After playing through them all, I can confidently say Alan Wake II feels like the Remedy Game of All Time™. I could feel - and often times literally see - something from every single game they've made and it was sick. I was amazed at how every system mechanic felt so well thought out, to the point where the game was kinda hard to put down. I just kept wanting to see how they would expand upon them.

Although I enjoyed the combat from AWI, the slower but heavier of AWII felt super good. Combine that with the darker environments and story overall and this was actually a great horror experience. I was jump-scared on multiple occasions which is something I could never imagine from the first game.

However, my favorite part of the game BY FAR was filling out Saga's case boards. There's something so simple and clean about having a question, finding out the answer, and then hitting that case board with new evidence. Very fulfilling stuff.

Will definitely replay at some point to 100% but this game was destroying my PC so I'm having to deal with the psychological damage of that.

Thought this game was going to be a simpler but cleaner predecessor to Neon White but I ended up just hating the game and figuring that the genre just isn't for me. It's hard to hate on a game this indie/old but such a unique hatred was born of just me playing through Episode 5 and I need to make it known. Every god damn minute of this game is filled to the brim with the flattest visuals I've ever seen and one of like 5 songs that are incapable of giving me any positive emotion. In one ear out the other, my mind keeps wanting to call it mobile game music. I keep seeing people say "Oh the game is cute! It's got hearts and rainbows and candy and giant m16 statues!" and I can't help but overwhelmingly disagree with them! Did they forget about the evil apple like demon that will end your life if you let it touch the floor? This game is only cute to people who have Instagram pages for their pets. This game is cute to people who generate puppy pictures on Bing. This game is only cute to people who have never played Katamari, THAT GAME IS CUTE. This game is as cute as a baby hippo, in that it looks sweet at first but give it time and it'll crush your windpipe. And people talk about movement, WHAT MOVEMENT? The gross floaty and unresponsive Unity movement? The bounce pads? The speedrun routes that most players won't know exist on the first playthrough? I'm so confused! I forced myself to finish this and I think in the end this game just somehow made me hate Neon White even more. I had Lonely planet 2 and Remix on my wishlist and they instantly got removed once I finished the game. I think I'm just not a fan of this genre!