A game like
Shadows of the Damned has the best walking sections, because you're not forced to slow walk. The Sushi Lamp sections. You can do a slow walk, medium walk, or run around like a crazy jackass and no immersion is broken. What helps even more is that you're not always exactly safe during these sections, aside from its first introduction.
Shadows of the Damned I do find better than
Alan Wake. The latter does have a longer campaign and better story, but it's also full of padding and most of those day time section could have been axed or are glorified walking sections. I get they're supposed to break up the pace, have a relaxing moment, or show that even in the day time, Alan isn't exactly safe, but not all of it works. It gets real obnoxious in one of the late chapter where you're just driving around in the day, and all of that could have been done with a cut-scene. I know the first game was supposed an open world originally, so many parts were cut to make a more linear story. Thank God the sequel improved upon that. Back on point:
Shadows of the Damned has more enemy variety and better varied combat encounters. The game has a killer soundtrack too. Nearly nothing beats Akira Yamaoka when comes atmospheric and bad ass soundtracks.
These games share a lot of similarities, so comparison is fair:
- Both are 3rd person shooters inspired by RE4. Shinji Mikami even worked on Shadows with Suda. Alan Wake while inspired has more zoomed out camera, at least in combat any way. Though it's still more zoomed out compared to RE4 and Shadows.
- Both games have a light vs. darkness theme. AW: Shine the light to weaken enemies/slowdown and kill them with guns. Shadows: Use the light shot to stun enemies covered in darkness or then hit their weak points. The Darkness can harm our heroes, if not careful and plays an even bigger theme gameplay wise with Shadows. Garcia is literally running around in Hell, so almost nowhere is safe for him. While Alan has to deal with supernatural being that might as well be from hell or from some eldritch location that can manipulate reality at will.
- Both games have light sources that act as rest areas/auto saves points to break up the action. Garcia gets a merchant in most of these areas named Christopher when he is around.
- Both games involved the kidnapping/capturing of a woman they love. Garcia's girlfriend, Paula, and Alan's wife, Alice. They're captured for different reasons though. Fleming wants Paula, because the story implies that she is the Unbreakable Huntress, even though she can't remember due to the trauma. He wants to have her alone and constantly break by killing her again and again. The Darkness captures Alice to manipulate Alan to write it into the real world and cause chaos. Still, the villains are taking someone from our heroes they care about, or their girl has something hidden about them (Garica and Paula).
- Both end on a stinger/sequel hook. To find out what happened to Garcia, Paula, and Johnson, you have to play Travis Strikes Again.
The only differences are that Garcia is a bad ass demon hunter, while Alan is just some writer with a flashlight, a gun, and an active imagination. Oh, and
Shadows have much better boss encounters. Thought that's always been a weak spot with Remedy designed games.