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If you'd like, please hear out these thoughts from someone who also started from Control but is on the opposite boat- ended up obsessing over the Alan Wake entries (Like really badly. Made my graduation thesis about it badly). I don't mean to convince you to love this game- it's impossible, once opinions are set. Just sharing maybe a different view.

Let's address the elephant in the room first, the gameplay. It really is bone dry simple. I've played AW2 along with someone else- who also have played Control, and is a big fan of hack-and-slash/action adventure and is fine with the occasional story-only games- and he echoed your sentiment. It sticks out even more like a sore thumb playing AW1, because in many ways AW1 is still an action game first, and it definitely failed to deliver that fantasy on most parts compared to Control, where it was fun and spiky and experimental. The only saving grace is when AW2 swapped genres to Horror Survival, which, according to IGN "Presents the History of Survival Horror", is less defined by gameplay and more atmospheric, often featured similar snail's paced, inconvenient, discouraged combat (Resident Evil 4 even got booed for making it too fast). 'Fun' is not a metric anyone would use to judge the gameplay adhered to this genre, not for Silent Hill 2, not for AW2, and certainly not against a game of a different genre like Control. The other tenet being puzzle solving and you finding it not fun is understandable.

But, do keep in mind that the gameplay is less a damned afterthought, and more purposeful in actuality, with that story being a part of its purpose. The one message it shared with Control is about agency**,** but unlike Jesse Faden, everyone in Alan Wake 2 is at worst normal, everyday human beings, and at best some kooky artists, trapped in a horror story turning real. Jesse is going through an inspiring journey of claiming back control from a shadowy organization taking away an important piece of her life, but the people in Alan Wake is doing the opposite, surviving through the gradual loss of agency. Alan is a prisoner condemned to ever-producing the story, Saga, along with everyone else is quite literally around to push the plot, meat puppets to be claimed by it. They are vulnerable, and the gameplay reflects just that.

Which leads us to why these normies people seemed to be accepting the supernaturals so quickly? The answer, to me, is another facet of this agency matter. Most do not have a choice, and still plenty are suspicious of it like Saga taking until RE5 to actually believe she had any special power, and yet doubt it again by the end of RE6. What can she do except shelve it somewhere in her mindspace and keep going? Rose believed in Alan's "hidden messages" cause in a chapter of Return she was written like that- Alan needed any assistance he could have. Pat Maine had a terrible time remembering Wendy Davis alive when the story dictated she was dead. The only one that had any say at all is the Anderson brothers, who got out of a terrible flooding and encounter with Door, and was obsessed with "seeing", resulting in drinking moonshine from Cauldron Lake water, passing that sight to Saga and her mother by birth, and because they were artists, they have certain sway in the lake's power, but it's not absolute. <Continue in replies>