4.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Alan Wake II.

Alan Wake II is my game of the year, I never expected to say that, but here I am. I've spent the better part of a decade disliking the first game, even after giving it multiple attempts and just not connecting with it. The original Alan Wake was always something I wanted to love, but between it's clunky controls, repetitive gameplay, uninteresting combat and just generally bad level design, it never clicked in the way I wanted it to. The story on the other hand hooked me, even if it's borderline plagiarizing Twin Peaks, It was still enough to carry an otherwise mediocre game on it's back to the finish line, enough for it's story to vividly stick out in my mind over a month after playing it. Alan Wake's presentation was so unique in how it delivered information to the audience, but It still wasn't the game I truly wanted, and from the same studio that made the Max Payne games, I knew Remedy was fully capable of making something amazing, which just made that original game feel like even more of a missed opportunity. Alan Wake II is the game I always wanted the original to be, It completely reworks everything that I disliked and turns it into something wildly different in the best possible way. While the first Alan Wake game made the comparisons to Twin Peaks and Resident Evil incredibly apparent, I'm having a harder time comparing the sequel to anything close to that, in fact I'm having trouble comparing it to anything at all. Sure it still has inspirations from both of those that I just mentioned, but Alan Wake II is one of few modern examples of something that feels unique in the games industry. Instead of feeling like it's taking ideas from elsewhere and slightly tweaking them, Alan Wake II truly feels one of a kind. Remedy is a studio I've followed for over a decade now and while their catalog is at least consistency decent, I haven't loved any of them since Max Panye 2, at least that was the case until this game. Alan Wake II feels like the culmination of everything they've learned from their history as a studio and it pays off in strides. Instead of being an action game with horror elements, Alan Wake II is a full on survival horror game. As someone that's a huge fan of the genre, I was curious to see how they'd work the Alan Wake elements into a survival horror format, and they really succeeded in doing so. Mechanically it doesn't do anything that hasn't been done in other survival horror games, there's resource management, stationary save areas and Resident Evil-esque puzzles, but between it's excellent sound design and gorgeous visual presentation it far excels a lot of other games in the genre. The flashlight mechanic is back and better than ever, the visual and audio feedback you receive makes it feel so good every time it happens. Combat as a whole has greatly improved, guns actually feel distinct from one another with excellent feedback and kick to them. The enemies themselves, while lacking in variety, are really fun to take down, more so than the first game since combat sections are used a lot of more sparingly to contrast with resource management. The level design has also greatly improved, instead of feeling incredibly restrictive as you stay on a narrow path for the entire game, Alan Wake II gives you giant levels to explore that you slowly work your way around throughout the game. These areas feel dense with secrets that I'm sure I completely missed, even when revisiting levels, as they are packed to the brim with places to explore. Alan Wake II is probably the best looking game I've ever played. I say probably because I feel like I say that a lot, but I really mean it this time. Remedy's last big game, Control, was one of the first real games to implement Ray Tracing in a way that worked, before then a lot of developers just put it in their game as a gimmick without taking performance and playability into mind, but Remedy really took full advantage of it in Control. That game quickly became the go to new benchmark game for high end PCs, and was the new "can it run Crysis?", and I expect the same will be the case for Alan Wake II. I don't know what kind of magic they're using over there, but the level of detail on everything is top notch. The character models, animations, the physics engine, lighting are all amazing, and it shockingly runs a lot better than I thought it would while looking this good. On top of looking fantastic, the art direction is incredibly ambitious, I can't think of any other games that mix in-game and live action footage like Remedy does, but it makes Alan Wake II so much better for it. There's a particular sequence around the midway point of the game that's one of my favorite sequences from any game of the past few years, maybe even ever, and I could never see any other studio even thinking of pulling something like that off. The story is so ambitious and it's clear that Sam Lake has been itching to make this game for over a decade now, and it's just so good. I won't get into spoilers, because honestly I think the best way to experience this story is knowing as little about it as possible outside of the first game, but it's one of the most unique stories I've seen pulled off in a big budget horror game. The performances and characters are excellent in this as well, I complained in the first game how Ilkka Villi's line delivery for Alan felt kind of monotone, but he's significantly better in this game, especially during the scenes of him losing his mind. This game has two different stories that you can switch between whenever you want, and I was shocked by how well it's pulled off. I honestly didn't expect to like Saga as much as Alan, but I really loved her introduction as she really fits the narrative the game is going for. Her sections feel very different visually and gameplay wise than Alan's and I loved the option to swap between them whenever I wanted, it created a nice balance that worked for me. Unfortunately it's not a perfect package, for whatever reason the map this game gives you is genuinely terrible. I had this same complaint with Control, and even though it's slightly better since the level design is less of a labyrinth, it's barely an improvement. Whenever I tried to read the map I'd end up following where I thought I was supposed to go, only to look at the map again and not have it line up. My biggest disappointment is that Alan Wake II falls into that category of triple A games released broken and filled with bugs. Keep in mind this is no cyberpunk or jedi survivor level broken, but I did end up getting soft locked quite a few times. Sometimes animations would bug out, audio wouldn't play when it's supposed to and textures would just refuse to load. When I went to check the map, for whatever reason the textures took 3-4 seconds of waiting to actually make the map legible. Whenever I was loading into a new area, sometimes audio would desync from the subtitles or cut off completely which happened almost every time I traveled in a car. There was one particular bug right before the final chapter of the game, where the level it was supposed to load just wouldn't load, it was just a black screen. I tried reloading to my saves, I tried restarting the game, but only when I fully restarted my computer is when it actually fixed itself, I don't know what could have possibly caused that to happen, but it happening 30-45 minutes before the end of the game kind of hurt the experience for me. Besides the game feeling unpolished, I absolutely loved my time with Alan Wake II, It's one of those games that I can easily see being put up there with some of the best survival horror games of all time, especially when a patch rolls out, and I couldn't recommend it more. As much as I was looking forward to this game, I never expected it to be my Game of the Year, and I doubt anything else releasing will be able to change it, I highly recommend Alan Wake II and I'm really curious to see how those Max Panye remakes will look on their current engine.