Holy fuck.
Been forever since I played a Remedy Game, and it's been a couple years since my first playthrough of Alan Wake 1 as well. Decided to try this one out to see what I would get and...
Yeah, if there's a high-quality Twin Peaks ripoff out there, this one is absolutely that one. And boy I'm glad it exists, because the concepts and ideas this game has make the first game look so small in contrast.
I love the live action segments and the mixture of visuals, specially when playing as Alan. Saga's gameplay feels closer to how Alan played in the first game, with the very welcoming dodge button and weapon upgrade system to it.
I love how you can just explore the area around Bright Falls too, and the small fetch quests of finding the lunchboxes, nursery rhymes and stashes hidden around the map.
Welp, if I have to deduct half a star over anything... is just how this just won't run on a low-end laptop at ALL. I can see why it doesn't run, this motherfucker has a fuckton of post-processing happening in your face almost 24/7. If this ever releases on game pass or if I get a console in the near future, I am definitely replaying it.
Overall, the madmen at Remedy know how to make a high quality game that's absolutely weird from beginning to end. I am definitely replaying their stuff in the coming weeks as well. :)

Over the last couple of weeks, I developed something of a ritual for playing this game. I would wait until at least 9 PM at night, ensuring that I could make my room pitch black. I cranked the volume on my headphones and connected my dualsense controller to my PC. I brewed myself a mug of tea and let it cool while I extinguished the lamps in my room. Finally, I booted the game up.
Alan Wake II is squarely Remedy's best. I have rolled credits on all their games and have loved each in their own way. I was driven to treat this one with reverence in a way I never did the others. I don't think I have ever seen a game so bold and strange get production values this enormous. It's a pure delight from start to finish, and feels like a once-in-a-generation game.
The decade-long gap between Alan Wake II and its prequel has allowed its concepts to simmer in the minds of its writers and designers. The game is clearly better off for it in every way.
True survival horror is a perfect fit for Alan Wake II. The game borrows heavily from the Resident Evil games to great effect. The stress of high-risk combat and resource management bring a player closer to Saga and Alan's journey. It also gives compelling reasons to follow the delightful collect-a-thon side quests in order to bolster one's aresenal. I was morbidly delighted when some of the cult stashes had me bust out a pen and paper to do algebra problems.
The technology behind Alan Wake II is peerless. My jaw dropped as soon as I stepped into the forest of Cauldron Lake and I was rarely able to pick it back up. Path traced lighting and reflections make every tiny detail shine. Audio deserves a shout as well, with incredible binaural simulation making me swing the camera around every time I heard a twig snap off in the distance. I played through the whole game with everything cranked up and I felt like my monitor was showing me a glimpse of what games will look like a decade into the future.
What will remain in conversation and stick in the memory of players the longest is undoubtedly Alan Wake II's metafiction story. It is sublimely layered and rewards careful attention. A player doesn't need to have played Alan Wake to enjoy the twists and turns in this game's narrative. On the other hand, previous experience with Remedy's stories will allow a player to recognize rich detail in every aspect of the game's story. It's a story that reflects on Remedy's past and interrogates the process of both creating and consuming media. Who should decide how the story goes? Is a creator responsible for their following? Can we really kill our creative darlings in permanent ways?