5/5 ★ – blastr85's review of Alan Wake II.

To start simply: Alan Wake 2 is a triumph. A true 10 out of 10 experience. My enjoyment of this game is impossible to separate from my years of enjoying Remedy's past works, particularly Max Payne, Quantum break, and Control. It is also impossible to separate it from my general fandom of David Lynch's work, starting with Twin Peaks (which Alan Wake 1 first inspired me to check out back in 2010, after fellow gamers pointed out there were many similarities to the influential 90's TV series). With all of that said, what is here is still an amazing game and a 10 out of 10 even without all of those fandoms playing into the experience that is Alan Wake 2. There's a few topics I specifically want to talk about and will keep it spoiler free. First, the gameplay. Alan Wake 1 was never a particularly "scary" game, billed more as a spooky thriller than something that would generallys care its players. Alan Wake 2 bills itself as Remedy's first official "survivor horror" game. While all of the tropes you might expect from the genre of third person action shooters is there, (think The Last of Us or the remake of Resident Evil 2) the gameplay is more than just advancing through corridors or forests looking for the next key and shooting zombies. There are significant portions of the game that are decidedly not scary. The times where the player is powerless against what they face off against are very few and far between. The helpless feeling of games like Outlast or Amnesia is not found here. Also lacking is what I would call "pervasive dread" from such classics as Silent Hill 2, as Alan Wake 2 is an experience peppered with lots of moments in quiet, cozy surroundings, bright and sunlit locations, and often with adorable or harmless company. When the game is trying to be scary, it is as scary as any game out there that empowers the player with a way to fight back. Just like Alan Wake 1, this is a mystery first and foremost, and the throuline pulling the player forward is a decidedly science fiction tale. Think X-Files with a fixation on alternate realities rather than aliens, and you'll have a pretty decent idea of the tone. TECHNICALLY speaking, this is the best looking game I have ever seen on a console, as of late 2023. Remedy was at the forefront of ray-tracing with its graphical options in Control, and they continue to push their lighting and fog prowess to the bleeding edge of what is possible in terms of recreating realistic environments. Casting a flashlights through the trees at night while the wind shakes the branches before you casts realistic shadows just as you would expect. No small feat when you consider the amount of foliage and branches that dress an actual forest, all of which is rendered here in breathtaking detail. Similarly, if you turn that flashlight off in the middle of the woods you will likely be thrust into pitch blackness. Lights of nearby structures, or far-off townscapes, illuminate realistically in the distance, adding even more realism to the very much surreal areas your characters find themselves navigating. The interface, font choices, title cards, story beat pacing, and tutorialization of game mechanics are all top notch and handled with the utmost quality you would expect from a first party studio. There was one instance where a Quick Resume on the Xbox Series X failed and crashed the game, and three or four occasions where the hunting rifle weapon would not appear. Saga looked like a professional mime aiming and reloading that thing in these instances, which were fixable by putting the weapon in inventory and pulling it back out again. Otherwise, the experience was bug-free. (My only other criticism is that the game could use a Chapter Select list like the first, rather than just three manual save slots) Speaking of those areas... Alan Wake 2 is not a large game in terms of scope. The game has two main protagonists, the titular Alan and Saga, an FBI detective investigating Alan's disappearance, among many other things. The story flip flops between them and can be done at will by the player, giving the player agency over which side of the story they see unfold and when. Saga's story is told in three distinct areas around Cauldron Lake and the small towns of Bright Falls and Watery, Washington. Alan's story takes place primarily in a fictional block of New York City, with wet, graffiti-plastered alleyways, littered streets, and a wide variety of building interiors to go along with it. This tighter focus likely helped the team develop the game into the relatively clean experience that it is, but it also enhances the cozy nature and "I know this place" that people get when they walk through an area a couple of times. These areas are very dense with optional materals that flesh out the game's world. (And the worlds of other games in Remedy's history) If you're like me and you want to see everything, you may spend close to 30 hours on your first playthrough, frequently stopping along the path to read material, look at pictures, watch videos, listen to radio broadcasts, talk to NPC's, or witness interactions between other characters. Not least amongst the art in Alan Wake 2 that exists outside of the video game, the title's music will be discussed for a long time. In many ways Alan Wake 2 is the closest thing we have had to a big budget musical as a AAA video game, for reasons I won't spoil here. What isn't a spoiler is to say that the game is broken up into 19 "chapters" and each chapter is preceded and followed up with a different song. Some of these songs are remixes of earlier songs you've heard, but the soundtrack is chock-full of artists fans will recognize and discover for the first time, no matter who you are. One other big part of the game play is their copyright free version of Sherlock Holmes' mind palace. Saga is a skilled investigator, and her mind place works as a glorified menu for sorting evidence, collectibles, songs, readable artifacts, etc. Alan has his own version of this room called "The Writer's Room" and both of these are integrated deeply into gameplay. By the time you need to use them for story purposes, you've already spent enough time in them to know exactly how they work and what you need to do. All of this is well and good, but what I can't describe is the amount of surprises and twists that come along the way. Not only is this a story with lots of twists and surprises, they are twists that are so well done and so tightly concocted that they lift the overall work from a conversation about video games into a conversation about art. I like seeing the face and voice of Max Payne in a role that is clearly a reference to Max Payne, or an actor cast as Warlin Door who may as well be doing an impersonation of Lance Reddick's Martin Hatch from Quantum Break (Hatch? Door?) and Shawn Ashmore showing up in a new role, but as the game goes on, it becomes very clear that these parallels are not just developers casting actors they like in different projects or reusing familiar tropes that they are comfortable with; they are very purposeful connections that are meant to bleed the line between different video games, the way the Dark Place of Cauldron Lake intentionally bleeds the line between itself and the "real world" where the characters of Alan Wake 2 live and breathe. Much like the works of David Lynch, I expect responses to be polarizing. The first time I saw Mulholland Drive, I laughed out loud and voiced my opinion that this was drivel made by a talentless hack. I would expect many gamers to have a similar opinion of Alan Wake 2, even including some fans of the original. This game is WEIRD. Weird as hell. It certainly won't be for everyone. But what is there is such a risk, such a middle finger to the status quo, that the audience it does resonate with will definitely find a quality experience that will be studied and analyzed and enjoyed for years to come.