I went into Alan Wake II with tempered expectations. My experience with Remedy games thus far has consisted of the first Alan Wake and Control, and I found both games to be lacking. Alan Wake 1 was a mediocre third person shooter with straightforward exploration, repetitive combat, and a story that spent more time paying tribute to the media that inspired it rather than directly fleshing out its characters and world. Control was another third person shooter that had great art and cinematic direction, as well as a story that was actually fleshed out as you played, but I ended up bouncing off of the game entirely because its lack of visual clarity in combat kept getting me killed, which resulted in frustration. Alan Wake II is a bold new direction from those games. Instead of a third person shooter, this sequel is a survival horror with greater emphasis on cinematic storytelling, as well as some of the best presentation and most engrossing atmosphere I’ve experienced in any video game I’ve played.
Thirteen years after the original Alan Wake, a series of ritualistic murders being perpetrated by a mysterious cult has been taking place in the town of Bright Falls, the same rural town the first game takes place in. They attract the attention of the FBI, who sends agent Saga Anderson and her partner Alex Casey to investigate. They end up encountering the supernatural “Dark Presence” from the first game, which has once again been possessing locals and turning them into monsters referred to as “The Taken”. They discover there’s far more going on in Bright Falls than meets the eye, with everything seemingly tying into the written works of Alan Wake, who hasn’t been seen since he disappeared during the events of the original game all of those years ago. Meanwhile, Wake himself is still trapped in the Dark Place, an alternate dimension whose reality can be manipulated and altered via works of art. He’s been caught in what seems to be an endless, nightmarish loop, desperately trying to find a way to escape and return to the real world. You play as both Saga and Alan, who each have their own interconnected stories to play through.
Alan Wake II takes the core gameplay of the first game and puts it into a survival horror blender. It’s actually amazing how well the mechanics of the first game transition through this shift in genres. The game plays very similarly to the modern day Resident Evil remakes, specifically Resident Evil 2. The combat loop from the first game is essentially the same here. The Taken are covered with a shroud of darkness that makes them invincible, so in order to do damage, you need to make them vulnerable by shining a flashlight on them until the darkness that protects them is gone, after which they can be harmed by your weapons. The Taken are a bit more dangerous than they used to be. They require more shots from your weapons to put them down, and you don’t face them in the same amount of large numbers as you did in the previous game (though there are times where this is an exception). Since encounters with Taken aren’t as frequent as before, this makes the combat loop feel a lot less repetitive in comparison to the first game, which constantly threw hordes of Taken at you over and over again, to the point where you just became numb to them. They actually feel like a threat now, as opposed to just being disposable.
Levels are more open now, and far less linear than they were in the first game. There’s a much greater emphasis on exploring the environments you find yourself in, and there are actual puzzles to solve this time, which greatly supplements the core gameplay. Minimum levels of resource management is required now, as opposed to the first game, where you didn’t really have to worry about running out of ammo or supplies unless you were just intentionally wasting them. It’s not especially difficult managing your resources in this game. As long as you’re keeping your eyes open and inspecting everything you can, you can maintain a decent supply of healing items and ammo. Still, certain sections of the game will really leave you down to the wire after completing them, so it's important to always keep an eye out for any opportunity to replenish what you’ve used up.
While Saga and Alan both share the same core controls and combat, they each have unique mechanics, and their stories have their own horror atmosphere. Saga explores various locations within the town of Bright Falls while attempting to connect and solve all of the various mysteries that pop up over the course of her story. At various points, you’ll need to swap over to what Saga refers to as “The Mind Place”, a location within her mind that takes the form of a cabin where she can collect her thoughts as well as the facts she’s learned regarding the mysteries of Bright Falls. You can switch over to the Mind Place at any time with the push of a button, and it loads almost instantly. The game isn’t paused when you do this, so you need to make sure you’re in a safe position whenever you do so. Saga organizes everything that she’s learned on the Case Board, a flow chart where you need to manually place all of the different pieces of evidence for a case and tie them all together in order to solve it and progress the game. It’s rarely difficult figuring out what piece of evidence goes where, and even if you get stuck, there’s no penalty for simply guessing until you’ve pinned the evidence in the correct spot. It’s a great way of keeping track of elements of the plot, but as a mechanic, it’s fairly underwhelming and feels like wasted potential. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a more complicated mechanic at one point that got dumbed down because they were worried about people struggling with it.
Alan spends his story trying to escape the Dark Place, which takes the form of a nightmarish version of New York City (so I guess just regular New York City). Since the Dark Place is an alternate reality, Alan’s section is extremely surreal and trippy, as you explore a series of macabre environments trying to find some way to return to Alan’s home dimension. Alan’s story primarily studies him as a character, in a similar vein to the DLC of the first game. Since the Dark Place can be manipulated through works of art, Alan has a mechanic where goes into the Writer’s Room, an area that works in a similar way to Saga’s Mind Place. Here, he can use story ideas on the Plot Board to shift reality and change the environment of certain areas within the locations he explores. You’ll need to do this at various points in order to solve puzzles and remove roadblocks preventing further exploration. The ways in which the environment changes makes this mechanic almost always a thrill to use, as areas can go from slightly off-putting to hauntingly hellish in the blink of an eye. Between the two characters, Alan’s story and gameplay are by far the best in the game. Not that Saga’s section is bad, far from it actually. It’s just that the supernatural nature of the Dark Place as a setting allows for way more interesting level design and setpieces compared to the more realistic, and thus mundane Bright Falls. Furthermore, Alan is a lot more enticing as a character, especially given how the game explores what haunts him and makes him tick. Granted, he had an entire game and DLC to build himself up as a character, but I also feel like making Saga a bit less enticing than Alan was by design, as the game frequently makes it clear she’s an outsider that’s quite literally been written into Alan’s ongoing story.
I think my only and biggest complaint with the game is that the camera is zoomed in way too close to the player character. I get what they were trying to do by going for a claustrophobic camera view, but Saga and Alan take up way too much of the screen, and there are times where you can die and have no idea what even killed you because you couldn’t see what you died to. The problem with visual clarity in combat carries over from Control, but it’s not nearly as bad, since combat isn’t as frequent or quite as hectic. Also, I think more enemy variety would’ve been nice. Much like the first game, pretty much every single enemy you encounter is some form of the Taken. There are some twists on the Taken, such as in the Dark Place where they can disguise themselves as the shadowy figures that populate the environment, as well as the amalgamation Taken you fight as Saga, but they’re all defeated in the exact same fashion. I think the game would’ve benefited greatly if certain sections had a recurring stalker character like Mr. X or Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil. They wouldn’t necessarily have to follow you the whole game, but I think that having one or two sections with a character like that would’ve added some much needed variety.
It almost goes without saying that this game’s narrative is far better told than the first game’s. A majority of the first Alan Wake’s narrative and worldbuilding was told indirectly through the manuscript page collectables, as opposed to the sequel, which tells almost everything in an upfront and direct fashion. The manuscript pages do return, but not only are they a lot simpler to find, they’re not the source of the bulk of the narrative’s details. They’re usually supplemental and expand on things that the story has already made clear. This game fleshes out the world of Alan Wake extensively. It manages to be a thrilling, gripping mystery that takes the lingering plot threads of the first game and turns them into something that I truly did not expect. The commentary on artists, their struggles, and how their work affects themselves and the world around them was something that I, as a wannabe writer myself, could deeply relate to on a personal level. I loved the use of symbolism even though it’s so in your face that the themes of the narrative are practically shouting at you. The story is just executed so well and told with such clear sincerity and immense passion that it completely and totally won me over.
The presentation is some of the greatest I’ve ever seen in any video game I’ve ever played, and I say that with absolutely no exaggeration. It isn’t just the high graphical fidelity that makes it so good. It’s the use of lighting to invoke strong emotions, the sound design which does an excellent job of making you feel like you’re never alone while creating feelings of paranoia, and the way the game seamlessly overlaps live action footage with in-game cinematics that absolutely took my breath away. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so immersed in a game’s world since playing the early Silent Hill titles.
I’m genuinely shocked and completely floored at how much I ended up loving Alan Wake II. It was absolutely worth sitting through the first game for this, and it’s actually made me consider giving Control another shot, as well as trying my hand at every other game Remedy has put out. While I’ve played other horror games that have frightened and disturbed me to a higher degree, or had tighter game design with more enemy variety, Alan Wake II stands out from other horror titles by wearing its creative heart on its sleeve. Its striking visuals and setpieces, its passionate and honest narrative, and unique gameplay mechanics make it absolutely unforgettable. You can tell that so much love went into the making of this game, and I feel like I’ve got no choice but to reciprocate it.
Thirteen years after the original Alan Wake, a series of ritualistic murders being perpetrated by a mysterious cult has been taking place in the town of Bright Falls, the same rural town the first game takes place in. They attract the attention of the FBI, who sends agent Saga Anderson and her partner Alex Casey to investigate. They end up encountering the supernatural “Dark Presence” from the first game, which has once again been possessing locals and turning them into monsters referred to as “The Taken”. They discover there’s far more going on in Bright Falls than meets the eye, with everything seemingly tying into the written works of Alan Wake, who hasn’t been seen since he disappeared during the events of the original game all of those years ago. Meanwhile, Wake himself is still trapped in the Dark Place, an alternate dimension whose reality can be manipulated and altered via works of art. He’s been caught in what seems to be an endless, nightmarish loop, desperately trying to find a way to escape and return to the real world. You play as both Saga and Alan, who each have their own interconnected stories to play through.
Alan Wake II takes the core gameplay of the first game and puts it into a survival horror blender. It’s actually amazing how well the mechanics of the first game transition through this shift in genres. The game plays very similarly to the modern day Resident Evil remakes, specifically Resident Evil 2. The combat loop from the first game is essentially the same here. The Taken are covered with a shroud of darkness that makes them invincible, so in order to do damage, you need to make them vulnerable by shining a flashlight on them until the darkness that protects them is gone, after which they can be harmed by your weapons. The Taken are a bit more dangerous than they used to be. They require more shots from your weapons to put them down, and you don’t face them in the same amount of large numbers as you did in the previous game (though there are times where this is an exception). Since encounters with Taken aren’t as frequent as before, this makes the combat loop feel a lot less repetitive in comparison to the first game, which constantly threw hordes of Taken at you over and over again, to the point where you just became numb to them. They actually feel like a threat now, as opposed to just being disposable.
Levels are more open now, and far less linear than they were in the first game. There’s a much greater emphasis on exploring the environments you find yourself in, and there are actual puzzles to solve this time, which greatly supplements the core gameplay. Minimum levels of resource management is required now, as opposed to the first game, where you didn’t really have to worry about running out of ammo or supplies unless you were just intentionally wasting them. It’s not especially difficult managing your resources in this game. As long as you’re keeping your eyes open and inspecting everything you can, you can maintain a decent supply of healing items and ammo. Still, certain sections of the game will really leave you down to the wire after completing them, so it's important to always keep an eye out for any opportunity to replenish what you’ve used up.
While Saga and Alan both share the same core controls and combat, they each have unique mechanics, and their stories have their own horror atmosphere. Saga explores various locations within the town of Bright Falls while attempting to connect and solve all of the various mysteries that pop up over the course of her story. At various points, you’ll need to swap over to what Saga refers to as “The Mind Place”, a location within her mind that takes the form of a cabin where she can collect her thoughts as well as the facts she’s learned regarding the mysteries of Bright Falls. You can switch over to the Mind Place at any time with the push of a button, and it loads almost instantly. The game isn’t paused when you do this, so you need to make sure you’re in a safe position whenever you do so. Saga organizes everything that she’s learned on the Case Board, a flow chart where you need to manually place all of the different pieces of evidence for a case and tie them all together in order to solve it and progress the game. It’s rarely difficult figuring out what piece of evidence goes where, and even if you get stuck, there’s no penalty for simply guessing until you’ve pinned the evidence in the correct spot. It’s a great way of keeping track of elements of the plot, but as a mechanic, it’s fairly underwhelming and feels like wasted potential. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a more complicated mechanic at one point that got dumbed down because they were worried about people struggling with it.
Alan spends his story trying to escape the Dark Place, which takes the form of a nightmarish version of New York City (so I guess just regular New York City). Since the Dark Place is an alternate reality, Alan’s section is extremely surreal and trippy, as you explore a series of macabre environments trying to find some way to return to Alan’s home dimension. Alan’s story primarily studies him as a character, in a similar vein to the DLC of the first game. Since the Dark Place can be manipulated through works of art, Alan has a mechanic where goes into the Writer’s Room, an area that works in a similar way to Saga’s Mind Place. Here, he can use story ideas on the Plot Board to shift reality and change the environment of certain areas within the locations he explores. You’ll need to do this at various points in order to solve puzzles and remove roadblocks preventing further exploration. The ways in which the environment changes makes this mechanic almost always a thrill to use, as areas can go from slightly off-putting to hauntingly hellish in the blink of an eye. Between the two characters, Alan’s story and gameplay are by far the best in the game. Not that Saga’s section is bad, far from it actually. It’s just that the supernatural nature of the Dark Place as a setting allows for way more interesting level design and setpieces compared to the more realistic, and thus mundane Bright Falls. Furthermore, Alan is a lot more enticing as a character, especially given how the game explores what haunts him and makes him tick. Granted, he had an entire game and DLC to build himself up as a character, but I also feel like making Saga a bit less enticing than Alan was by design, as the game frequently makes it clear she’s an outsider that’s quite literally been written into Alan’s ongoing story.
I think my only and biggest complaint with the game is that the camera is zoomed in way too close to the player character. I get what they were trying to do by going for a claustrophobic camera view, but Saga and Alan take up way too much of the screen, and there are times where you can die and have no idea what even killed you because you couldn’t see what you died to. The problem with visual clarity in combat carries over from Control, but it’s not nearly as bad, since combat isn’t as frequent or quite as hectic. Also, I think more enemy variety would’ve been nice. Much like the first game, pretty much every single enemy you encounter is some form of the Taken. There are some twists on the Taken, such as in the Dark Place where they can disguise themselves as the shadowy figures that populate the environment, as well as the amalgamation Taken you fight as Saga, but they’re all defeated in the exact same fashion. I think the game would’ve benefited greatly if certain sections had a recurring stalker character like Mr. X or Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil. They wouldn’t necessarily have to follow you the whole game, but I think that having one or two sections with a character like that would’ve added some much needed variety.
It almost goes without saying that this game’s narrative is far better told than the first game’s. A majority of the first Alan Wake’s narrative and worldbuilding was told indirectly through the manuscript page collectables, as opposed to the sequel, which tells almost everything in an upfront and direct fashion. The manuscript pages do return, but not only are they a lot simpler to find, they’re not the source of the bulk of the narrative’s details. They’re usually supplemental and expand on things that the story has already made clear. This game fleshes out the world of Alan Wake extensively. It manages to be a thrilling, gripping mystery that takes the lingering plot threads of the first game and turns them into something that I truly did not expect. The commentary on artists, their struggles, and how their work affects themselves and the world around them was something that I, as a wannabe writer myself, could deeply relate to on a personal level. I loved the use of symbolism even though it’s so in your face that the themes of the narrative are practically shouting at you. The story is just executed so well and told with such clear sincerity and immense passion that it completely and totally won me over.
The presentation is some of the greatest I’ve ever seen in any video game I’ve ever played, and I say that with absolutely no exaggeration. It isn’t just the high graphical fidelity that makes it so good. It’s the use of lighting to invoke strong emotions, the sound design which does an excellent job of making you feel like you’re never alone while creating feelings of paranoia, and the way the game seamlessly overlaps live action footage with in-game cinematics that absolutely took my breath away. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so immersed in a game’s world since playing the early Silent Hill titles.
I’m genuinely shocked and completely floored at how much I ended up loving Alan Wake II. It was absolutely worth sitting through the first game for this, and it’s actually made me consider giving Control another shot, as well as trying my hand at every other game Remedy has put out. While I’ve played other horror games that have frightened and disturbed me to a higher degree, or had tighter game design with more enemy variety, Alan Wake II stands out from other horror titles by wearing its creative heart on its sleeve. Its striking visuals and setpieces, its passionate and honest narrative, and unique gameplay mechanics make it absolutely unforgettable. You can tell that so much love went into the making of this game, and I feel like I’ve got no choice but to reciprocate it.
3 Comments
@Victormdesa Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm going to screenshot your comment and save your advice for the future when I give Control another go, it sounds like that'll improve my experience by a lot. Not sure if you've read my Control review, but I was enjoying it aside from the combat frustrations. Main reason why I played it was because of its Alan Wake II connections. I'll definitely give it another go some time!
@Phantasm You're very welcome! I did read your Control review and that's why I thought to give some hints regarding the combat (Seriously, I can't overstate enough how the fully upgraded "Launch" ability makes almost every combat encounter a walk in the park).
When I first played Control, I remember also having a tough time with the combat at the beginning and becoming frustrated with it. To me, the moment it all clicked was when I realized I had to stop trying to play the game as a cover-shooter (which years playing triple A TPS games had made me expect was the norm for all of them) and approach it as a run-and-gun, constantly moving and shooting and alternating between the powers and the Service Weapon. That was a huge Eureka moment for me and, from that point on, I "got" the flow of the combat and started really enjoying it!
That being said, I feel like the early game, when you haven't unlocked many abilities and forms for the Service Weapon yet, is probably the toughest part to get through, even when playing in the way I described earlier. Anyway, I hope you get to enjoy the game more when you get back to it! If there're any other hints I could help with, feel free to ask :)
When I first played Control, I remember also having a tough time with the combat at the beginning and becoming frustrated with it. To me, the moment it all clicked was when I realized I had to stop trying to play the game as a cover-shooter (which years playing triple A TPS games had made me expect was the norm for all of them) and approach it as a run-and-gun, constantly moving and shooting and alternating between the powers and the Service Weapon. That was a huge Eureka moment for me and, from that point on, I "got" the flow of the combat and started really enjoying it!
That being said, I feel like the early game, when you haven't unlocked many abilities and forms for the Service Weapon yet, is probably the toughest part to get through, even when playing in the way I described earlier. Anyway, I hope you get to enjoy the game more when you get back to it! If there're any other hints I could help with, feel free to ask :)
Victormdesa
10 days ago