I really needed a game like Alan Wake 2. After growing increasingly jaded with AAA titles and its repetition, Alan Wake 2 offers an incredibly creative experience that breaks the mold of what you would expect in a typical high budget game.
I love Remedy's storytelling. They present a lot of questions to you, but rarely answer them explicitly. In some cases, you are left to speculate, or wait for the next game in the series. The story is purposefully convoluted, full of references to a 10 year old game and mentions you need a very keen eye to truly appreciate. The story jumps back and forth in time, from one character to another, and sometimes it's questionable what is and isn't "real". While this can be somewhat annoying for some, it ensures for me that the game and its mysteries stay in my mind for a long time. It is a game that, if you get invested, it stays with you for a long time after you play it. Lore videos, discussion boards, making up my own theories, it's a lot of fun.
Alan's endless monologues, Saga questioning what is happening and what is real, characters seemingly knowing more than they let on, Athi the janitor, I just wanna dive deeper and deeper into the lore and discover as much as possible.
When it comes to the gamplay itself, it's good. Alan offers classic Survival Horror type gameplay, where you have to be careful with your resources, solve puzzles while pushing forward to continue the story. Alan Wake 2 fixes a lot of my issues with typical survival horrors. There are very few "annoying" things to deal with. No big unkillable AI that does nothing to improve the atmosphere, no running to the other side of the map to find what you need to solve a puzzle, and no boss fights where all you do is unload 3 magazines of every gun type into them before they die.
Saga's side of the game is similar, but focuses more on action, exploration, more long winded puzzles, and meeting characters to drive the plot forward.
While all of this is well and good, the game is not without flaws. Here are my main gripes:
1) Sometimes I would know the answer to a puzzle, get really confused as to why it wasn't working, second guess myself and run around the map like a headless chicken before realizing I forgot to put a picture in its place in the Mind Place. Bruh. Seriously? Sometimes I would even solve the puzzle, look in the correct spot, but the item isn't there because I didn't enter my head and "think" the item into existence. This sucks, and the Saga part of the story is especially guilty of this. It happens multiple times.
2) The optimization is god awful. Seriously? 4080, i7-13th gen, 32GB ram and I can't even get 60 fps at 1440p without DLSS? Even with DLSS it sometimes stutters. DLSS makes the game feel much heavier and clunker than it needs to be. What a shame. The anti aliasing is also really bad, you essentially have to choose between a jagged game or a blurry game. If you choose to play with DLSS, it is especially bad when anti aliasing is on.
3) Sometimes I would get lost. The map was not very good, and it was not always clear where the game wanted you to go. Especially in some of the open ended areas like when you explore the open world of the Dark Place, particularly when you look for something that hasn't appeared in the world yet, so you hyper focus on scouting for that one thing that doesn't exist. The map is also inaccurate multiple places in the Dark Place because walking into a room will technically teleport you somewhere else, so you take a left and on the map it looks like you took a right, and you also sprinted 200 meters (because you teleported).
In conclusion, I think this game is amazing, and definitely deserves all the praise it is getting. I am super excited for Remedy's next game, and I can't wait to dive back into this fantastical world of horror. I can only hope we don't have to wait 10 years for the next one.
I love Remedy's storytelling. They present a lot of questions to you, but rarely answer them explicitly. In some cases, you are left to speculate, or wait for the next game in the series. The story is purposefully convoluted, full of references to a 10 year old game and mentions you need a very keen eye to truly appreciate. The story jumps back and forth in time, from one character to another, and sometimes it's questionable what is and isn't "real". While this can be somewhat annoying for some, it ensures for me that the game and its mysteries stay in my mind for a long time. It is a game that, if you get invested, it stays with you for a long time after you play it. Lore videos, discussion boards, making up my own theories, it's a lot of fun.
Alan's endless monologues, Saga questioning what is happening and what is real, characters seemingly knowing more than they let on, Athi the janitor, I just wanna dive deeper and deeper into the lore and discover as much as possible.
When it comes to the gamplay itself, it's good. Alan offers classic Survival Horror type gameplay, where you have to be careful with your resources, solve puzzles while pushing forward to continue the story. Alan Wake 2 fixes a lot of my issues with typical survival horrors. There are very few "annoying" things to deal with. No big unkillable AI that does nothing to improve the atmosphere, no running to the other side of the map to find what you need to solve a puzzle, and no boss fights where all you do is unload 3 magazines of every gun type into them before they die.
Saga's side of the game is similar, but focuses more on action, exploration, more long winded puzzles, and meeting characters to drive the plot forward.
While all of this is well and good, the game is not without flaws. Here are my main gripes:
1) Sometimes I would know the answer to a puzzle, get really confused as to why it wasn't working, second guess myself and run around the map like a headless chicken before realizing I forgot to put a picture in its place in the Mind Place. Bruh. Seriously? Sometimes I would even solve the puzzle, look in the correct spot, but the item isn't there because I didn't enter my head and "think" the item into existence. This sucks, and the Saga part of the story is especially guilty of this. It happens multiple times.
2) The optimization is god awful. Seriously? 4080, i7-13th gen, 32GB ram and I can't even get 60 fps at 1440p without DLSS? Even with DLSS it sometimes stutters. DLSS makes the game feel much heavier and clunker than it needs to be. What a shame. The anti aliasing is also really bad, you essentially have to choose between a jagged game or a blurry game. If you choose to play with DLSS, it is especially bad when anti aliasing is on.
3) Sometimes I would get lost. The map was not very good, and it was not always clear where the game wanted you to go. Especially in some of the open ended areas like when you explore the open world of the Dark Place, particularly when you look for something that hasn't appeared in the world yet, so you hyper focus on scouting for that one thing that doesn't exist. The map is also inaccurate multiple places in the Dark Place because walking into a room will technically teleport you somewhere else, so you take a left and on the map it looks like you took a right, and you also sprinted 200 meters (because you teleported).
In conclusion, I think this game is amazing, and definitely deserves all the praise it is getting. I am super excited for Remedy's next game, and I can't wait to dive back into this fantastical world of horror. I can only hope we don't have to wait 10 years for the next one.