Not as insane as everybody says, there’s two segments that are clearly the star of the show when it comes to big set-pieces and the rest is… forgettable, really, it also feels extremely constrained by the limitations of an ancient hardware, the developer unable to reach the visual splendor they surely imagined. As a shooter merely one year before Halo, I’m sad to admit that this does not hold up, and as an art-piece, while not without its charm, is as juvenile as it gets, full of half-assed ideas and not much more, like they watched the end of evangelion and wanted to make something like that in game form but didn’t have the time nor the money so this is the result.

One of my teachers in secondary school was adamant that us pupils never use the word 'boring' to describe something. It was the laziest descriptor to fall back on in his opinion, and he urged us to avoid it completely when it came to any form of creative writing. Well I'm sorry Mr. Hicks, but there's one word that perfectly sums up Alan Wake 2, and that word is boring. Alan Wake 2 is boring. As fuck.

There was a time when I considered Remedy as one of my favourite developers. They could do no wrong. But after the one-two gut punch of Control and Alan Wake 2, I just can't champion them anymore. Alan Wake 2 is a colossal disappointment, down there with the likes of MGS2 and Burnout Paradise, and I don't even know where to begin with my list of complaints.

Well, let's start with the combat. The combat in Alan Wake 2 is fundamentally flawed. There's actually surprisingly little of it compared to the first game, and it's easy to see why. Combat encounters usually go one of two ways - without a hitch or disastrously. Alan and Saga are squishy to the extreme, so it's game over after three hits or so. This wouldn't be an issue if guns didn't take an age to reload, and it's further exacerbated by a fiddly healing system that involves selecting the healing item you want to use from your inventory and then having to wait for your character to finish their healing animation. Enemies don't dawdle, so it's rare to actually be able to top your health mid-fight. As such, I had a huge stock of first aid kits in both my inventory and shoebox (the game's name for an item box) because I just wasn't using them that much. Towards the end of the game as Saga, all available item spaces were filled to the brim. I had no room to put anything so I often had to resort to discarding items. Combat is an unbalanced mess, and in the last few hours I was just running past the shadowy mobs whenever I could for the sake of my own sanity.

And then there's the Mind Palace, the mental safe space where Saga stores all her information relevant to the case. This is meant to serve as the area where the player gets their sleuth on, but anything resembling critical thinking and puzzle solving just isn't there. You either play mix and match with the Case Board, taking items of evidence and guessing the correct category to attach them to, or you watch cutscenes in Profiling, as Saga has internal conversations with other characters and just magically hits upon all the right answers (oh, it turns out she's psychic btw). So you play as a detective, but there's no detective work. The player isn't required to do any actual deduction; just stare at walls of evidence for inordinate amounts of time. It is so mundane, and it completely ruins the pacing of a game that's already very slow anyway. Alan Wake 2 isn't a short game, and boy does it fucking drag because of the Mind Palace.

Prior to release, much was made of Remedy insisting that their sequel would be a full-blown shift to survival horror territory. "Great" I thought. I couldn't have been happier to hear it. But curiously, Alan Wake 2 isn't scary. At all. The topic of what makes a game scary or not is one that fascinates me, and I often ruminate over it on a game-by-game basis. Well I'm still trying to figure out why Alan Wake 2 was so ineffectual in this regard. Was it the lack of enemy variety? The schlocky tone and meta-narrative flying in the face of the serious attempts at horror? The most obnoxious usage of jump scares I've ever encountered in any form of media ever? Probably all three, but mostly the latter! The jump scares are relentless, and they don't strike fear in the heart of this player, but rather annoyance and an eye roll or two. Remedy would do well to analyse games like Silent Hill 1/2/3, Project Zero 1/2, P.T. and Manhunt if they have any future plans to explore the horror genre further, because it's clear they don't have a fucking clue how to generate any sense of fear or dread in their games.

And then there's the story. Oh don't get me started on the story. It's official - Sam Lake has disappeared up his own rectum and his head has gotten so big that he'll never be able to get it out. The man fancies himself as the European Hideo Kojima (although he'll never be that bad... I hope). I've loved Lake's writing in the past - particularly the noir masterpiece that is Max Payne 2 - but here he's surrendered himself to all his worst habits. Excessive monologues, hammy dialogue frequently delivered in unnatural ways, constant meta references and in-jokes, and just a total lack of focus in general. I think the main problem is that, because Epic was footing the bill and Remedy had that Fortnite money to play around with, Sam Lake was given carte blanche, and he took to his unlimited creative power like a Finn to the sauna. There's no normalcy to be found here. Just weird piled upon weird. Everyone talks in riddles, or speaks in cryptic patterns. Nobody gives a straight answer. It was a problem I had in the past with Control, but instead of tempering those tendencies, Sam Lake has decided to emphasis them further.

Should I go on? Saga Anderson is a stoic, dull-as-ditch water co-protagonist who veers dangerously close to the Mary Sue template. In fact, I think her only real character flaw is that she's too dedicated to her job and neglects her family sometimes. There's a section towards the end where she's trapped in her Mind Palace (yay!) because she's plagued by self-doubt and all the bad choices she's made in the past, and in order to escape she has to convince herself via the Case Board that she hasn't done anything wrong at all and shouldn't listen to the malignant force that's trying to warp her mind. It turns out she's pretty flawless after all! Fucking shoot me. After Control and this, I'm convinced that Sam Lake doesn't actually know how to write an engaging female lead.

Oh, and the game doesn't even end conclusively. It's rushed. There's sequel bait. Alan still hasn't succeeded in his main goal that began near the beginning of the first game. The end credits are scrolling and I wonder why I even bothered in the first place. Remedy's clearly more interested in creating its own MCU than actually putting a full stop on Alan's story. Fucking shoot me.

What truly hurts is that I appear to be in the minority with all of this. Alan Wake 2 is universally adored, or something close to that status. A hit with the gaming press, a fixture at award ceremonies, and even on Backloggd itself, the game has an alarmingly high average rating of 4.5. (Nearly) everything was pointing at me loving it. I enjoyed the first game, third-person survival horror is my absolute comfort zone, I like the works of David Lynch, I embrace the abstract in general... I could go on. I genuinely wish I could sing its praises just as much as everyone else. But I have to be true to myself and anyone reading this - the game was a chore to get through from beginning to end.

Deerfest? More like Borefest. Sorry Mr. Hicks.

Gets a majority of its interesting ideas from Twin Peaks: The Return and I’d much rather watch that than play this. I can’t stand that both Alan and Saga comment out loud EVERY single time they interact with something, it’s genuinely one of the most immersion breaking things I’ve come across in a game and completely detracts from the cinematic experience the game is attempting to present. Speaking of immersion breaking.. why does Saga go around petting mounted deer heads while apologizing to them profusely? Is she an alien?

Hoping to come back to this eventually with an open mind as people seem to really like it but outside of the incredible visuals the experience has been pretty underwhelming for me so far.

I may well one day write thousands of words resolving how this game is fundamentally opposed to every single value I hold dear in terms of writing and storytelling. The number of better works I've seen called boring or pretentious by people who would praise this game is nearly staggering enough to give me depression. It is what I feel is some of the worst writing I've ever seen praised in my entire life, and I would have truly felt I was trapped in a hell of my own making with how bad I think this is if it weren't for living with two people who thankfully agree with everything I see wrong in it. Beyond that, it may literally be the least fun I've ever had finishing a AAA video game (because normally I quit games I don't like, but I had to see this one through for reasons deeply personal to me)...but for now I'll just say this...

To me, this is as bad as a David Cage game, but if one took all of the deeply offensive conceptions of human beings, veiled hatred of women, and sloppy plot beats and traded them for a script that's 90% just the most bland exposition imaginable about the most boring story you've ever heard. It is utterly sterile, sanitized of any sincerely dangerous, risky, or unappealing emotion or human quality, saying literally nothing about human existence that isn't fit to tell a 10-year-old, all while being dressed up in enough Twin Peaks cosplay to trick someone into thinking it was actually remotely dark, horrifying, or interesting on its own merits. It is the epitome of a work demanding the audience finds it interesting while saying nothing interesting at all, and it's amazing to me how well that apparently works because it has good graphics and points a sniper scope directly at the specific weak spot in the human mind that says "this is really goofy and strange and weird, just don't think about it."

An award for "Best Narrative" is a crime against writing, and an award for "Game of the Year" is a crime against game design. Someone must get Alex Casey to look into this. I fear everyone who praises the writing or gameplay must have joined the cult that thinks Alan Wake is a good writer.

I think I hated Animal Well. I think I loved it, but I also kinda hated it.

Let me start right off the bat by saying I'm typically not a fan of games that contain zero hand holding and refuse to explain anything. I'm a filthy casual; I like being told what to do and having a sense of direction, just so long as the game doesn't do it too much. So by that rationale, someone like me ought to reject Animal Well outright. Right off the bat it's as esoteric as can be. There's no context given to the player, no story, no lore... nothing. And after a short linear introductory area, it opens up in all directions, leading to an immense feeling of being overwhelmed. I go one way, eventually come up against a puzzle that I'm either too stupid to solve or lack the required tool to do so, and so I go somewhere else. This is the kind of game design that keeps me up at night.

But you know, when all is said and done, Animal Well's overall design is pretty damn impeccable. The game is esoteric, but it isn't unfair, and the difficulty of the puzzles is well balanced for the most part. All my sessions involved some level of frustration sure, but I was never stuck for too long, and to counter that, there were also lots of eureka moments that left me feeling pretty pleased with myself. I had little patience for something like The Witness, which felt like an endless bombardment of puzzles with zero downtime in between, but something about Animal Well kept me pressing on. While it's mostly cited as a 'Metroidvania', Animal Well to me also has the DNA of the cinematic platforming genre, which I appreciate. Games like Another World and Flashback, which switched things up on a frequent basis with their mixture of puzzle solving and trial-and-error platforming, added some necessary diversity to proceedings. And this is what Animal Well has in spades. When you enter a room you haven't visited before, that room will often present it's own unique challenge to the player. It could be a puzzle, it could be an exercise in pure dexterity, or it could be a rare boss encounter. The point is that you never know what's around the next corner, and that design ethos keeps things fresh and exciting. It also doesn't hurt that the game is gorgeous to look at. The eerie subterranean world of Animal Well is rife washed out splashes of colour, warm hues and little details placed everywhere. For anyone who appreciates some choice pixel art, this game is a veritable feast for the eyes.

Full disclosure - I reached the end credits with 29 eggs. Part of me wants to do the post-game stuff, because I know there's a lot more to discover, but at the same time, I'm eager to move on and check off something else that's on my backlog. I've read some people say that Animal Well doesn't truly begin until you've reached the end credits, so I don't know whether I've officially 'completed' it or not, but I feel content with what I've played. I also don't want to risk hating the game completely because I spent half an hour trying to use both a frisbee and a bubble wand in order to reach a collectable... again. Best to quit while I'm ahead.