It was an easy recent favorite of mine after a playthrough. The atmosphere is so well done. It got me to finally play Alan Wake and I'll definitely pick up that sequel at some point too.
I tried Alan Wake at one point, but had a hard time getting into it. I also tried their other game, Quantum Break, but at the first part it wanted to download a video to link it to the TV show the game broke on me. It wouldn't download the video, and I couldn't skip it, so I was stuck less than an hour into it.
Control was so good that, for me, it retroactively made Alan Wake better by their connections.
However, in my opinion, that didn't make Alan Wake good. It's a game that should have worked wonders for me, but the gameplay loop being the same from beginning to end (and truthfully, it being monotonous didn't help) and the controls being frustrating just made it a game I wanted to get through, rather than enjoy.
Unsure if I'm going to play Alan Wake 2, as it looks like the same gameplay that I didn't enjoy.
For me the problem with AW, more than the boring gameplay loop, is the weird episodic format they shoehorned into it. You'd just be getting into the groove of the game, used to the annoying combat and stealth and such, and then it yanks you out of it and you have to watch an end of episode cutscene, and then a new episode cutscene, just to continue on