"Alan Wake 2 is a game that shows what videogames are capable of"

Well, I imagine that a large number of people, when reading this highlighted phrase, will imagine a game that demonstrates cutting-edge technology, photo-realistic visuals, or even surprising performance. But definitely not the case where I wanted to refer to that kind of thing.

Alan Wake 2 tries to push the limits of what is possible to present and (only) achieve through a game. Using different multimedia formats to convey a plot, whether through meta commentary, live action cinematic cutscenes, different forms of interaction in the environment and fourth wall breaks, may not be a new thing. But it is certainly the game that comes closest to what was idealized by Sam Lake throughout his career, by playing with these elements in a coherent way, and delivering an experience that is unlike ANY other game I have seen playing videogames for more than 20 years.

And speaking of which, I believe that the most important thing in a game is the experience it gives you, and without a doubt, Alan Wake 2 is a game that cannot be explained. I could say that it is one of the best survival horror titles of recent decades, going head to head with classics like Silent Hill 2 or the original Resident Evil, or I could even say that it has one of the best and most ingenious plots and ways of tell a story that you can find in any medium. But it doesn't make sense, nothing I can say could do him justice.

Alan Wake 2 is a game that needs to be experienced above all else, and I hope everyone can give it a chance someday.

You are on your own.

Good lu- ...

Thrown away into the red sea in a bunch of badly together scraps that could barely be called a submarine, it’s clear from the very get go that Iron Lung doesn't hold its punches off. The mere promise of a barren universe whose life and planets have disappeared out of thin air, with only the ships and lifeless moons remaining and their last decaying bastion, it's already pretty shit-pants inducing, especially for those who already certain fear of the limitless beyond, but that's not even where the focus of the game lies, and the messed-up part if that awaits you is probably more terrifying than that premise.

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The Iron Lung only provides you protection against drowning in the blood sea and whatever lurks around this horrific place, and you could say that even that is debatable. You don't even get the gift of sight here, you fo have a camera, which gives you a glimpse of the outside world and it's what you'll need to get the photos of what you've been ordered to investigate, but aside from that, the bulk of the experience takes place within the four small rusty walls of the wretched ship, being forced to navigate using only a map and the coordinates on your ship, and thank god the z-axis doesn't facture in this equation. Iron Lung not only takes advantage of the fear of the unknow, it embodies it, the gameplay itself its extremely simple, only really made interesting by the fact you really can't see shit, but that small little detail is basically what the entire game takes pride of. With almost nothing to see, the sounds that creep through the bowels of the red sea are what make every neuron of the brain go into read alarm mode: from sounds like the ship catching fire (yes, even down here you aren't even safe from that), to the-

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-... yeah that, but most of all... the echoing grunts and sounds of the beast that swim outside of you, always out of sight, curious yet afar, being only able to get glimpses of them that are enough to make you shiver, and sometimes you do get more clear view of whatever you are investigation or stalking you... but even in those cases it's confusing, alien, bizarre. It's the primal discomfort or not knowing where you are, what you are even facing, and times things are a bit clearer, it's only to make you feel even more hopeless.

It's a magnificent example of simple yet effective design, even with its caveats. There is a ton of down-time, and while at first its effective and there are some key moments in which the game really knows what to do to not let you put your guard down, for such a relatively short experience, having to traverse huge chunks of seafloor with nothing happening outside of the same sounds you've heard before is a tad disappointing. This same design fault is what makes subsequent playthroughs a tad tedious; Iron Lung invites you to discover it, to explore its secrets, and for a game that pretends you to do that and asks you to at least play it again to discover every major thing it has offer, it certainly isn't scared to make that process take a long while and to sacrifice that feeling of paranoia and fear that made it so special. But it is that first playthrough, the key interaction with the game, what makes it so utterly genius, so horryfiying, and everything outside of this metal prison complements this idea.

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You are not the first to come down here, the real name of this ship reveals as much, and it only takes reading the note of the last pilot, reading the terminal entries and discovering the dark secret hidden in the farthest ends of the rift to get a good picture of what's really going on here; the universe is torn apart, even more than what the current situation would have already broken it. The very few survivors, barely more than a thousand and with their provisions dwindling, are divided, broken by meaningless wars of espionage and petty battles, making prisoners go die in the depths of the unknown while desperately trying to find ways to turn into the superior colony; even at the brink of the cease of existence, humanity finds ways to kill each other.

By digging a bit more, what you get is only more desperation; there's nothing to be had, nothing to be claimed, and you are lucky enough to maybe get a chance at freedom, or at least the one you could have in these conditions. It’s bloody genius hidden story-telling, because if at first you already though all of this seemed bad, oh let me tell ya, it gets much worse! And yet, you keep going, maybe its spite, at a certain point it's what I felt, spite of just figuring out what was going on down here and achieve freedom, and that's underlying feeling of desire, of hoping of something better while everything around seems to crumble down, what sealed the deal for me, it feel too personal of a game to also achieve what it accomplishes. There's nothing to grab onto...

But somewhere in the void, there must be hope...

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