One of my teachers in secondary school was adamant that us pupils never use the word 'boring' to describe something. It was the laziest descriptor to fall back on in his opinion, and he urged us to avoid it completely when it came to any form of creative writing. Well I'm sorry Mr. Hicks, but there's one word that perfectly sums up Alan Wake 2, and that word is boring. Alan Wake 2 is boring. As fuck.
There was a time when I considered Remedy as one of my favourite developers. They could do no wrong. But after the one-two gut punch of Control and Alan Wake 2, I just can't champion them anymore. Alan Wake 2 is a colossal disappointment, down there with the likes of MGS2 and Burnout Paradise, and I don't even know where to begin with my list of complaints.
Well, let's start with the combat. The combat in Alan Wake 2 is fundamentally flawed. There's actually surprisingly little of it compared to the first game, and it's easy to see why. Combat encounters usually go one of two ways - without a hitch or disastrously. Alan and Saga are squishy to the extreme, so it's game over after three hits or so. This wouldn't be an issue if guns didn't take an age to reload, and it's further exacerbated by a fiddly healing system that involves selecting the healing item you want to use from your inventory and then having to wait for your character to finish their healing animation. Enemies don't dawdle, so it's rare to actually be able to top your health mid-fight. As such, I had a huge stock of first aid kits in both my inventory and shoebox (the game's name for an item box) because I just wasn't using them that much. Towards the end of the game as Saga, all available item spaces were filled to the brim. I had no room to put anything so I often had to resort to discarding items. Combat is an unbalanced mess, and in the last few hours I was just running past the shadowy mobs whenever I could for the sake of my own sanity.
And then there's the Mind Palace, the mental safe space where Saga stores all her information relevant to the case. This is meant to serve as the area where the player gets their sleuth on, but anything resembling critical thinking and puzzle solving just isn't there. You either play mix and match with the Case Board, taking items of evidence and guessing the correct category to attach them to, or you watch cutscenes in Profiling, as Saga has internal conversations with other characters and just magically hits upon all the right answers (oh, it turns out she's psychic btw). So you play as a detective, but there's no detective work. The player isn't required to do any actual deduction; just stare at walls of evidence for inordinate amounts of time. It is so mundane, and it completely ruins the pacing of a game that's already very slow anyway. Alan Wake 2 isn't a short game, and boy does it fucking drag because of the Mind Palace.
Prior to release, much was made of Remedy insisting that their sequel would be a full-blown shift to survival horror territory. "Great" I thought. I couldn't have been happier to hear it. But curiously, Alan Wake 2 isn't scary. At all. The topic of what makes a game scary or not is one that fascinates me, and I often ruminate over it on a game-by-game basis. Well I'm still trying to figure out why Alan Wake 2 was so ineffectual in this regard. Was it the lack of enemy variety? The schlocky tone and meta-narrative flying in the face of the serious attempts at horror? The most obnoxious usage of jump scares I've ever encountered in any form of media ever? Probably all three, but mostly the latter! The jump scares are relentless, and they don't strike fear in the heart of this player, but rather annoyance and an eye roll or two. Remedy would do well to analyse games like Silent Hill 1/2/3, Project Zero 1/2, P.T. and Manhunt if they have any future plans to explore the horror genre further, because it's clear they don't have a fucking clue how to generate any sense of fear or dread in their games.
And then there's the story. Oh don't get me started on the story. It's official - Sam Lake has disappeared up his own rectum and his head has gotten so big that he'll never be able to get it out. The man fancies himself as the European Hideo Kojima (although he'll never be that bad... I hope). I've loved Lake's writing in the past - particularly the noir masterpiece that is Max Payne 2 - but here he's surrendered himself to all his worst habits. Excessive monologues, hammy dialogue frequently delivered in unnatural ways, constant meta references and in-jokes, and just a total lack of focus in general. I think the main problem is that, because Epic was footing the bill and Remedy had that Fortnite money to play around with, Sam Lake was given carte blanche, and he took to his unlimited creative power like a Finn to the sauna. There's no normalcy to be found here. Just weird piled upon weird. Everyone talks in riddles, or speaks in cryptic patterns. Nobody gives a straight answer. It was a problem I had in the past with Control, but instead of tempering those tendencies, Sam Lake has decided to emphasis them further.
Should I go on? Saga Anderson is a stoic, dull-as-ditch water co-protagonist who veers dangerously close to the Mary Sue template. In fact, I think her only real character flaw is that she's too dedicated to her job and neglects her family sometimes. There's a section towards the end where she's trapped in her Mind Palace (yay!) because she's plagued by self-doubt and all the bad choices she's made in the past, and in order to escape she has to convince herself via the Case Board that she hasn't done anything wrong at all and shouldn't listen to the malignant force that's trying to warp her mind. It turns out she's pretty flawless after all! Fucking shoot me. After Control and this, I'm convinced that Sam Lake doesn't actually know how to write an engaging female lead.
Oh, and the game doesn't even end conclusively. It's rushed. There's sequel bait. Alan still hasn't succeeded in his main goal that began near the beginning of the first game. The end credits are scrolling and I wonder why I even bothered in the first place. Remedy's clearly more interested in creating its own MCU than actually putting a full stop on Alan's story. Fucking shoot me.
What truly hurts is that I appear to be in the minority with all of this. Alan Wake 2 is universally adored, or something close to that status. A hit with the gaming press, a fixture at award ceremonies, and even on Backloggd itself, the game has an alarmingly high average rating of 4.5. (Nearly) everything was pointing at me loving it. I enjoyed the first game, third-person survival horror is my absolute comfort zone, I like the works of David Lynch, I embrace the abstract in general... I could go on. I genuinely wish I could sing its praises just as much as everyone else. But I have to be true to myself and anyone reading this - the game was a chore to get through from beginning to end.
Deerfest? More like Borefest. Sorry Mr. Hicks.
There was a time when I considered Remedy as one of my favourite developers. They could do no wrong. But after the one-two gut punch of Control and Alan Wake 2, I just can't champion them anymore. Alan Wake 2 is a colossal disappointment, down there with the likes of MGS2 and Burnout Paradise, and I don't even know where to begin with my list of complaints.
Well, let's start with the combat. The combat in Alan Wake 2 is fundamentally flawed. There's actually surprisingly little of it compared to the first game, and it's easy to see why. Combat encounters usually go one of two ways - without a hitch or disastrously. Alan and Saga are squishy to the extreme, so it's game over after three hits or so. This wouldn't be an issue if guns didn't take an age to reload, and it's further exacerbated by a fiddly healing system that involves selecting the healing item you want to use from your inventory and then having to wait for your character to finish their healing animation. Enemies don't dawdle, so it's rare to actually be able to top your health mid-fight. As such, I had a huge stock of first aid kits in both my inventory and shoebox (the game's name for an item box) because I just wasn't using them that much. Towards the end of the game as Saga, all available item spaces were filled to the brim. I had no room to put anything so I often had to resort to discarding items. Combat is an unbalanced mess, and in the last few hours I was just running past the shadowy mobs whenever I could for the sake of my own sanity.
And then there's the Mind Palace, the mental safe space where Saga stores all her information relevant to the case. This is meant to serve as the area where the player gets their sleuth on, but anything resembling critical thinking and puzzle solving just isn't there. You either play mix and match with the Case Board, taking items of evidence and guessing the correct category to attach them to, or you watch cutscenes in Profiling, as Saga has internal conversations with other characters and just magically hits upon all the right answers (oh, it turns out she's psychic btw). So you play as a detective, but there's no detective work. The player isn't required to do any actual deduction; just stare at walls of evidence for inordinate amounts of time. It is so mundane, and it completely ruins the pacing of a game that's already very slow anyway. Alan Wake 2 isn't a short game, and boy does it fucking drag because of the Mind Palace.
Prior to release, much was made of Remedy insisting that their sequel would be a full-blown shift to survival horror territory. "Great" I thought. I couldn't have been happier to hear it. But curiously, Alan Wake 2 isn't scary. At all. The topic of what makes a game scary or not is one that fascinates me, and I often ruminate over it on a game-by-game basis. Well I'm still trying to figure out why Alan Wake 2 was so ineffectual in this regard. Was it the lack of enemy variety? The schlocky tone and meta-narrative flying in the face of the serious attempts at horror? The most obnoxious usage of jump scares I've ever encountered in any form of media ever? Probably all three, but mostly the latter! The jump scares are relentless, and they don't strike fear in the heart of this player, but rather annoyance and an eye roll or two. Remedy would do well to analyse games like Silent Hill 1/2/3, Project Zero 1/2, P.T. and Manhunt if they have any future plans to explore the horror genre further, because it's clear they don't have a fucking clue how to generate any sense of fear or dread in their games.
And then there's the story. Oh don't get me started on the story. It's official - Sam Lake has disappeared up his own rectum and his head has gotten so big that he'll never be able to get it out. The man fancies himself as the European Hideo Kojima (although he'll never be that bad... I hope). I've loved Lake's writing in the past - particularly the noir masterpiece that is Max Payne 2 - but here he's surrendered himself to all his worst habits. Excessive monologues, hammy dialogue frequently delivered in unnatural ways, constant meta references and in-jokes, and just a total lack of focus in general. I think the main problem is that, because Epic was footing the bill and Remedy had that Fortnite money to play around with, Sam Lake was given carte blanche, and he took to his unlimited creative power like a Finn to the sauna. There's no normalcy to be found here. Just weird piled upon weird. Everyone talks in riddles, or speaks in cryptic patterns. Nobody gives a straight answer. It was a problem I had in the past with Control, but instead of tempering those tendencies, Sam Lake has decided to emphasis them further.
Should I go on? Saga Anderson is a stoic, dull-as-ditch water co-protagonist who veers dangerously close to the Mary Sue template. In fact, I think her only real character flaw is that she's too dedicated to her job and neglects her family sometimes. There's a section towards the end where she's trapped in her Mind Palace (yay!) because she's plagued by self-doubt and all the bad choices she's made in the past, and in order to escape she has to convince herself via the Case Board that she hasn't done anything wrong at all and shouldn't listen to the malignant force that's trying to warp her mind. It turns out she's pretty flawless after all! Fucking shoot me. After Control and this, I'm convinced that Sam Lake doesn't actually know how to write an engaging female lead.
Oh, and the game doesn't even end conclusively. It's rushed. There's sequel bait. Alan still hasn't succeeded in his main goal that began near the beginning of the first game. The end credits are scrolling and I wonder why I even bothered in the first place. Remedy's clearly more interested in creating its own MCU than actually putting a full stop on Alan's story. Fucking shoot me.
What truly hurts is that I appear to be in the minority with all of this. Alan Wake 2 is universally adored, or something close to that status. A hit with the gaming press, a fixture at award ceremonies, and even on Backloggd itself, the game has an alarmingly high average rating of 4.5. (Nearly) everything was pointing at me loving it. I enjoyed the first game, third-person survival horror is my absolute comfort zone, I like the works of David Lynch, I embrace the abstract in general... I could go on. I genuinely wish I could sing its praises just as much as everyone else. But I have to be true to myself and anyone reading this - the game was a chore to get through from beginning to end.
Deerfest? More like Borefest. Sorry Mr. Hicks.
2 Comments
@sher_holder Thanks for reading. I know there won't be many people who agree with me, and it's a shame because I did genuinely want to love AW2. But at this point, I think it's safe to say that the Remedy I once knew is long gone.
sher_holder
2 months ago