Ignoring all the plot holes the narrative is more interesting than I remembered. Ghosts of the past and all that. Still has all the same problems as the last game, only compounded. Puzzles are much more logic based affairs involving math or simple arithmetic. I liked the weird tricky puzzles of the first game. Nothing here is trying to catch you out, but it's all the worse for it.
The aesthetic, music, and tone of the game is certainly more notable though. Again not much logic to the twist, but if we take it as a world propped up by this thin hope then it works. Now that I think about it that castle certainly supports that theme.
Like the first, it's just as pleasant, but still missing some key element I can't quite place. Perhaps the third will provide more insight.

To everyone who has recommended this as the best VN I need to ask - do you read books?

Aggressively gauche piece with the malformed bones of a decent narrative. Insists on making incest and pedophilia justifiable in the narrative for some reason. Narrative beats indulge in a deluge of pointless details and tired anime clichés. Also feels the need to explain literally everything to the reader. It tried explaining to me misdirection and I nearly quit playing the game. That was a mistake.

The creator wrote it earnestly enough, there's no malice here. A story about an intersex person in a cursed house, the subtext should be worn on its sleeve. Instead we get a series of imprudent narratives which only serve to propel a tired tale of revenge and redemption.

I'll sum it up with an event from the game

"The world around me went brown"
And they proceeded to dunk her head in shit

How I felt the entire time.

I tried it purely based on the aesthetic they were going for and I made it about 2 hours before I dropped it. I have no problem fast travelling everywhere if they at least did it seamlessly, but it's just loading screens and annoying pull outs to a third person perspective when taking off, landing, or just jumping to a new system. That and the immediate reliance on space magic to propel the narrative really turned me off. I really just want an LoGH game with this kind of NASA aesthetic. Something politics and decision driven with very little combat and an emphasis on taking advantage of space as a setting. This likes the aesthetic of space, but hates the intricacies of its traversal.

I've had this forever, bought it on release I think. Just could never get into it due to the difficulty, but I decided to give it a genuine attempt today. It's pretty good!

If played on the higher difficulties, it's a game that is more about mitigating damage than it is about thriving. Things are going to go wrong, no way around it, figure it out. I just wish there was a bit more meat on it then. It feels like a smaller, tighter Frostpunk, but without the moral implications. A bit more of a narrative, a connection to your crew, and these decisions might feel more impactful. As is, when my characters cannibalize someone, it's just a question of how much their stress meter will go up. Still a simple fun way to kill a few hours, pick it up for $5 bucks or less.

The more I think about this game the more I regret not having played Max Payne - that’s not necessarily a complement. From my understanding in 2012 Max Payne was basically Remedy’s whole identity. Reading from this game, it’s a fact they must have resented. Being unable to escape their past successes, literally trapped by a fiction. The thesis of this game presents that they needed to balance the strengths of their Max Payne past while moving into new territory. It’s an interesting conflict, but not one I think is handled the most deftly here.

While I haven’t played it, the slow motion shooting of Max Payne has been acclaimed for decades. An appropriate fit for a hard boiled neo-noir. Alan Wake’s main mechanic is using light to dispel enemies' shields to make them vulnerable to gun fire. While perhaps thematically appropriate, gameplay wise it just communicates that they wanted to use flashy gun play because that’s what they know. That and some awful platforming leaves this game coming off as more confused than intentioned.

Don’t get me wrong this somewhat matches the theme. Them messily trying to balance their past and present, but the result ends up being more frustrating than insightful. The shame is that the game gets this a bit right with Alan having the stamina of an eighty-seven year old man or, very appropriately, an unathletic writer. He runs out of breath in about five seconds flat and while it’s frustrating, it’s a beautiful subversion that annoys me in just the right way.

Now let me be clear, I enjoyed this game immensely. I played it one episode at a time over the course of about two weeks and it felt like cozily throwing on an episode of Twin Peaks. I have a particular fondness for mountain towns, and while I don’t think they capture it as well as Twin Peaks, America through the lens of Fins was bound to be fun. I mean so many games have trouble tying their setting into the subtext, but Bright Falls is beautifully realized here. A somewhat removed place where shadows of industry loom heavy beneath the enclosing mountains just as Alan is being shadowed by promotional cutouts, posters, and rabid fans of his ended book series. It’s whip smart stuff. Alan Wake’s greatest flaw then is that it’s a game, not a show.

The strength of many games tends to be their ability to place you in a world as an active participant. This is best done through gameplay, but many games are content to use flashy graphics to overwhelm you into immersion, Alan Wake is unfortunately no exception. While I had a lovely time, I can’t find a way to intelligently resolve Remedy’s own conflict about being caught between the worlds of film/TV and computer games. Though rest assured, I am going to play ALL of their remaining games in the coming weeks.

Neon, filth, and 2000s ass slow-mo. This one gets by entirely on charm and it has it in spades. The actual narrative is nothing to write home about. The devs knew this, so they had a ball coming up with action setpieces to hang off a basic revenge story. It's not well balanced and the level design isn't going nuts, but it has the cool factor and I think that's all it needed. That being said, it will be served greatly by a remake. Tighten up the story, add some nuance, refine the gameplay, and they could really have something here. Just keep James McCaffrey; dude carries this game's narrative.

A much more polished product than the first and it's all the worse for it. Feels like it exists out of obligation; the studio needing to leverage the success of the first game to keep footing. I'm glad I went back and played these, really illuminates the subtext of Alan Wake with this already feeling like the devs were done with this property. Still it felt good enough to play and 𝙞𝙩 𝙞𝙨 polished, so if anything it played like a popcorn movie. I'll never think about it again in earnest, but if it did some good for the devs in the real world then why not.

Also, rest in peace James McCaffrey, these games could get by on your performance alone.