God, just everything about Alan wake 2 screams passion, from the writers making a beautifully complex and rich story to the northlight engine pushing out the most breathtaking graphics I've seen in years.
To start, I enjoyed this game, every award and praise it gets is definitely deserved, Sam Lake is known for his games pushing boundaries on both a narrative standard and a graphical standard and this shows with what I could argue is his best work now, Remedy have worked on this game for years now, the concept behind it has been around since the first game, even getting a teaser in quantum break back in 2016. Sam Lake has stated many times in interviews that he has tried to get this concept working for years and has tried many times, this is what all those years have come to and it was very much worth the wait.
I will not say much about the story as I HIGHLY suggest that for this game you go in as blind as possible, I did and had a wonderful time. Just know that the story is very well written and had me guessing and engaged the whole way through.
The gameplay of the game is the only part I have some complaints about, most of the time the concepts that are shown are creative and work quite well, but others not so much. Take for example the Alan Wake sections and the flashlight, in the first game the flashlight was consistent, you could hold it down on any enemy and then would either use batteries to recharge or wait, in the second game however the flashlight now uses "charges", little bars that represent bursts of time for how long the flashlight is used, this often leads to wasting battery and it can be inconsistent, along with this enemies can take 1 charge just to make them vulnerable and for some it takes one whole bar of all your charges. This becomes problematic in the Alan Wake sections where there are "dark ones" and "dark one enemies" who are incredibly hard to tell the difference from, this leads to wasting your battery charge on something that doesn't attack instead of the enemies that actually do attack.
With those little problems out of the way I can say that Alan Wake 2 was an amazing game to start the year with.
To start, I enjoyed this game, every award and praise it gets is definitely deserved, Sam Lake is known for his games pushing boundaries on both a narrative standard and a graphical standard and this shows with what I could argue is his best work now, Remedy have worked on this game for years now, the concept behind it has been around since the first game, even getting a teaser in quantum break back in 2016. Sam Lake has stated many times in interviews that he has tried to get this concept working for years and has tried many times, this is what all those years have come to and it was very much worth the wait.
I will not say much about the story as I HIGHLY suggest that for this game you go in as blind as possible, I did and had a wonderful time. Just know that the story is very well written and had me guessing and engaged the whole way through.
The gameplay of the game is the only part I have some complaints about, most of the time the concepts that are shown are creative and work quite well, but others not so much. Take for example the Alan Wake sections and the flashlight, in the first game the flashlight was consistent, you could hold it down on any enemy and then would either use batteries to recharge or wait, in the second game however the flashlight now uses "charges", little bars that represent bursts of time for how long the flashlight is used, this often leads to wasting battery and it can be inconsistent, along with this enemies can take 1 charge just to make them vulnerable and for some it takes one whole bar of all your charges. This becomes problematic in the Alan Wake sections where there are "dark ones" and "dark one enemies" who are incredibly hard to tell the difference from, this leads to wasting your battery charge on something that doesn't attack instead of the enemies that actually do attack.
With those little problems out of the way I can say that Alan Wake 2 was an amazing game to start the year with.