this is some hella charming shit, but I can’t help but feel like it was playtested by only 1 person. The platforming mechanics just aren’t clicking for me, some moves straight up don’t register when and how you expect them to. levels are structured for speedrunning, but 50% of the time the big segments don’t hit correctly and/or u run into walls because of a lack of direction.

Other than that, a charming technical achievement made by a small indie team on their own fucking game engine, word.

Edit: I’m 8 worlds into the game now and nah this shit is infuriating, too many bugs and inconsistencies with the platforming. Some bosses are also just completely unfair (the pool table and magnet ones). Putting this down until they fix it, Christ.

-movement feels weird
-community servers are all dead and completely broken because they thought shadow dropping this was a good idea
-stuttering issues
-missing vital settings like fps limiter and fps counter
-muting people doesn't work

shoulda kept csgo on a seperate branch and made this optional, jesus christ.

just like alan wake is a horrible author who writes insanely long books with super deep lore, here's my stupidly long review of what might be the best game remedy has ever made. (no spoilers)

if we go back all the way to 2010, alan wake 1 comes out and honestly that shit got shoved under the rug. not a lot of people knew about it, and remedy was trying to make ends meet after the rise and literal fall (sell-off) of max payne to rockstar (max payne 3 was fucking amazing though don't get me wrong).

regardless, remedy needed a new guy, they needed a new dude to be their cover-boy. in walks alan wake.

alan wake is an author (and probably redditor) with some pretty obvious mental issues. the first game (if i remember correctly, im too lazy to google) involves him finding his wife who disappeared in a strange town where strange things are happening based on the plot of his recent novel, which he doesn't remember writing. to sum things up and put the lime in the coconut, it wasn't too bad. i mean, it wasn't a stellar title from remedy as they've made absolute bangers like max payne 1 and 2 (no 3 does not count, rockstar did that, shame on you) but nonetheless it was definitely an interesting new tale that delved into a lot more mystery and horror than a lot of other remedy games (albeit the baby scenes in max payne 1 are fucked up so give those a huff if ur tryna get depressed). all-in-all the game ended on a kind of "the fuck?" note. not much was explained, for good or for worse.

alan kinda got shoved under the rug for a fat while (we don't talk about american nightmare) and remedy went on to make bigger shit with the help (MONEYY) from a little friend called EPIC GAMES. with some of that "fuck you" money in hand, they went on to make quantum break and, you guessed it, control, and boy oh boy, only 1 of those were good.

control got hella praise from critics, bunch of awards, the whole lot. the game was and still is impressive. the graphics are sexy, the plot and themes are neat as hell, remedy was clearly on to something.

so they cooked for a fat bit from 2019-2021 and what do ya know, alan wake: remastered is coming out. no way, they bought it back from microsoft (apparently) what!?! why would they do that-

ALAN WAKE 2

alan wake 2 is a god damn video game. what it looks like from the first few trailers is a heroin-filled john wick walking the streets of new york with a flashlight and a bunch of other third-person resident evil/silent hill inspired stuff. whatever, right? we've seen this before already-

WRONG.

turns out it's actually a survival horror detective mystery meta plot that will have you thinking: yep, twin peaks. also it just has whatever sam lake thought would be cool (including max payne, we'll get to that).

what you get is a game that literally ties in the universe of control, quantum break, and alan wake, all into one. and just for the god damn hell of it, sam lake goes and brings back max payne's original voice actor and face model (sam lake himself), renames him to "alex casey" (get it, cause he's a detective who solves cases???? also cause rockstar owns max payne now???) and shoves him in the game cause why the fuck not.

as soon as this game opens, you are hit with nothing but questions and absolutely no damn answers. it's just you and the game, and you're off to the races. you start as a fat naked man muttering random shit, walking through a creepy forest (i won't say anymore for spoilers), then you get one of the sickest title cards in any video game

you play from two perspectives, saga anderson, and alan wake himself. saga anderson, an fbi agent tasked to solve a murder case in the town of caldron lake with her partner alex casey (max payne), and alan wake, the mentally-insane author who's been stuck in the alternate realm known as the "dark place" for over 13 years, basically continuing off directly from where alan wake 1 ended back in 2010. navigating these 2 character's stories (in any order you want, im serious), you slowly uncover the insanely confusing but gripping plot and answer all those questions you had in the first place. BUT, unlike alan wake 1 where you'll only be saying "huh", this game gives you access to a place called the "mind place", a separate room you can hop into at anytime during gameplay with the click of a button, and put together evidence you've uncovered on a literal bulletin board. this mind place will be your best friend, and will help explain a shit ton of story and keep you on track with the plot, as it gloriously simplifies a lot of the confusing subtext that the plot has sometimes.

from a haunted forest filled with murder rituals, a meta talk show straight outta joker (ur laughin???), the streets and subways of new york filled with wandering deadly shadow beings, to a god damn amusement park named "coffee world", this game's got it all baby.

im only 6 hours into this game, everything i've explained so far has only happened in the span of that time, and this game has 20 hours of playtime if you ONLY focus on the main objective, and keep in mind, THERE'S TWO FUCKING CHARACTERS WITH TWO SEPERATE FUCKING ARCS.

buy this god damn game already. masterpiece remedy, masterpiece.


My notes after beating the game (15.5 hours)

It is Halloween night and I have accomplished my goal of beating this beast on this very night with Jack shit to do cause I’m still sick so I can’t do much whatever.

This game was a fantastic fucked-up rollercoaster from start to finish, there were definitely some parts that had me SCRATCHing my head (ending included) but I knew that going in, cause this is Alan wake, and if we’ve learned anything from past remedy titles like control and the first Alan wake, getting an ending that makes sense isn’t in the cards. So a long ass YouTube explainer will do it for me later tonight.

Overall, despite its confusing ending and overall very confusing 3rd act, I’m still blown away by this shit. It’s right in my fuckin jellies and it’s just a fever trip that SPIRALS from start to finish. A must play if you’re new to Alan wake, and a must play if you’re a veteran Alan waker.

All my wakers rise up. This game is rad.
SCRATCH that, it’s phenomenal.

4.5/5

I clocked more than 5000 hours in the old THPS games so this was calling me, however the roguelite combat mixed with Tony Hawk skateboarding doesn’t really jell with each other here. Also, holy HELL this is VERY early access, with quite misleading game trailers showcasing a more complete-looking game. It left me pissed when I bought it and saw what we actually got:

The game requires you to heavily focus on dodging enemies (with some smaller enemies who don't give much indication that they're attacking) while still maintaining a clean combo and nailing some tricks for attack boosts, but you end up rubbing up against them/taking damage as you can’t really stop moving in a certain direction quickly besides dashing, which is on a cooldown. The grinding snake enemy specifically is a pain here, you can't even jump on the thing to grind it without injuring yourself 90% of the time due to the hitbox for it's spikes on the sides. The first boss is almost unbeatable due to randomly hopping off the back of the enemy while grinding and taking damage from the goo beneath it, it’s a mess.

And even with combat being so punishing, there are BARELY any health pickups, with a max health stat boost you can pick at the end of levels that doesn't even heal you one bit.

The skateboarding though? It's almost peak, it feels almost identical to THPS and if you've played those games, you're right at home, but the problem I find is I find myself skating around and busting out fat combos more than I am actually playing the game as intended, which I think is a problem. Also, some places that should be grindable just aren’t, and keeping your combo when coming down a half-pipe is super difficult. AFAIK there’s a revert in the game, but it’s hard to pull off easily.

The gameplay feels very split. On the one hand you're battling enemies, but then you spend long stretches skating around the map to collect all the letters, hit all the camera crows, get high scores and do side-challenges that it ends up feeling so disconnected. After spending less than maybe 1 minute on actually engaging in combat and rogue-lite goodies, you're just playing a tony hawk game, wandering around an empty map for secrets.

I understand it's in early access, but this feels VERY early access. We have full cutscenes replaced with text boxes for the devs as placeholders, random dialogue boxes appearing on screen for no reason, full maps missing textures and assets, clipping out of bounds constantly, and some of the side minigames not even working when initiating them, effectively soft locking my run.

I'm still giving this a thumbs up because the devs have something here, and I think with time they'll iron things out and this could turn into something awesome. I won't be refunding it, my moneys in and I'm invested in this, but I’m still pissed about the rather misleading gameplay trailers that we got before release. It doesn’t even compare to the mess we bought with our wallets.