I brought you the heart, witch. Show me the terror.
Alan Wake II is a cerebral experience unlike any other; it’s the rare game that will keep players hooked all the way to its thrilling finale, and it’s a culmination of Remedy’s unique approach to the medium as a whole - primarily through its juxtaposition of multiple forms of media. Even though the core gameplay does not keep up with the surreal setting at times, it’s an intense survival horror when it works, and a breath of fresh air for the genre.
A game 13 years in the making, Alan Wake II still feels familiar if you’ve played Remedy’s previous games. They continue to expand its Connected Universe; both dealing with the consequences of the first game and adding Control’s concepts throughout this one. [You can technically play this game if you haven’t played the other ones, but you would miss out on all the little details on the universe (and, well, two other great games that helped set this one up)]. But at the same time, everything feels new. From the core gameplay loop that came with the shift in genre, to its back-and-forth narrative structure, the Mind Place/Writer’s Room mechanic, the settings that blend the surreal with the macabre, and the amazing visuals that support them - it all comes together in a beautifully realized world, and the worlds within the worlds.
Bright Falls feels eerily unsettling, while the Dark Place is outright terrifying. There’s the Mind Place, built with the confidence of a detective that dares to go to the bottom of an impossible case, as bottomless as the lake that creeps over the town and the woods surrounding it. And then there’s the Writer’s Room, built from the despair of a writer that repeatedly fails to escape a nightmare of his own creation. It’s a gimmick, for sure; not supposed to be anything revolutionary, but these two places keep the characters grounded in a twisted, demented story. And the story is so damn good.
I won’t spoil much here, but I’ll touch briefly on the juxtaposition I mentioned earlier: this is a game that plays like a TV adaptation of a series of books, written by an author trapped in it. The Dark Place is filled with graffiti directed at Alan (there’s an entire short film you can watch there!) Each chapter ends with original music from real-life bands fitting that chapter; hell, it has a real-life band playing songs as a fictional band during parts of the game, and in typical Remedy fashion, it’s the wildest shit you’ll ever experience. I could go on, but the game has sent the message perfectly clear: Art is the key here, it’s constantly referenced during the journey, and frankly, there’s no other thing quite like it. It’s amazingly executed, and it’s a damn fine work of art.
Alan Wake II is a cerebral experience unlike any other; it’s the rare game that will keep players hooked all the way to its thrilling finale, and it’s a culmination of Remedy’s unique approach to the medium as a whole - primarily through its juxtaposition of multiple forms of media. Even though the core gameplay does not keep up with the surreal setting at times, it’s an intense survival horror when it works, and a breath of fresh air for the genre.
A game 13 years in the making, Alan Wake II still feels familiar if you’ve played Remedy’s previous games. They continue to expand its Connected Universe; both dealing with the consequences of the first game and adding Control’s concepts throughout this one. [You can technically play this game if you haven’t played the other ones, but you would miss out on all the little details on the universe (and, well, two other great games that helped set this one up)]. But at the same time, everything feels new. From the core gameplay loop that came with the shift in genre, to its back-and-forth narrative structure, the Mind Place/Writer’s Room mechanic, the settings that blend the surreal with the macabre, and the amazing visuals that support them - it all comes together in a beautifully realized world, and the worlds within the worlds.
Bright Falls feels eerily unsettling, while the Dark Place is outright terrifying. There’s the Mind Place, built with the confidence of a detective that dares to go to the bottom of an impossible case, as bottomless as the lake that creeps over the town and the woods surrounding it. And then there’s the Writer’s Room, built from the despair of a writer that repeatedly fails to escape a nightmare of his own creation. It’s a gimmick, for sure; not supposed to be anything revolutionary, but these two places keep the characters grounded in a twisted, demented story. And the story is so damn good.
I won’t spoil much here, but I’ll touch briefly on the juxtaposition I mentioned earlier: this is a game that plays like a TV adaptation of a series of books, written by an author trapped in it. The Dark Place is filled with graffiti directed at Alan (there’s an entire short film you can watch there!) Each chapter ends with original music from real-life bands fitting that chapter; hell, it has a real-life band playing songs as a fictional band during parts of the game, and in typical Remedy fashion, it’s the wildest shit you’ll ever experience. I could go on, but the game has sent the message perfectly clear: Art is the key here, it’s constantly referenced during the journey, and frankly, there’s no other thing quite like it. It’s amazingly executed, and it’s a damn fine work of art.