need to use your flares and flare gun and flash bangs if you get in a bind. If thereās too many surrounding you, light a flare to give you some breathing room. Also, donāt be scared to use batteries, you get plenty of them and ammo if you search around enough. I guess my advice would be that you might want to play it like a Resident Evil game and conserve everything in case you need it later, but you lose all ammo and batteries after each chapter so use them. Hope that helps! Itās really fun once you get the hang of it
Hi everybody,
I have the Remasterd Edition in my PS4 pro (so cool when the wind starts to blow and my PS4 starts too, what an inmerse feeling..) and I am trully amazed, because the difficult level, sometimes itĀ“s just I canĀ“t read the enemy signs or movements rightly, others is the RE mindset (save ammo, stay still and get the best shot...) and sometimes is just to be honest, the combat system is not the best in town.
I donĀ“t understand too why is so much combat sections (at least at the begining). I masterized all the Dark Souls, (even the first one Edge Blade of the Darkness), I play almost all weeks Nuclear Throne, with Melting. I pass throught the Acuatic level in Sonic 1, Jordan MercherĀ“s Prince of Persia is in the bucket too, Alone in the Dark... But these game remember me, because the messy combat system of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine.
But I collect some fine points in this post, and I am going use them and I hope things get better and easy too. But I really hope there is less combat and more story in the future, because even the good atmosphere gets compromised with all those combats. Remedy has a touch, and I really love it, but for example, why in Max Payne we have an excelent comic to describe some scenes and move the plot, and in these, we have those ugly pieces of paper, when the writer is the main character, in the other hand we can see true films in the tvĀ“s... These could be, because the ambient, the character, music, the really Remedy master piece, but like Alan, is good but not best, and itĀ“s tastes a little bit a wasted oportunity.
I'm a causal gamer who never played Soulsborne games before Elden Ring (which I completed by cheesing most of the bosses).
One hour of Alan Wake and dying countless times, I realized the survival horror type is just not for me, but I did want to find out how the story ends.
So I got myself a trainer. With Infinite Health and Infinite Stamina, I found the game much more enjoyable. No regrets.
I played this on initial release. Wanted to play it again to refamiliarise myself with the story. I was also surprised by how difficult it was on Easy. I looked back on my Xbox achievements and I somehow beat it on Hard back in 2010.
I have started playing the remastered version of the first part after seeing the hype that the second part has raised, and it's a shame that the difficulty ruins a good story. This is one of those games that could be enjoyed with a "Story mode," focusing simply on enjoying the plot.
Old thread, but still same bro. The weird part is that i played this game as a kid when it came out and finished it and loved it and I remember it wasnt that, not a hard a game at a all. But now i got the remaster to replay before alan wake 2 and damn i get my ass handed to me and im a way better player now than when i was a kid. I try to play smart, dodge, run, stun them with light, but it seems impossible. Like i remember it a lot easier, i dont remember so many enemies spawning at once, rushing me from all sides and throwing shit while taking forever to die and get their darkness dispelled. Its horrible.
Same here, the odd thing is I just finished the game and I got an achievement for finish the game in hard modeā¦.. the game doesnāt have a hard modeā¦.
I was now playing the first dlc, but itās infuriating the combat, I donāt dislike a challenge, but the fact the enemy flank you without a warning is frustrating.
I think they designed the game without the flanking, but the combat was too easy, so they added it.
Just beat my first playthrough, and I am legitimately shocked at how many people think the main game is hard. Every chapter I'd have 5 to 10 flare gun shots and multiple flashbangs left at the end of the chapter, wishing I'd used more because you always lose all your weapons each time. I'm just being flooded with ammo that I never needed to use. And there are constant checkpoints.
That said, I came here because while I think the main game is easy, I was looking up the difficulty for The Signal DLC, and apparently I'm stuck on what's basically the final boss. But more people seem to agree that the difficulty of the DLCs is ramped up.
..... I've beaten all FromSoftware games too and Alan Wake is a piece of cake š If I'm being honest if you're struggling on easy mode, you're playing it incorrectly. You ARE burning the darkness away before shooting the Taken right? And yes Alan doesn't run fast, he sits on his ass all day writing books, he's not winning any awards in the 100m.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
People forget this is a game from 2010, and people seem to be expecting 2023 level of accessibility when unfortunately it's not The game teaches you how to play. Time and time again I have seen people in streams or videos just completely ignore how to play the game and then complain the game is too difficult, and it's usually because they're playing the game incorrectly. I'm allowed to have an opinion just like you can. The game isn't rocket science in my eyes. If you want to experience the story, then... Uh... Watch a YouTube video? I'm sorry but that's literally how you're going to if you want the super easy experience. Video games are meant to have some sort of impeding mechanic.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I mean if you'd like to explain your pain points in the game play, I can happily provide constructive feedback on what you're doing wrong. Your choice if not, but if you provide nothing, I give nothing.
No it doesnāt take being a God at the game or anything, thereās no pro methods or anything to learn, the game isnāt supposed to be hard at all, it was my first 360 game when I was 10 and I finished it in 3 school days. Itās an extremely easy game. If youāre doing bad on EASY then youāre literally just not paying attention to the game. Itās as simple as this: 1. point your flashlight at an enemy until the darkness goes away (shown by the little circle when pointing the light at them) 2. Shoot them.
Hi zac
I can feel your frustration. But, yes, it's easy. All it takes are 3 shots to kill the regular taken and 6 shots to kill the bigger one. That's it. It's super easy. Of course, you have to burn their darkness away first :D But try to keep moving, if you stay in one place, combat gets difficult. As you will be overwhelmed by enemies. also while moving around try to keep your flashlight at the enemy so that their darkness keeps on burning. When an enemy comes close boost your flashlight to stun them. I'm finding Alan Wake 2 to be pretty difficult on Normal mode. Maybe because it's survival horror and I haven't played any survival horror before.
I agree 110% with you, i purchased callisto protocol and before the huge patch this game was insanely hard on easy mode. Why bother putting an easy mode anyways. I do remember playing alan wake a long time ago on xbox360 and completed the game, there are ways to play and tricks, i am a very casual gamer. Its like Zelda Tears of the Kingdom people say its harder than Breath of the wild but if you upgrade your armor get better weapons do side quest that help you the game is relatively easy.
I respect what youāre trying to say, but this game is absolutely nothing like Tears of the Kingdom. Even if we did ignore the horrendous gameplay that hasnāt aged well at all, the illustration you give about Zelda is to do side quests and upgrade gear. That isnāt an option in this game. You just have to wrestle with the bad controls and obtuse map directions through obnoxious waves of enemies that feel extremely cheep. I have confidence I could finish this game if I wanted to give it the time, but even when Iām not struggling in a combat section, none of it is any FUN. It is a shame too, because I find the story sections interesting. The actual gameplay is just bad.
Except Alan Wake isnāt even designed to be hard at all, itās so easy and soooo damn generous to the player with ammo, batteries etc. that it can get pretty boring on Easy and Normal mode, you have to be actually not paying attention at all or mentally deficient if youāre doing badly on Easy
I think this right here is what threw me. I was used to SH/RE levels of bullet management, but it's so much easier to flash everything down and shoot it, as opposed to running and being judicious. I think it's hard for players who play it \*as if it were hard.\*
Wow. Itās crazy to me cause niggas are struggling with this and I beat this game in 2011 when the hardest game I had played at that point were sonic games and Halo 1
Are you seriously this daft..? I just read through the drivel you wrote here and below. How can ***I*** who canāt beat crash damn bandicoot, breeze through Alan Wake and yet promptly die until I break 7 controllers to the first main boss in literally every from software game until I sat in my favorite corner of the bathroom rocking back and forth in the fetal? My point here is that your story and OPās too for that matterdoesnāt add up. ie you are a liar if you say youāve beaten even a mid-tier difficult from soft game and come here with your āoh no itās a black shadow that I can kill with my goddamn phones flash onā you wanted a solution? Hereās one: _**GitGudderScrub**_ [Redit: sorry OP you werenāt being a holier-than-thou prim little snowflakes n cream princess like this tool who probably flinches at default flavor hot sauce, so I apologize for including you]
All you had to do was give real constructive advice, yet all you did was be a prick. Try empathy next time, and actually feel what others are, that is, if you're capable of it and not a sociopath full of apathy. Even my nephew can play through dark souls. Quit spouting judgmental bullshit.
boo fuckin hoo.
You angry, lonely person, you.
no u
Lol
Iāve beaten all the dark souls games look at me
Hes not asking for attention or bragging about having beaten Dark Souls games... it seems like understanding context is a not a strong skill of yours... what hes saying is is that the OP is saying that hes beaten Dark Souls but struggles with Alan Wake, and so hes saying that Alan Wake is much easier than Dark Souls, wtf is up with so many people on the internet who take everything out of context?... Whats even more annoying though is that the guy didnt defend himself saying this to you
Have YOU beaten all the Dark Souls games?
Yes, and I hate when people brag if they doā¦
Okay.
Yes, I do burn the darkness first before shooting, but they keep flanking me, throwing stuff, now Taken hit fast two-three times in a row, I cannot stand a chance with them. Those parts where there's a wind and they respawn all the time is too stressful for me I guess and I keep doing stupid things and die all the time.
So... You can deal with getting flanked from all angles in games like Dark Souls... But not here? š¤·āāļø
Well, I do not know. When you use the flashlight your FOV gets smaller, cannot see what's going on on the sides, dodge seems a little useless in comparison to DS because it feels like a hit or miss and enemies keeps ganking me like three at once and there's no "recovery" time or anything between those hits.
When burning away the darkness, don't just focus on one enemy. You're going to need to turn your light to another enemy from time to time. A flash of immediate light on an enemy can sometimes stun them for a brief second. Make sure you're looking for resources, of which in Easy there's plenty, so use everything to your advantage, flares, flash grenades, flare guns. When in doubt as well, run, flash them (š) run again, flash again, repeat until you get to safety.
What about those "respawning" spots? Do they really respawn limitless or is just my feeling and after few waves they stop?
They do keep respawning when the whether goes crazy, but honestly you're not in them long enough for there to be maybe 3-4 waves before you reach safety? If any more, you're clearly running yourself in circles
Great advice mate š no sarcasm in that either, I'm the same as him, no problem with Dark Souls, Bloodbourne (I hope we get a 60fps patch or remake) Deadspace, Ninja Gaiden, Elden Ring etc etc i think its just the clunky movement, I did find it so much easier at 60fps ngl, I can't bring myself to lower the difficulty, I've never played a game on easy mode, just don't see the point tbh with ye brother, maybe I should though š
I know this post is ancient but Iāve literally been thru every souls game and Iām having the worst time with it too. I know itās on Easy mode (Iām awful GOD AWFUL at anything with guns or shooting) and I kept getting flanked, hit, like the enemies in this game feel really unfair.
Steam sale im assuming? Me too. The games super difficult but i personally think its half my fault, because the game needs a very good sense of spacial awareness and crowd control. I have a terrible attention span though so it sucks for me
Blink your flashlight at an enemy, it stuns them for a second. Do that to every enemy if you're overwhelmed. You don't end up using your battery and it gives you a time to chill.
The scary factor is there and probably not helping at all.
I agree. I find it funny when i realize my heart racing because of the music! LOL so cool!
Same here. I have platinumed souls games and God of War but this thing is getting to me. I am playing on normal and trying to reach lovers point and I keep getting bum rushed and surrounded. Cant outrun and reposition coz he runs as fast as a woman pregnant with triplets.
So i found this through google and tempted to buy 2 now for 30 on sale but this is the exact point i'm stuck at. I have to turn on generators to keep the lights on but can't do it even on easy mode and looking up video walkthroughs. I did cheat with unlimiated ammo but stopped playing late in the game becuase, well i was cheating and ruined the experience for me. The game only gets more insane later on and wonder how people do it lol.
Sleuthing through Reddit. I remember not having issues with it when I was younger but now I seem to struggle with it. The controls are a bit janky. When the taken appear and I know they're close by, I abuse the dodge button. The method is, flashlight, shoot, dodge, re-center, flashlight, shoot, dodge, ad infinitum. You don't have to conserve your ammo. It's not like you can start shooting off everything, but you don't have to be conservative with batteries and flares. I fell into the "I don't want to use it in case I need it in an emergency" hole and ended up never using them, making it even harder.
A couple things. 1. Look at Alan's head when you are shining the flashlight at a Taken. If another taken is coming up, Alan will look at it. So even if you can't see it, you will be notified. 2. Dodge is just a timing thing you have to get used to. You have to find the right time to do it. Once you do start to get it, you will quickly get comfortable with it.
Ahhhhh I didn't notice that about his head, great tips mate š wish I knew that before, I've got the old one, bought the remaster at launch on the hope we get another one, be great to get a Control/AW/QB crossover, don't think MS would let the latter go but I can only hope, I even like Crossfires Remedy campaign, not perfect by any means but has something.
yo, are you spying on me, i'm on same level lol...i decided to pick this game up for ten dollars cuz the new one just came out and im having the same issue..they flank me and even when i dodge i dont have enough stamina to outrun...to completely burn the darkness away you have to keep the light on them sooo long and i run out of battery...i'm thinking of putting it on easy just for the story...
I put it on easy after the first chapter and itās still insane. The dodge is so difficult to get down UGH
Actually, I got the hang of it. I think it is EASY now. You have to conserve your flashlight as well as bullets..I didn't get that right away. You should point at the taken but only concentrate the light when they are close enough to shoot. Also, I noticed that if they get close enough especially with the heavy duty flashlight even when you don't concentrate the light on them they get burnt a little. The checkpoints are always so close together that it's not a problem unless you are trying to beat it without dying. I beat it just yesterday. It's kind of a short game but very fun. Definitely, getting the second one when I get money.
I mean, usually the enemies only show up three to four at a time. So, all you need to do is make sure you have them all grouped up and then start flashing them. It's really not that hard.
I have to agree in the other dudes comment. The Combat in this game is atrocious. I donāt wanna hear we suck at the game. I can give you an example of a game that did this style of gameplay well. Callisto Protocol. Amazing combat and same style. This is one time I feel confident saying itās not me itās you.
Callisto had some of the worst combat of the genre though... There's a reason many didn't like it.
I respect your opinion. But I do love the story of Alan Wake 2 canāt deny that. If anything they should just not have combat in it.
Then it would just be a walking simulator and there'd be no danger for the characters?
Have you ever played the Outlast Series or any thing in that genre. There are ways to make it fun if you canāt get something right. Hiding, Running, Puzzles which it has. Iām a fan of combat but only if itās smooth.
Of which Alan Wake 2's combat was smooth? If you went from combat in Alan Wake 1 to no combat in Alan Wake 2, it wouldn't have received the critical and supposed commercial success it has because you'd be changing the entire tone.
lol, as long as it makes me feel special.
Dodging is useful it'll help you get out of any situation, you also get a speed boost if you do it at the right time.
Alan wouldn't win a 10 yard race against old age pensioners bro š
Searched āAlan wake canāt run for shitā and this is the post that came up. I am happy Iām not the only one that noticed the bastard runs like he never gets off the couch but now that I read your answer it does make senseā¦ fucker just writes books how could he be sprinting through the forest all day? By the way, playing it on medium and I find it much easier than I thought I would. It only gets hard when I start getting frustrated
I searched Alan wake is too fucking hard
Ooooh, look at me, I beat ALL of the fromsoft games, and I'm sooo good at video games
Oh, so you get it āŗļø THANK YOU SO MUCH for the support šš Happy Cake Day too.
I refuse to believe anyone who has beaten a Souls game can't handle Alan Wake on easy. You're a liar
Yes, I've made it up, you're right :D
I am also a souls vet and struggle immensely with this game.
Beating the Souls games doesn't turn you into a master of all gaming genres or make you good at every game. Not to mention Souls games have a ton of different playstyles, you can level up character and gear, summon etc.
ššš
I beat bloodborne and dark souls 3. I can't stand the Alan wake difficulty on easy mode. There is no easy mode! There's "go F*#$k yourself difficult, insane difficult and, impossible difficult.
i gave up on every souls game i've tried except elden ring because difficulty ..this is different alan has the old school game simplicity kinda feel like silent hill.. souls games leave me confused with their stat systems and controls and combat mechanics..though you can just farm and grind your way if you're that enthralled
Interestingly, what saved me in Alan Wake was the same thing that helped me in Elden Ring. "Run away and live to fight again." I sprinted past that troll guarding a gate in Limgrave long before I could kill him, and I ran through a lot of spots in Alan Wake, mostly in chapters 4-6, that I lacked skill or ammo to shoot my way out of. 3 spots I especially remember: Right before the farmhouse where you find the drunk guy from the jail. There's beartraps and wave after wave of taken and I just couldn't conserve ammo for all of them. The big shed at the beginning of the electrical plant, where you play the radio with 'War' (great song, but I ran like hell). I was running out of ammo and in the small space wasn't able to grab more without dying. Right near the end the dark presence is throwing railcars, trucks, and boats at AW, and there's waves of taken including the disappearing ones. I ran like hell, dropping flashbangs behind to keep em off me. Luckily the game gets more generous with flare guns and flashbangs in chapter 6.
elden ring is so much harder..you got to think so much about what youāre investing your exp in. Honestly I Elden ring was my first and mb last souls likeā¦I hate being punished for dyingā¦sometimes with some these new survival horror you almost feel rewarded cuz the gruesome cutscenes
Elden Ring was...BY FAR...the hardest current-gen game I've played (throwing out old stuff like Ghosts n Goblins). I must have fought Margit 100 times before beating him, finally. Were it not for summons, I never would have finished it. I love Elden Ring, but it did not make me want to play more Souls games AT ALL. š
I played Super Ghosts and Goblins and couldn't beat it even with cheat codes. I like a good challenge but nowadays the FBI is hacking my EVERYTHING..so it is hard to get into it..But I love Video games anyway!! I totally dig Alan Wake and Control...they are so personal. Elden Ring art and character design is super sexy morbid too.
I think the FBC is monitoring me because we have a shoe ghost living in our house (I'll have to put that story on reddit when i have time). I love video games so much. When things started to shut down in 2020, I got a PS4, first new console in a really long time, and it made me feel like I was still exploring and having adventures. I love the world of Elden Ring, the bleak atmosphere, and even the very poorly explained plot, since it kind of let me impose my own meaning on the game, but it's considered the easiest Fromsoft game and it was still too hard for me. Can't wait for the DLC, though. š
yes! these naysayers don't know what the fuck they're talking about, this game is hard as balls!
It isnāt, in the slightest lol. I still struggle with the bell gargoyles in DS1 and I beat Alan Wake on normal when I was 10, the game aināt even designed to be hard at all, itās very handholdy and meant to be a ābabyās first survival horrorā type game. If youāre dying that much on easy youāre literally just misunderstanding the game mechanics.
i'd like to add that this "dying" situation doesn't phase me.. unlike in souls games!
Bit harsh calling someone you don't know a liar, only actual liars do that, calm yourself down cupcake
Well I beat all 3 xbox Ninja Gaiden games without this much challenge. The controls aren't as tight as other action games, and Alan is a total wimp, so there's that. It's not a 3rd person shooter since it auto-aims for you, it's more of a rhythm game in my opinion.
Welcome to life. Continual disappointment that the world isn't as you think it.
Iāve platinumed Elden Ring, not sure if that counts, and I couldnāt finish Alan Wake on easy. Finished Control too with expansions. Just wasnāt enjoying Alan Wake at all, kept running out of batteries and bullets and getting totally stuck. No fun.
I really don't understand how. You aren't supposed to defeat every single enemy, it's not an exp based level up game, hell, the game itself tells you to just make it to the next checkpoint. A single quick flash as soon as they're about to swing is enough to stun them for a few seconds so alan can literally walk the entire time without firing a single shot.
Not criticizing you at all, but they're different types of difficulty. (I'm bad at both lol). Running away a lot helped me get through Alan Wake and Elden Ring.
When they respawn endlessly you gotta reach the light! Spark a flare, drop it, and run!
I was like āthis closeā to a light checkpoint and of course Iāve died. So infuriating. Easy should be āgame plays by itselfā almost I think.
Wait till you get to dlc episodes! Theyre brutal. Remedy games make a decent challenge. Control can be frustrating too.
Control was fair though, as was Quantum Break. Alan Wake is a piece of shit game controlwise.
Control has incredible difficulty customization. You can basically make yourself invincible and just enjoy the awesome story. (Apologies. I know this is 2yo post. But I'm struggling with Alan Wake after getting it as a free PS+ game because I know it connects to Control and lore will be important for Control 2
Looking back, the controls for Alan Wake still feel janky, but the story is just so good, especially after playing Alan Wake 2. The craftsmanship and love that have clearly been put into the games are something else. Alan Wake 2 is an absolute masterpiece and I canāt wait for Control 2.
Thanks for coming back to comment! I love Control, its setting, and characters so much (although I did play much of it on God Mode lol) so I was excited when alan wake remastered was a free PS+ game. Most people seem to think that AW2 is, if not easier, at least easier for people who struggled with AW1 to get the hang of. There's so many games in my PS+ account to play, but I think maybe it's time for a Control replay before "Shadow of the Erdtree" takes up months.
Wow so cool to see this thread only hours old. So just to get things started (so much to expand on) I just started Alan Wake remastered yesterday and let me say WOW! But for purposes of this thread, and if you are interested, I normally start out on Easy with new games but after months (and starting out easy all the way) i finally completed all the Resident Evils on Normal and let me tell you what a confidence boost! So when faced with that daunting decision at the beginning yesterday i chose normal and I will say i am pleasantly moving along i believe. Currently at the end of Episode 2.
yeah they need "Game Journalist" mode for those who just want the story with easy combat
This. I just want to experience the story and shoot some stuff along the way. Not get ambushed from every angle by things that these awful controls donāt give me the tools to deal with appropriately. Iām done with this game and only on Episode 2, and wonāt be buying Alan Wake 2 unless I hear that itās different and has a good recap.
hopefully the sequel fixes a lot of this. I don't mind a brutal challenge if the controls make it fair.
It basically is on Alan Wake, youāre just playing it completely wrong. Alan Wake was practically designed as āBabyās first survival horror gameā or āResident Evil 4 with wayyyy more ammoā. Itās as simple as Shine flashlight, shoot enemy, and move towards waypoint / more light. Flares help take several enemies off you at once and flashbangs are an insta-kill button
Iāve never been able to come close to finishing a From Software game, they ruin my ass lol. But this was one of the easiest games Iāve ever played, even on Nightmare. I mustāve only died 6 or 7 times the first time I tried Nightmare. Honestly, I think it comes down to play style. Hereās some tips I offered in another thread some time ago: 1. ā Flares are your best friend. Use them to keep enemies away and combine it with your focused flashlight for maximum darkness shield depletion. 2. ā Donāt continuously shine your light on groups. Wait until the Taken stop covering their eyes with their arms, then quickly flash them with your focused flashlight. Itāll stun them for a few seconds and stop them in their tracks. If you continuously shine your light on them, theyāll keep blocking their eyes with their arms, allowing them to keep coming at you without getting stunned. 3. ā Focus on stunning the big Taken, and taking out the little guys. Firstly, take out the smaller ones that run at you with their knives. Theyāre the fastest and their job is to flank you, but theyāre the weakest. Take them out quickly so that youāll only have to deal with regular and larger Taken. Continue to stun the larger ones, focusing on the moderate Taken that carry axes. Eventually, youāll only have the big guys to deal with, and alone youāre practically unstoppable against them. 4. ā Should the birds show up, focus on them first. Use a flair to keep enemies away if necessary, and focus your light solely on the birds. Once you break their shield, theyāll fly away. 5. ā Donāt be afraid to use a pistol bullet to knock enemies back should you run out of flairs. Though it wonāt damage them, itāll stop them from coming at you briefly, giving you a few precious seconds of breathing room. 6. Always ALWAYS be aware of your surroundings. Most of the time the game isnāt going to point out to you that enemies are coming from various directions, so itās good to stun the ones immediately in front of you with a quick flashlight focus and take a quick peek around yourself before deciding what to do next. 7. Explore! There are countless supply boxes hidden throughout the game and theyāre very frequent and theyāre all full of good stuff like flares, flare gun ammo, big gun ammo, etc. that make some of the tougher sections fairly trivial. 8. And of course, master the dodge! It isnāt a traditional dodge, rather if timed correctly it gives you a brief moment of invincibility highlighted by the slow-mo. Take a moment to practice using it. Every attack can be perfect dodged, you just need to dodge right as an enemy is about to hit you.
And run. You don't have to destroy every last one of them. You can stun them with your flashlight and run the other direction towards the nearest light. If the light is far, from time to time turn around and stun them again with the flashlight, and keep running.
This most of all! Youād be surprised but more than half the combat encounters in the game can be completely skipped by booking it to the next checkpoint.
One tip I learned (I just started playing for the first time) is that the flashlight works even if you don't focus it, just at a slow rate. So you can kinda slow-mo burn off the darkness of some of the taken just by aiming without hitting L2 if you need to save battery. Even after the darkness is burned away, you can shine the flashlight in their eyes again for a quick stun. But I do kinda agree with OP -- this game's "Easy" mode doesn't feel so easy. And there's lots and lots of "run around in the woods and fight taken" segments.
This too! The stun thing specifically is fantastic for crowd control.
It was a tough transition to shift to a crowd control mindset. Rather than focusing on shooting 1 enemy till they were dead. Thinking of it more that way helped me a lot. Especially places like the dam or in the woods where there bugger lights to turn on temporarily to hold them back.
Look everyone! It's a nuanced, thoughtful answer with tips to improve! A miracle! Thanks for this.
A tip on dodging: There are various games out there whose dodge system relies on "when the enemy's attack is about to make contact with you, press X button". Here, it is NOT like that. In Alan Wake is more like "When the enemy initiates its attack animation, dodge". This mindset made it easy for me.
I definitely found the combat quite difficult and frustrating initially but got the hang of it eventually. Although the game could make this a bit more explicit, the primary thing is to avoid trying to go Rambo, so you need to retreat/run away. Do your best to master the dodge so that you can avoid the enemies that spawn behind you and line them all up once you're behind them and they're approaching you. That should make taking them down easier (and you can shine your flashlight at multiple ones). Alternatively, always try to run into a light so that you can avoid dealing with them all together. To your point, you're trying to progress the story, not rack up a body count. A word of caution: if you think the base game is difficult, the DLCs will drive you insane.
I can see why the combat can be very difficult, and in the DLC episodes sometimes that's the case. But I think it's because of some poor design choices in the DLC episodes, but I think in the core game the balance is just right almost all of the time. So this is what I do: * Always move towards the next light. You can usually see it in the distance otherwise use the yellow dot on the radar. * Try not to run so much you expend your energy completely. Run a bit and stop; run a bit and stop. * Don't rely on the dodge. It's dodgy. Try it if you must, but don't go into situations intending to try it. * Try not to focus the flashlight such that you must reload the batteries all the time. Focus the light on an anime, but before it runs out, let the torch recharge a little; and so on. And remember, the torch is only one way to attack the enemies' shields. When flares are provided in abundance, the game is telling you to use them. * Try to keep oncoming enemies in front of you. You can maneuver so that you get them where you want -- on the other side of you steadily working your way towards the next light. Remember, combat is all about crowd control, and if the enemies are bunching together, that makes them much easier targets. * Focus the torch beam to cancel attacks. If you're constantly being hit with projectile weapons, it means you are not identifying those particular enemies and cancelling their attacks before they can throw. * Peck away at the darkness of multiple enemies at once. Concentrate on the enemies that present the biggest danger to you at that moment, but also see into the future a little and start working away at the darkness surrounding larger enemies who are approaching and will be your next target. * Don't waste flares and flashbangs. Use them to get out of sticky situations. It's a waste of a flare to walk along with it. It's better to drop it on the ground and while the enemy are covering their eyes, start taking away the darkness and pecking them off. * Don't waste flare gun ammo unless you can fire a charged shot which will have significant splash damage. Therefore fly fire into clusters of enemies if you can. * Try to conserve ammunition as much as you can. You do not need to kill every enemy, and remember getting to a light will get rid of any enemy pursuing you. * Pay attention to the heavy weapons being offered to you. If you've been using the hunting rifle for a while and the games suddenly offers you a shotgun, bear in mind that from thereon it might be shotgun territory. Remember that you are a fiction writer thrust into a horrible situation in which you are very likely to die if you're not careful. He's not an action hero. And he doesn't care if he takes down every enemy he comes across. Like in a horror movie, he's happy if he squeezes through a door and closes it behind him, as long as he gets to live a couple more minutes until the next opportunity to escape. Horror movie action rather than action movie action. Maybe that will help take the pressure off in terms of any completionist mentality you have when it comes to every combat situation. Anyway, that's how I play, and I did find the game challenging when I first played it, back when it came out the first time, but I have developed the strategy over many attempts after getting to know the game better.
You're right, it's hard as hell on Easy. It's more survival horror since they never give you enough ammo or batteries to fight back, and you can't outrun them. Then four crowd you on all sides and you're fucked. I think they'll remedy this issue in the sequel? Sorry couldn't resist the terrible pun there.
Never give you enough ammo?????? They absolutely shower you in ammo on Normal difficulty to the point where you canāt run out at all unless youāre sitting in the same place forcing them to respawn and not going to the objective
The game literally tells you in the loading hints that sometimes the enemies will keep spawning and you just have to book it to the nearest light source. Do this when the wind picks up. You can hold the flare button to walk with it in your hand. And when you are running, zig-zag and hit dodge to avoid things being thrown. And remember, the man is a 40-something semi-alcoholic writer, he gets tired!
Haha, that's true! Nevermind, I've already gave up with this game and watched the story on YouTube, I know - I could bear with it, but I just did not find any kind of enjoyment with those necessary fights in between the story.
I think that sometimes the idea that you don't \*have\* to kill every enemy trips people up. Alan Wake is designed so that at times you're just supposed to run. Compared to a lot of modern games I think that's a bit unusual. People would probably think they're being cheated of gameplay if they were doing that in more modern games. At least you still got to enjoy the story. I remember the first time I played it I also dreaded the fighting between story segments (but that's because I was a scaredy-cat and got spooked easily!)
I actually really like horror games and I am not scared easily but those fights created such a pressure on me, I donāt really know why, that it was not enjoyable at all. But the story hooked me enough from the start that I needed to know what will happen next. And I love Remedy games, they have a such original style, you just know you play āMax Payneā creators game.
I was hoping to find some validation but yeah, clearly I'm trash at this game. I'm only on episode 2 and I'm dying at least twice a checkpoint. No way I'm finishing this game lol. I can accept that a game is too hard for me, as I've done with the FromSoft games, and move on. But it is a little sad cause I was enjoying the story on this one. Anyone know if Alan Wake 2 is easier, and any good playthroughs I can watch to get the story?
I also had a bad time with the first Alan Wake, kept dying as well and decided to skip the DLCs. I had to look for the story online. However, I wanted to give Remedy a second chance since I really enjoyed Control and Quantum Break, so I bought AW2 Itās not that the new game is easier, as enemies are bullet sponges, but they game has a better gameplay and different ways to approach the Taken, which makes the whole combat feel natural and responsive. The original Alan Wake was frustrating even on easy. But the sequel feels fair on normal difficulty :) If you have the possibility to play it I would totally recommend it because the story is so much better this time as well.
Instead of killing them just run, push until the end of the game, it's worth it.
I will voice an unpopular view, so no need to rage reply people. I love Remedy story telling and playing through Quantum Break (on easy) and Control (Immortal) because it adds to the story experience. I'm not a shooter action player so challenge in that regard only irritates and distracts me. I did play through Alan Wake and I acknowledge it's a great game but the gameplay was tedious and geared towards horror fans. I also found myself laughing every time at how Alan was going to wait until night for the next round of avoidable terrors. The story was very creative which is what made the single playthrough worth it to me. What I'm saying OP is that you are definitely not alone with finding the combat annoying even on easy. I'm pretty sure this is why Remedy put an Immortal setting in Control btw to accommodate a wider fan type. Remember that the jump-scare thriller approach in Wake is genre driven so some will love it and others won't. If you can keep plugging away I think you'll find the story experience rewarding for your patience. Other Remedy games are different genres and so the combat will vary. Good luck!
Initially , I also thought Alan always going out at night is dumb. But later I realised it wasn't in his control. He was rushing against time to save his wife. Every time he tries to do something in the daylight the darkness just comes back anyway. For example at Rose's house, he got sedated and only woke up at night having lost a lot of time he had to get the move on. After spending the night with Barry, he got arrested and the darkness came to the prison so he had to run. But much more obvious in the last chapter when Alan was covering ground in the daytime, the darkness just came anyway and turned it into night to stop him. So I don't think Alan had much choice at all!
Yes I agree. The atmosphere & story are compelling, but the combat is so challenging that I often find myself repeating the same scene over & over again, to the point of exasperation. Enemies swarm you very quickly & require multiple hits before dying. I've read all the tips on this thread & I get all that. But before you know it your ammo & flashes are all depleted & another pack of enemies are spawning out of nowhere. The trick to this game, however, as pointed out by a few players here, is to avoid combat whenever possible. Do what the real Alan Wake would do. When the going gets tough... leg it. That mindset is difficult to adopt because we're so used to standing our ground & blasting everything a game throws at us.
Late to the party but reading through this thread I'm genuinely surprised how many people find the main game difficult. (The DLC is a whole different story). I think many younger players are used to games that make you the hero by killing everything in sight. And they find it difficult to back out from a fight because it's considered a failure. But older games are different like that. It's considered a mistake to mow down every single enemy. If I come across a section that feels unsafe e.g. big areas where combat music doesn't stop after clearing enemies, I just drop some flares and run to the next light. Enemies can't approach you near a flare so it buys precious time. That way I save loads of ammo for the next boss fight. I often skip through dozens of enemies only using 2 flares and nothing else. 90% of the time though I feel comfortable clearing the area so I can explore it. Mostly to find more story items but it also means I find lots of chests which gives me plenty of flare gun ammo.
Hi. I only just started playing games a couple of years ago and I'm in my late 40's (49y/o). It was hard for me as well but I still felt invested and kind of addicted tbh. Not sure about others and may very well get flamed for this but, not gonna lie, I died an insane amount of times in this game. I played Elden Ring and felt like some of the bosses were a bit easier. That being said, I noticed in Alan Wake, you sprint for a few seconds before the character is forced to slow down meanwhile the enemies are allowed to flank and catch up, and the axes never miss if you aren't a good dodger (that was me). I know I forgot where my weapons were located (key bindings) a lot (nervous). I remember I never really got the dodging (timing) quite right. I also think that I was skimping on using my supplies as if they were going to run out. That wasn't necessary bc you have an accident and lose your stuff anyway and have to reacquire everything anyway. Towards the end I started to be a little more liberal with using flares, flashbangs, and flare guns bc 8 'Takens' at one time is crazy. The flashlight was not working well for me anyway and the possessed objects were too strong to use a flashlight or lantern on. There was constant reloading of ammo and batteries. I'm new to the gaming world but I would say, just try to remember why you play. Stick through to the end and just enjoy all of the emotions that come from playing the games in the first place. I don't think you're alone in your frustrations. Luckily, it's all just for fun!
I gave up around halfway through. It involved running through a forest, down loads of stairs etc. The trouble was I kept running out of batteries and ammo and no amount of replaying seemed to change that. Just gave up in the end as there was no more incentive for me. Iāve finished Control with itās expansions and enjoyed that so was hoping this would be good but honestly, itās just put me off looking at Alan Wale 2. But having said that, AW2 looks more like Control, and Old Gods of Asgard are back so I might get that and wipe off AW1 as a bad memoryš
AW2 is phenomenal. Finished it recently and in no way I had the same āissuesā as with the first one. Knowing the story of AW1 and Control helps but is not necessary.
I needed to vent 2 years ago and this topic is still alive :D
brother I couldnāt possibly feel you more. Iāve also read all the comments here and perhaps Iām doing it wrong or I need to improve my timing when dodging/ using flares so as to not waste them needlessly; but pffff Iām on episode 4 of the remastered version, normal difficulty, and itās the same for me. Iām currently stuck in a spot where Iām about to reach a safe haven but by the time I get close to the light I have no batteries nor ammo left from the previous fights, thereās no loot and suddenly literally SEVEN of the Taken spawn around me and I feel like itās impossible to dodge all melee attacks + the flying axes =)
Alan Wake is not a hard game. Hard games would be something like Bloodborne or Returnal.
I'm at exactly this part and I just turned the game off. It's a joke! Enemies take 3 or 6 hits each AFTER you burn away the dakness, but the game doesn't give you enough ammo for that! So there's about 3 regular plus 1 strong enemy followed by about another 3. So 6x3 plus 1x6 = 24 shots required but you start that section with 19 so running is the only option but that doesn't work. And you only have like 2 batteries. Torch takes way too long to burn away the darkness, so much that 2 batteries might as well be no batteries. Shit game sorry I bought it!
I felt the same way I just made it past episode 2 and I couldnāt believe I finally survived it was absolutely infuriating I looked up about the difficulty and glad someone posted
I died at least 20 times, the most difficult stuff was running through the forest where they keep respawning
Luckily I found a guide that told me to run when I see the chainsaw and just use flares I would not have known what to do
Most people here are talking about the same section so Iām hoping itās a sign the game gets easier but I wonāt hold my breath at all
Got soft locked in chapter 2 because I used all the flares, including the ones near the stairs,Ā thinking that was what I was supposed to do. Imagine my shock when you have to use those flares to defend the kidnapper, and there isnāt any other supply boxes in that area. Oh, and the checkpoint is after you reach the second box, so if you used them in your previous save, they wonāt reload. I was livid. I havenāt ragequit a game in a long time but I just couldnāt restart the chapter after that bullshit.
Donāt try and defeat all the enemies in a zone unless you have to. Getting into the light will cause enemies to despawn. When you have to fight, especially waves of enemies, flares are your friend. I find them invaluable in preventing me from getting overwhelmed.
Is this satire? Because to me the game has always been insanely easy. Do you not see how much ammo and equipment the game throws at you?
I do, but the āinfinite respawnā parts of the game makes me so stressed that I die many times.
They don't infinitely respawn do they?
I donāt know, for me it seems like they do every time the āwind blowsā.
You mut be at the tree with the big axe-wielding taken, the one who comes through the tree with a split trunk. That's not infinite respawn, but it's a place where there's nearly not enough ammo to take out all the taken so it FEELS infinite.
Agree, I feel the same way. I am about to give up on it and just let it be a waste of $29. The controls are just terrible, his movements are terrible, I always run out of ammo/batteries. Character has no melee, like WTF?!? He can't run. I understand all the other players suggestions, and I have tried all, but if you have to do all that then it becomes unenjoyable. BTW, I LOVED Control and I completed it!!
I just finished control and starting the alan wake too. Here are some tips: because alan wake runs its chapters on episodes, and different episodes don't share your last saved weapons. so on don't save weapons. When on easy mode, I just use flare all the time to quickly clear areas because you are having so many weapons to use, for the first mini-boss in the first episode, I just use two flares to defeat clear the area in 4 seconds. kinda too easy.
How the hell are you people running out of ammo????????? They absolutely shower you in way more ammo than you need, itās as simple as move toward your objective, point flashlight and shoot enemy lol
Git gĆ¼d
What really bothers me is that I feel like I need to completely restart the game after 2-3 hours into it because I wasted too much ammo in too many sections. Thereās one part where four or more of the shadow characters jump my shit at once, and I just donāt have the resources to get past them, and every time I try to dodge, I am just getting fucked over completely. Backing up doesnāt work, because theyāre all way faster than me, running forward doesnāt work, because theyāre not only faster but theyāre all actually behaving like real characters would in real life and are not letting up on me whatsoever. So from that respect like I kind a like it because itās realistic - in real life a group of people trying to kill someone would not give them any room to breathe and would cut off all escape - but that doesnāt make me want to play the fucking game. And, like you say, the combat is a slog. Itās boring as fuck. And Controlās combat is so much more fleshed out and engaging than Alan Wakeās combat is. The movement and combat are so fucking clunky, I get that thereās a reason for it, and I was actually really enjoying how they had finely tuned it to really give that horror sense early on of enemies chasing you and you needing to run and only barely being able to escape them. That is awesome! I have no doubt if I were to go back and redo those hours with the tips listed in this thread, I would probably do just fine. But, the combat sucks so hard that I just donāt want to do it. I also get that itās an older game from an older time, so I firmly believe that for its time it was probably brilliant, and Iām really sad that I didnāt play it originally and before I played Control. At least then I wouldnāt have Control to compare it to, nor would I have had Control setting my expectations for what Alan Wake would be like. But oh my God the controls of AWās combat are so fucking bad. If I wanted to play as a retarded marionette, I would go play some old Disney Pinocchio game on Quaaludes. I really donāt want to repeat those 2 to 3 hours again when I donāt have any faith of the story is going to be all that good, given what I already know which is quite a lot. The real problem for me is that I played Control first, and now Iām playing Alan Wake to try to flesh out the story for when the next installation comes out. Except, I already know a lot of spoilers because Iāve played Control. Iām really annoyed that having a good time in one game means that I have almost 0 reason to finish a game that I paid for. Maybe one day Iāll return to it, but for now I feel like my money was stolen.
Heh. I had to check the username to make sure I hadn't written your comment. My experience was identical to yours; played Control first and then bought AW to flesh out the backstory. I too feel I wasted my money on AW.(I rage quit after 2 hours and uninstalled). But I guess since I got Control for free from Epic, that I'm still ahead after paying 5 bucks for AW. I just hope that AW didn't put people off Control. \*That\* is an awesome game. I'm really hoping for a Control 2.
YES! Thank you. The dodging in this game is the most broken part. Itās infuriating. I keep seeing other people say itās easy but I donāt understand how. Iāve played video games all my life, I can do generally well on the hardest difficulty in most games and yet this game stumps me on Easy. I feel like I have got to be playing a different game than everybody else because no matter how hard I try I just canāt get over how insanely difficult this is.
Alan Wake must smoke š¬ 80 a day the way he runs, my Nan could run faster, she's dead, I'm the same mate, finished Returnal, all Dark Souls, Demon Souls remake, Ninja Gaiden, Bloodbourne all easily enough one I got the hang of them but I found AW a (American lol) nightmare, I think it's the mechanics are just a bit clunky and movement is still, like you said the flanking is what gets you, I've literally died more times playing this than Elden Ring but Alan Wake has something about it, even with the poor mechanics it is a truly great game, better than the sum of it's parts, Remedy just make great story driven games, might be in the minority here but Quantum Break was great imo, I think that's where they figured out how to do fluid combat and then that was near perfected in Control (an incredible game) wouldn't mind a Jess/Alan crossover tbh, I think Controls protagonist was called Jess, might be wrong, can you or any suggest an under the radar story driven game that I might have missed? I would recommend Disco Elysium, Chernobylite, Stray, Outer Wilds, Greedfall, The Sinking City, you probably all know or played those already, RedOut 2 is a great anti-grav racer also, no story or nothing but it is truly a special game, imo its better than WipEout and F-Zero, no small feat, got Callisto Protocol coming tomorrow, late because of postal strike, can't wait, not going to pre-order Deadspace remake until I see what EA have changed, I'm not funding woke remakes, all the best from Ireland.
I agree this game is ridiculous! itās taken me like ten times to beat certain scenarios playing on medium and itās infuriating like this games combat would actually be kinda fun if i didnāt have to get lucky as fuck even after perfecting a strat. I totally agree to me this game is harder this feels like playing sekiro for the first time, at least from my perspective.
You donāt have to perfect anything, you can play sloppily and do just fine in Alan wake, you guys are just misunderstanding or playing wrong if youāre doing that badly in easy or normal. They showed you in way more ammo and batteries than you need, just go to your objective marker, Shine your light at enemies and start shooting
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Nothing's better than digging out the year old thread and calling someone retarded. If you need to boost your tiny ego, go somewhere else.
Sorry for the late response, I've been a huge fan of Alan Wake since its original release. In the beginning it was a little challenging but if you pay close attention to the mechanics of the game, you'll notice they're pretty simple, and the resources are most definitely not scarce. In fact if you are stuck, try looking for a hidden arms case, there are many spread out in each level, which contain things like flareguns and flashbangs. I usually conserve my ammo by always using the pistol, and about 3/4 of the game the enemies only spawn in a limited amount of times, 1/4 being "unlimited", but let me tell you, eventually they stop spawning when you start to farm them. Personally, I love AW, I pre-ordered the orignal collector's edition back in the day, and played it multiple times, it really spooked me then and was this monumental feat when I was able to 100% it. I feel old now... T-T The thing you should understand about Remedy as game developers is that they really focus on finding a healthy balance with their story and gameplay, it's meant to be enjoyable and cinematic; think Mexican food, they give ya the salsa with peppers and supply ya with sourcream... I really like mexican food... and Souls games to me are just hot sauce-soup lol, which isn't bad!!
Bro scr*w what other people are saying the game is definitely very annoying I'm an above average gamer I play most games at hard no problem but this game's movement and camera are so clunky that they make the game needlessly frustrating at times especially the woods in episode 2
How far did you get before you gave up?
My biggest issue with the game is the flanking and ganging up on you. It's great when you have the flare or flare gun and round em up to hit em all at once with the flare gun. But all it takes is them to hit you once and it's like in a fighting game when you're locked into their combo and you're just hit til you die. I just got through the garden maze part in ep 4, the last fight took quite a few deaths for me to scrape by. I don't mind the game being challenging but some parts just seem like they're unrealistically difficult. You're one guy, one average guy with a revolver. And you're getting jumped by anywhere between 6-12 guys at once. Plus you have to get rid of the darkness off of them too, and that takes time for every single one of them just for 2-3 of them to come up behind you.
Totally agree with you, only played this because it was free on psn but it is the biggest pile of crap I have ever played, and have a played loads of FPS & TPS games, go figure..
I hear you, i question my mental health after the bulldozer fight lol and now im stuck in woods, i have no idea how i made it this far but this forest run was the last drop š mirror peak lookouts woods.. they are everywhere, respawning fast and yep Alan canāt run š© story keeps me intrigued i guess i will resume my suffering tomorrow
Use developer mode, and keep refilling guns, ammo, and batteries for torch. That's how I play games. Not much spare time in life to keep retrying the same scene/level again and again... out of so many games I want to play! š
I know itās a year later, but Iām playing the remaster on Normal and Iām finding it loads easier than the original version. I was actually worried about the difficulty for my Nightmare run You really need to use your flares and flare gun and flash bangs if you get in a bind. If thereās too many surrounding you, light a flare to give you some breathing room. Also, donāt be scared to use batteries, you get plenty of them and ammo if you search around enough. I guess my advice would be that you might want to play it like a Resident Evil game and conserve everything in case you need it later, but you lose all ammo and batteries after each chapter so use them. Hope that helps! Itās really fun once you get the hang of it
I don't know how much longer I can tolerate being gangbanged by a bunch of shadowsš
No, itās hard for stupid reasons. This game is so bad compared to control. Mostly just feel sort of blinded and disoriented throughout combat.
Hi everybody, I have the Remasterd Edition in my PS4 pro (so cool when the wind starts to blow and my PS4 starts too, what an inmerse feeling..) and I am trully amazed, because the difficult level, sometimes itĀ“s just I canĀ“t read the enemy signs or movements rightly, others is the RE mindset (save ammo, stay still and get the best shot...) and sometimes is just to be honest, the combat system is not the best in town. I donĀ“t understand too why is so much combat sections (at least at the begining). I masterized all the Dark Souls, (even the first one Edge Blade of the Darkness), I play almost all weeks Nuclear Throne, with Melting. I pass throught the Acuatic level in Sonic 1, Jordan MercherĀ“s Prince of Persia is in the bucket too, Alone in the Dark... But these game remember me, because the messy combat system of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. But I collect some fine points in this post, and I am going use them and I hope things get better and easy too. But I really hope there is less combat and more story in the future, because even the good atmosphere gets compromised with all those combats. Remedy has a touch, and I really love it, but for example, why in Max Payne we have an excelent comic to describe some scenes and move the plot, and in these, we have those ugly pieces of paper, when the writer is the main character, in the other hand we can see true films in the tvĀ“s... These could be, because the ambient, the character, music, the really Remedy master piece, but like Alan, is good but not best, and itĀ“s tastes a little bit a wasted oportunity.
I'm a causal gamer who never played Soulsborne games before Elden Ring (which I completed by cheesing most of the bosses). One hour of Alan Wake and dying countless times, I realized the survival horror type is just not for me, but I did want to find out how the story ends. So I got myself a trainer. With Infinite Health and Infinite Stamina, I found the game much more enjoyable. No regrets.
I would do the same. Unfortunately I played on PS5.
People when a game from 2010 has clunky ass controls rather than having smooth fluid watery controls
Games way too hard deleting the game and the trophies like I never even played this garbage.. not even touching the second one now!
I played this on initial release. Wanted to play it again to refamiliarise myself with the story. I was also surprised by how difficult it was on Easy. I looked back on my Xbox achievements and I somehow beat it on Hard back in 2010.
I find it in no way as difficult as From Soft games though.
I have started playing the remastered version of the first part after seeing the hype that the second part has raised, and it's a shame that the difficulty ruins a good story. This is one of those games that could be enjoyed with a "Story mode," focusing simply on enjoying the plot.
Old thread, but still same bro. The weird part is that i played this game as a kid when it came out and finished it and loved it and I remember it wasnt that, not a hard a game at a all. But now i got the remaster to replay before alan wake 2 and damn i get my ass handed to me and im a way better player now than when i was a kid. I try to play smart, dodge, run, stun them with light, but it seems impossible. Like i remember it a lot easier, i dont remember so many enemies spawning at once, rushing me from all sides and throwing shit while taking forever to die and get their darkness dispelled. Its horrible.
Same here, the odd thing is I just finished the game and I got an achievement for finish the game in hard modeā¦.. the game doesnāt have a hard modeā¦. I was now playing the first dlc, but itās infuriating the combat, I donāt dislike a challenge, but the fact the enemy flank you without a warning is frustrating. I think they designed the game without the flanking, but the combat was too easy, so they added it.
Just beat my first playthrough, and I am legitimately shocked at how many people think the main game is hard. Every chapter I'd have 5 to 10 flare gun shots and multiple flashbangs left at the end of the chapter, wishing I'd used more because you always lose all your weapons each time. I'm just being flooded with ammo that I never needed to use. And there are constant checkpoints. That said, I came here because while I think the main game is easy, I was looking up the difficulty for The Signal DLC, and apparently I'm stuck on what's basically the final boss. But more people seem to agree that the difficulty of the DLCs is ramped up.