This review contains spoilers
Alan Wake II was an amazing experience.
First of all, this game absolutely nails atmosphere, especially in the Dark Place. Moving around a dark and weird version of New York while hearing voices whispering "Wake" and some of Alan's writing really adds a lot of tension and spookiness to the experience. Even when you're in the real world, the atmosphere is still pretty spooky. Even in broad daylight, they manage to keep you on your toes with some weird noises and keep the environment around you relatively dark. One really good example that comes to mind is the Coffee World amusement park, you spend the whole time in this area walking around a relatively dark and decrepit area while hearing this creepy amusement park song that echoes throughout all the zone, it really made for a spooky and immersive experience. The game does like to "jump scare" you quite often thought and even if it got me quite good a few times and added to the tension of some scenes, I feel like they were a bit too much jump scares at times.
Second of all, I really liked the gameplay in this one, a huge improvement over the first game. This is my second survival horror game (or third if you count the first Alan Wake) and I must say that I really enjoy the resource management aspect of the genre. Having to carefully manage your inventory and your ammos while also trying not to panic and waste a ton of bullets as multiple enemies come at you when you least expect it is great. The shooting feels good, I also liked the variety in weapons, well at least when playing Saga Anderson in the "real" world, I especially liked her crossbow. Most of the weapons upgrade seemed pretty significant, except for the handgun, in my opinion.
The only problems I had with the gameplay-side of the game was that I was often tempted to avoid enemies because of the small amount of batteries, which I believe are necessary to fight most enemies, I was finding. My other problem was with the exploration, more specifically, backtracking, since movement is pretty slow, which makes sense in a game like this, back tracking for the missing collectible/ cult stashes felt pretty annoying. Add to that the fact that enemies respawn and I felt pretty discouraged to go back and explore at times. At least, the map were small enough that it made all of that less annoying, and some shortcuts helped with the backtracking.
The whole mind place and writer's room gimmick was also something I thought was pretty neat. I liked doing all the detective-style investigating with Saga's investigation board, linking evidences together to try to understand what was happening and what my next move was. The mind place in itself was also pretty cozy, especially compared to the environment you go through in the rest of the game. On the other hand, Wake's writer room felt really isolating and creepy, really fitting of the dark place where Alan's trapped. The writer's room gimmick of being able to change the player's environment by finding "inspiration" for Alan to write new things into existence is also really cool. It was fun seeing all the different variations of the same place there was and all the little details it changed.
Graphically, the game looks really good, even on medium setting, although I wished it run a bit better on my pc. At least, the game was running fine on medium preset settings with balanced DLSS. There's a lot of detail in all of the different locations you visit and the art direction is simply phenomenal. The Dark Place looks so cool, weird and eery I just loved looking around while I was there.
The music is absolutely one of the biggest highlights of this game for me. Every part of the game with songs from the Old Gods of Asgard is just so memorable and fun. You can feel all the passion and love the developers put into the game. The whole Herald of Darkness segment with the live action musical is just so charming and funny, especially since it contrasts so hard with the general vibe of the game. My favourite Old Gods of Asgard song from this game is probably Dark Ocean Summoning and the whole sequence that comes with it is just so cool and fun. Fighting hordes of Taken on the stormy beach, trying to bring back Alan Wake to fix everything while the song plays in the background, with lyrics that match what was happening feels really epic and simply just cool. The chapter songs that played when finishing a chapter were also amazing, my favourite being Wide Awake. Having all the songs' lyrics somewhat match what was currently going on in the story is such a neat detail that really adds to the whole experience.
Story-wise, Alan Wake II blew me away. I was captivated during my whole playthrough, I was reading every manuscript pages, FBC files or other pieces of lore I could find to try to understand a bit more of the world and story of the game. It certainly helped that I played Control and the first Alan Wake before this game, I probably would've been a lot more confused if I hadn't. The game sure knows how to confuse the player but a the same time make them think. I always had at least two different theories on what was happening and what was going to happen, it was a ton of fun seeing when I was right or when I was totally wrong.
Having the choice to play Alan Wake's story or Saga Anderson's story in whatever order your chose after a certain point was also really cool and made for a really unique and captivating narrative. Sometimes, some questions I had while playing as Saga were answered when playing as Wake and vice-versa, but more often than not, even more questions and theories popped up in my mind every time I switched characters and I really loved that.
The whole build up to the ending feels really epic and is really well made, but I will say that the normal ending of the game left me a bit "confused". I was thinking "is that it? that's how it ends?". At the same time I want to say that it was a pretty good idea to end with a bit of uncertainty though, because you'll be left wondering and thinking about the game and it will stay with you longer. I later saw that there was some sort of "true ending" when finishing the game in new game plus and since I was not planning on doing that anytime soon, I looked it up and I'll say that it does a better job of giving a proper conclusion to the game while still leaving the player curious to see what's next for Alan Wake.
To put it simply, Alan Wake II was a really unique and truly great game for me. Remedy Entertainment certainly knows how to make strange and charming games that'll stay with you long after you've beaten them and I'm excited to see what will come next from them.
First of all, this game absolutely nails atmosphere, especially in the Dark Place. Moving around a dark and weird version of New York while hearing voices whispering "Wake" and some of Alan's writing really adds a lot of tension and spookiness to the experience. Even when you're in the real world, the atmosphere is still pretty spooky. Even in broad daylight, they manage to keep you on your toes with some weird noises and keep the environment around you relatively dark. One really good example that comes to mind is the Coffee World amusement park, you spend the whole time in this area walking around a relatively dark and decrepit area while hearing this creepy amusement park song that echoes throughout all the zone, it really made for a spooky and immersive experience. The game does like to "jump scare" you quite often thought and even if it got me quite good a few times and added to the tension of some scenes, I feel like they were a bit too much jump scares at times.
Second of all, I really liked the gameplay in this one, a huge improvement over the first game. This is my second survival horror game (or third if you count the first Alan Wake) and I must say that I really enjoy the resource management aspect of the genre. Having to carefully manage your inventory and your ammos while also trying not to panic and waste a ton of bullets as multiple enemies come at you when you least expect it is great. The shooting feels good, I also liked the variety in weapons, well at least when playing Saga Anderson in the "real" world, I especially liked her crossbow. Most of the weapons upgrade seemed pretty significant, except for the handgun, in my opinion.
The only problems I had with the gameplay-side of the game was that I was often tempted to avoid enemies because of the small amount of batteries, which I believe are necessary to fight most enemies, I was finding. My other problem was with the exploration, more specifically, backtracking, since movement is pretty slow, which makes sense in a game like this, back tracking for the missing collectible/ cult stashes felt pretty annoying. Add to that the fact that enemies respawn and I felt pretty discouraged to go back and explore at times. At least, the map were small enough that it made all of that less annoying, and some shortcuts helped with the backtracking.
The whole mind place and writer's room gimmick was also something I thought was pretty neat. I liked doing all the detective-style investigating with Saga's investigation board, linking evidences together to try to understand what was happening and what my next move was. The mind place in itself was also pretty cozy, especially compared to the environment you go through in the rest of the game. On the other hand, Wake's writer room felt really isolating and creepy, really fitting of the dark place where Alan's trapped. The writer's room gimmick of being able to change the player's environment by finding "inspiration" for Alan to write new things into existence is also really cool. It was fun seeing all the different variations of the same place there was and all the little details it changed.
Graphically, the game looks really good, even on medium setting, although I wished it run a bit better on my pc. At least, the game was running fine on medium preset settings with balanced DLSS. There's a lot of detail in all of the different locations you visit and the art direction is simply phenomenal. The Dark Place looks so cool, weird and eery I just loved looking around while I was there.
The music is absolutely one of the biggest highlights of this game for me. Every part of the game with songs from the Old Gods of Asgard is just so memorable and fun. You can feel all the passion and love the developers put into the game. The whole Herald of Darkness segment with the live action musical is just so charming and funny, especially since it contrasts so hard with the general vibe of the game. My favourite Old Gods of Asgard song from this game is probably Dark Ocean Summoning and the whole sequence that comes with it is just so cool and fun. Fighting hordes of Taken on the stormy beach, trying to bring back Alan Wake to fix everything while the song plays in the background, with lyrics that match what was happening feels really epic and simply just cool. The chapter songs that played when finishing a chapter were also amazing, my favourite being Wide Awake. Having all the songs' lyrics somewhat match what was currently going on in the story is such a neat detail that really adds to the whole experience.
Story-wise, Alan Wake II blew me away. I was captivated during my whole playthrough, I was reading every manuscript pages, FBC files or other pieces of lore I could find to try to understand a bit more of the world and story of the game. It certainly helped that I played Control and the first Alan Wake before this game, I probably would've been a lot more confused if I hadn't. The game sure knows how to confuse the player but a the same time make them think. I always had at least two different theories on what was happening and what was going to happen, it was a ton of fun seeing when I was right or when I was totally wrong.
Having the choice to play Alan Wake's story or Saga Anderson's story in whatever order your chose after a certain point was also really cool and made for a really unique and captivating narrative. Sometimes, some questions I had while playing as Saga were answered when playing as Wake and vice-versa, but more often than not, even more questions and theories popped up in my mind every time I switched characters and I really loved that.
The whole build up to the ending feels really epic and is really well made, but I will say that the normal ending of the game left me a bit "confused". I was thinking "is that it? that's how it ends?". At the same time I want to say that it was a pretty good idea to end with a bit of uncertainty though, because you'll be left wondering and thinking about the game and it will stay with you longer. I later saw that there was some sort of "true ending" when finishing the game in new game plus and since I was not planning on doing that anytime soon, I looked it up and I'll say that it does a better job of giving a proper conclusion to the game while still leaving the player curious to see what's next for Alan Wake.
To put it simply, Alan Wake II was a really unique and truly great game for me. Remedy Entertainment certainly knows how to make strange and charming games that'll stay with you long after you've beaten them and I'm excited to see what will come next from them.