Masterpiece. GOTY.
In a year of a lot of possible gotys, Alan Wake rise above all.
The story is fucking fantastic, the gameplay is solid, the graphics are the best of the generation and the elements o survival horror are great.
Almost everything about this game is A+. Improves in everything from the first game.
Doesn't have the amount of enemies that the first game had. Its just enough enemies to scary you off.
The only critic that I have is about the ''cheap jump scare'' that the game have, especially with Saga. But is a minor issue.

Thanks, Remedy.

Alan Wake II is a game that only Remedy could make. It is more than just a sequel to Alan Wake, and more than just a continuation of the interconnected universe brought together with the advent of Control. The Remedyverse finally is brought together in an amalgam of Alan Wake, Control, Quantum Break?!, and Alex Casey, AKA Max Payne.

While not having direct links to the latter two series, there is still a fair share of blink and you miss it references and nods. When the Mr. Door DLC releases then we'll get our Quantum Break sequel we never asked for.

Anywho....

Alan Wake II feels like a game made expressly for...

...Well for me.

It combines the storytelling Remedy is famous for and finally sticks it in a world that doesn't bombard you with cannon fodder enemies to mow down. The amount of Taken killed by both Saga and Alan in this game feels a lot more grounded than Alan Wake 1's kill count. I swear Alan killed the entire population of Bright Falls in the last game alone!

So, I'd argue, for the first time Remedy has finally told a story and given it a gameplay experience to match it. Control, however great it was, suffers from MAJOR ludonarrative dissonance. Jesse walks into a random building and mows down a bunch of red, extra-dimensional aliens? I love these game but they've always lacked in the gameplay side for me.

Back to the game at hand. Alan Wake II speaks to all my creative eccentricities. By the time I beat the first Saga chapter, I had this insatiable itch to go and make a short film. This game is so good it inspires me to make my own stories in similar veins. I picked up Control when it came out and never got around to actually finishing it until earlier this year when I picked up Alan Wake 1 for the second time and actually beat it. I did all my homework for this game series and I was blessed with everything I could ever ask for.

Is this game a masterpiece?
I'd have to wait until the whole story is out. The way this ends leaves a lot of things open. Remedy usually never misses with their DLC output though.

In a year full of incredible games, this might just be my personal favorite. Baldur's Gate III might be the actual best game to have released in my lifetime, but Alan Wake II just speaks to me on a level that honestly no other game has. This narrative based, survival-horror video game took me 23 hours to complete. That's almost ten more hours it took for me to complete Spider-Man 2. A lot of games I just feel like beelining in order to get an experience but Alan Wake 2 slowed me down. There wasn't a second, a corner, or a pixel of this game I did not want to fully experience and explore. I had the three free roam small open world maps downloaded into my brain by the end. I'm like 6 trophies away from the Platinum and I almost don't want to complete them just so I have an excuse to come back later.

My experience with the Remedy games has really made me change the way I thought about Alan Wake 1 and Control. I couldn't even finish those games the first time I picked them up. Now I wish I could go back and experience all of this from the start again.

Alan Wake II is a game that I know will only get better with time. Once Remedy makes the next Control, or Quantum Break due to all the Warlin Door/Martin Hatch references in this game, I know that this experience will only become more beloved.

I cannot praise this game enough. I will literally explode if Baldur's Gate III does not win game of the year, but I'd be lying if I said that Alan Wake II was not my favorite game of the year.

Objective choice: Baldur's Gate III
Subjective Choice: Alan Wake II
(I spent literally like 45 hours this year playing through the Remedyverse and watching lore videos in prep for this game. It was worth the time spent and like I said, I wish I could do it all over again.)

So Sam lake comes in as himself in Alan wake 2 as the actor for Alex Casey in the films based on books of Alex Casey that Alan wake wrote while Alex Casey is essentially max Payne and Alex Casey is also a real detective who is also acted and voiced by the people who act and voice the fictional Alex Casey based on Alan wakes books and this is all written by Sam lake So there's multiple max Paynes and multiple Alex Casey's and multiple Sam lakes and multiple James McCaffrey's and Alex Casey is a fictional detective who is Sam and James but Alex has a book series written about a detective of the same name who isn't actually Alex Casey just a detective written by Alan wake but the fictional Alex Casey movie features Sam lake and James mcaffery as that fictional Alex Casey who's based off Alan wakes book who's character shares the name to a real but fictional guy who's acted and voiced by the same people who act and voice the fictional fictional movie adaption of a guy who shares his name but the actor and voice actor of him there is a fictional version of those respective actors

a medium defining epic, as paradigm shattering as the first non silent film

this isn't a "video game" as we've known them anymore, this is something else, and not something any other developer can replicate for the foreseeable future (they'd need 20+ years of IPs they could pull elements from to even get started)

a masterclass from sam lake and remedy, whom I hope are sleeping VERY WELL on beds made of money