Truly amazing how something that was amazing news is now just a bowl of sour grapes any time I see it.

Yea, I agree. I'm at the

spoiler

carnival section

right now and I agree with all that you've said. Atmosphere, narrative, the set pieces - they've made something really intriguing. Unfortunately the actual game aspect of it is so damn boring and pointless.

I was hoping for more since I enjoyed Control so much. I know Alan Wake is a different kind of game than that, but my hope was that they could fix my issues with the first Alan Wake. That is not the case. But I still appreciate the story and other things they've done. It kind of reminds me of the first Senua/Hellblade game, but I actually enjoyed the combat in that and the game was like ~5 hours long.

I'm playing Alan Wake 2.

My review of the first game wasn't too favourable, and if I'm honest, the second game seems to be shaping up similarly despite what I've heard about it.

The gameplay in this series isn't really good. I enjoy the mind palace stuff and how that can change the world and narrative, but it's also not that hard to sort through. The combat mechanics I don't consider fun. This is the first game I've turned on the easy mode accessibility options for.

Now, the world and narrative and other artistic decisions they've done are great and why I'm sticking through it. I just feel like a game should be fun to interact with, which generally I don't think AW2 has been. Would love to hear others thoughts.

Appreciate it, thanks for checking!

I'd wager this person who spoke about it to me is on the younger side - probably early 20s, so some more of this is making sense.

I also believe Steam doesn't allow Visa Debit - at least, it doesn't here, so perhaps it's the same over there.

I just want to be clear, what my post meant to say is that it's (apparently) not as common to use a credit card like you would in North America (basically a necessity if you want to get a car, apartment house, etc).

This person that I got the information from was very up in arms about this, so I'm not sure why they would lie about this. Again, I looked this up after. You can find posts about people discussing this very issue from a month ago.

My whole point wasn't even about the credit cards. It's about the anti-privacy laws.

Thank you for some further explanation.

Regardless of this, I believe these changes should be protested. None of this is ever looking out for children, and I'm sure if stuff like this succeeds over there, it'll just be a matter of time before we've got the same thing in the Americas.

I don't know what to tell you, I got my information from an Australian, and everything I've seen online confirms this.

I'm not an expert, I'm just being told this from an Australian. They do have credit cards, but it's not as much a necessity to do things as it is in North America. So, from what I'm told, a lot of adults don't have one.

For anyone that doesn't know, currently because of stuff like this, people in Australia can't even access their Steam games that they've already bought unless they have a credit card, which I've learned most people over there don't. Valve isn't allowing the third-party 'steal your data' options like face scan and government ID, so Australian folk without a CC are out of luck.

Australians, please fight back against these anti-privacy laws. If these are successful, they'll come to other countries.

I was the opposite. Loved Hollow Knight but couldn't get into Nine Sols. I tried for about 5 hours before deciding it wasn't for me.

Recently been getting into MIO, which has been great.

Where have you heard that? I guess it depends on if you're a comic book fan or not maybe? But anyone that likes/knows the characters has said (or so I've been told, could just be the circles I'm in) that it's a massive disappointment.