First off, I feel I should explain my history with the games of Remedy Entertainment before going any further. My first experience with Remedy was Alan Wake 1. I was very much a PlayStation 3 kid during this time, but this game was one of the rare Xbox 360 games to make me jealous of Xbox owners (Forza being the only other one to really do so). So when I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas in 2012, I naturally went and bought a copy of Alan Wake the next day… and I loved it. The story was compelling, the gameplay felt unique & responsive and the presentation made it feel like a well-made TV show. So naturally (once I’d played the DLC & the Xbox Live Arcade spin-off Alan Wake’s American Nightmare), I was looking forward to a sequel… only to find out that Alan Wake 2 was (at that time) not happening. There had been a prototype shown & pitched to Microsoft, but it was rejected in favour of a new IP that leaned into Remedy’s historic blending of live-action video into their games and Remedy would repurpose most of the ideas seen in that prototype for American Nightmare instead.

This new IP would take the form of Quantum Break and would experiment with blending video games & TV to tell its story. And while Quantum Break was far from a bad game and had some interesting ideas in its story & especially its take on time travel, it failed to reach the heights of Alan Wake for me & many other Remedy fans. It would seem that it also failed to resonate with a broader audience & it definitely didn’t do as much to move the needle when it came to Xbox One console sales as Microsoft had hoped. So Remedy would part ways with Microsoft, reacquire the Alan Wake IP from them & (after resuming brainstorming on an Alan Wake sequel) their next project would be the smaller-scale Control, which, while also not reaching the heights of Alan Wake for me, was a solid game that hinted at possible ties to the Alan Wake universe, which culminated in a DLC that officially crossed over with it & confirmed the two games were in the same universe. This made me and many others very excited about what the future held.

And now, just over three years since that DLC’s release & almost thirteen and a half years after the original game’s release, Alan Wake II is finally here! So, what do I think of this game I’ve been waiting just over a decade for? IT WAS AMAZING!

First, let’s start with what is probably the most important part of a Remedy game: the story. And what a story it is! The game has you switch between Alan & Saga, with both only providing part of the whole story. Both stories are tense, gripping & filled with memorable moments and I do recommend alternating between the two to get the best experience (although I will note that the game only gives you free rein to switch between the two in the middle of the story). The way Remedy mixes gameplay, real-time cutscenes & live-action cutscenes throughout the game is ingenious & the best ratio of the three that Remedy has ever struck (said live-action scenes also look great and are clearly well-shot, but with more of a B-movie or arthouse feel than that of a big Hollywood blockbuster). The story Remedy weaves throughout these stories is engaging, creative & insane in a way that is so distinctly Remedy while feeling like a natural continuation of Alan Wake’s story. The writing is simply stellar, pulls you into the narrative, is filled with twists and turns that keep you guessing even after the credits roll and has no shortage of layered & complex characters to analyze and get invested in. The orchestrated music enhances the atmosphere while the lyrical music (almost all of which has been created specifically for this game) are all bangers that I would absolutely listen to on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube even long after my playthrough is done. It is simply crazy what Remedy have accomplished with this story & I’m glad Epic threw that Fortnite money at Remedy and gave them the space & resources to make this game what they wanted it to be.

Now, do you need to have played Alan Wake to understand Alan Wake II? I wouldn’t say it’s strictly necessary. The game itself is fairly self-contained & does explain most of what newcomers would need to know throughout. That being said, I’d still recommend playing or at least looking up recaps of Alan Wake and Control (which is confirmed to be set in the same universe as the Alan Wake series and introduces concepts & entities like the Federal Bureau of Control that factor into this game’s story) before starting Alan Wake II if you want to know everything you need to going in. I personally can recommend Hidden Machine’s recap on YouTube if you just want to go the recap route. But familiarity with not just the Alan Wake games and Control, but also Max Payne & Quantum Break is ideal to get the most out of this game as it is filled with nods to Remedy’s past work for their fans. But you can definitely enjoy the main story without familiarity with Remedy’s prior games (even if familiarity with Alan Wake & Control is recommended).

The gameplay, on the other hand, is mostly standard for a survival horror game. If you’ve played any of the recent Resident Evil remakes, you probably already have a good idea of what to expect from Alan Wake II’s gameplay. That’s not a bad thing though. Remedy’s sensibilities are surprisingly at home in a survival horror context considering they’ve never made a horror game before. Pretty much the only mechanic in this game that I can call out of place is the upgrade system. Not only does it feel at odds with the very atmospheric & cinematic story Remedy’s trying to tell, but it’s also just useless. I pretty much never interacted with it at all in my playthrough and never felt disadvantaged as a result. Not to mention how you really have to go out of your way to find the upgrade points to afford said upgrades. Even Control’s upgrade system had more reason to exist than this one does. And that game’s upgrade system isn’t all too good either.

While we’re on the topic of gameplay deficiencies, one area where Alan Wake II falls short compared to the Resident Evil games is replayability. Due to how exploration & puzzle-heavy Alan Wake II is, I don’t see this game holding up as well on repeat playthroughs as something more combat-heavy like the Resident Evil 3 & 4 remakes or Village (RE2’s remake is probably a bit more replayable too). Not that every game needs to be replayable, but I could see this hurting Alan Wake II’s value proposition for some people.

But it’s not all bland or bad news on the gameplay front. It’s interesting how Saga & Alan’s segments differ from each other gameplay-wise. While the combat mechanics between the two are the same, Saga’s segments are much closer to the aforementioned Resident Evil remakes with more of an action-horror feel to them with some LA Noire-esque detective gameplay mixed in. Alan’s segments on the other hand are much more puzzle-focused and often take on a more moody, almost Silent Hill feel with a focus on more psychological horror as Alan navigates through the Dark Place.

As for whether this game is scary… Yes it is. There were plenty of times that the game’s scares got me & the atmosphere Remedy build up got me scared of what was around the corner.

Also, while the mechanics are fairly typical, the levels you use them in can be anything but. In fact, some of the most creative, insane & boundary-pushing sequences I’ve experienced in a game in years are in this game! If you thought that Remedy couldn’t possibly top Control’s Ashtray Maze… hoo boy, you’re in for a treat as there are a couple of sequences that may actually be even better than that (won’t spoil anything though, but if you know, you know)! The ways the game has you changing reality in real-time in Alan’s sections are simply mind-blowing and feel like they are really taking advantage of the standardization of the presence of SSDs in modern gaming hardware to do things not possible previously. It’s truly awe-inspiring stuff.

Speaking of awe-inspiring, THOSE GRAPHICS THOUGH! While this really shouldn’t be surprising coming from Remedy, Alan Wake II is a stunning technical showcase that justifies its high system requirements on PC. Alan Wake II really does push modern graphics technology forward in a way that hasn’t been seen since Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2020. It makes heavy use of ray tracing to the point where even the lowest settings use some sort of software-accelerated RT tech with little to no rasterized fall backs & is one of the first games to implement Path Tracing on PC, which is impressive in and of itself (even if said Path Tracing is fairly limited & isn’t as game-changing as it is in Cyberpunk 2077’s RT Overdrive mode).


But it’s not all amazing with this game on the technical side of things. While the PC version (which is what I played) is an incredible technical showcase (as I just explained), it’s also (like quite a few other games released this year, even some of the greats like Baldur’s Gate 3) filled with bugs. In my playthrough, I ran into some audio desync issues in cutscenes, which ruined a couple of scenes, one instance of falling through the world due to some assets not loading in, more instances of safe rooms not loading in properly, a surprising amount of lighting pop-in (mostly surrounding those safe rooms) & a couple of A-Posing character models. While all of these bugs are disappointing to run into & I wish the game was released on PC in a better state, none of these issues derailed my experience entirely and prevented me from enjoying what Remedy has created and I wouldn’t suggest letting them stop you from playing this game either. There have been reports of some game-breaking bugs that prevent players from progressing the story and/or side activities, but I did not encounter any of them in my time playing at launch.

The game on PC also doesn’t have any form of Anti-Aliasing outside of DLSS & FSR 2. This, considering how bad the image quality of FSR 2 is at lower resolutions, could be problematic for those without Nvidia RTX GPUs, but I have an RTX 2070 and even DLSS Balanced at a target resolution of 1080p looked pretty good to me.

My last gripe with Alan Wake II is the lack of any kind of physical release. While it’s understandable for the PC version to be digital only (this has been the standard on PC for a long time now), I do lament that the console versions haven’t been given such a release, especially from a game preservation standpoint. It’s not a dealbreaker for me, but it’s still worth mentioning.


Conclusion:

When Quantum Break was announced a decade ago, Remedy promised that it would be “the ultimate Remedy experience”. While that game fell short of that lofty claim, Alan Wake II very much is the ultimate Remedy experience, their magnum opus so to speak. The story is probably their best, most idiosyncratic, meta & strange narrative to date. The characters are all layered and complex. The mix of gameplay, real-time cutscenes & live-action video feels just right. The survival-horror genre manages to fit Remedy’s sensibilities like a glove (even if the upgrade system feels as though it’s more present due to obligation to the genre than anything else). The graphics & technology are some of the best in the industry and (along with certain chapters of the story) feel like Remedy is truly pushing video games as an industry & art form forward. This is my Game of the Year for 2023 & it’s hard to see anything else topping it, not even fellow GOTY frontrunners Baldur’s Gate III & The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

It is truly incredible that Epic Games let Remedy truly go wild with this game & if this is representative of how they plan to get people to use the Epic Games Store going forward, I’m on board (as long as they also realize that they need to improve the user experience & feature set of the Epic Games Launcher too if this strategy is going to work). Especially since Valve seems content to profit off literal gambling with Counter-Strike 2, which is disgusting to me for reasons I went into in my review of that game…


Ratings:

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 10/10

Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)):

9.5/10 (assuming the bugs eventually get fixed)

8/10 (as of now)

Business Practices score: 7/10 (Not much to complain about. Even the Epic Games Store exclusivity is not much of an issue this time considering Epic both published this game & funded its development. The lack of a physical release (even on console) blows though)

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience):

9/10 (as of now)

10/10 (assuming the bugs are eventually fixed)