I have a light history with rhythm games, mostly in the form of genre hybrids like Metal: Hellsinger, Cadence of Hyrule, and Hi-Fi Rush. I do generally enjoy rhythm gameplay, and I very much enjoy Persona music, so I figured a game centered entirely on that would be an easy win. I did not entirely know what I was getting into with this one.

The biggest thing I didn’t expect was the story. There’s a LOT more than I expected. Taking place after the events of P4, the gang gets back together to perform in a music festival at the request of their resident idol, Rise. Naturally after they get there a group of meat themed idols that were meant to perform get kidnapped by supernatural forces and the Investigation Team is back at it to investigate and rescue them.

I was NOT expecting a proper Persona story here at all, but it very much felt like one. I mean the story starts with a little girl seeing her favorite idol committing suicide, so there ya go. Deeper themes, such as burying one’s own personality to appease others and depression are touched upon, as are the typical cheesy stuff like believing in oneself and the power of friendship. While not nearly on the scope of the game from which it’s spun off, it tells a deeper story than I’d expect, which would be great if not for its presentation.

There is a LOT of exposition and dialog, told through entirely static character portraits and textboxes. It is a slog to get through all of it, which is unfortunate given that I broadly like the story and characters. Similarly letting it down are the voice performances. I can’t explain why, but I never cared for Chie’s voice after the original P4, and Rise in particular sounds like she’s phoning it in. I know this is a portable rhythm spinoff of a series that doesn’t tend to have a super high budget regardless, but presentation does matter. If you’re trying to tell an involved story, especially in a genre not known for it, there should be at least something to look at while going through so much dialog.

Enough of that, you play rhythm games for the gameplay and music and it’s…interesting here.
As a song progresses there’s a circular border with six nodes around the screen, three on the left and right, that notes fly to from the center. The more accurately you time a note reaching one of the nodes the better your score. There are some notes you must hold for a time, others you have to hit simultaneously, and optional notes with a different input for bonus points. Some of the optional notes are special, where hitting them activates Fever mode, where your main dancer has a partner join for a bit with a harder set of notes to hit for more points. Mistime too many notes, you lose. Simple stuff.

There’s two modes of play, story mode and free play. Story mode has you go through a set order of tracks in a set difficulty, with cutscenes and dialog in between. In free play, various modifiers can be used to make songs easier or harder, such as making timing more forgiving or harsher, having notes fly faster or slower, fading them into view or making them outright invisible. All of that, plus several difficulty modes, impact your score. The better the score and thus rating, the more currency you get after the song which can be used to purchase those modifiers as well as cosmetics for your dancers. It all works well to incentivize you to master the songs and shoot for high ranks, and it’s satisfying ending a song without missing any notes.

That’s all well and good, but I personally feel these games are harder than other rhythm games I’ve played, and it all comes to that border. There’s a reason I couldn’t keep up with the songs past Normal difficulty. The border being around the screen means your eyes have to watch and travel around essentially the entire tv screen at all times, as opposed to most rhythm games generally only forcing you to watch over a relatively confined area. In addition, there’s also the matter of the dancing going on in center screen, which has tons of colors popping all over the place. Fun to look at, less fun when notes blend into the background without any options to alter the color of the notes or border. I feel like these issues were likely less prevalent with the game’s original hardware, it’s easier for your eyes to track everything happening on a portable screen, but it’s a lot to manage on a larger screen.

Unfortunately for a rhythm game, I’d probably say the music is the most disappointing part. Not including DLC both paid and free (MAN Atlus likes making some much stupid stuff as paid DLC btw), there are 27 tracks, the vast majority of which are remixes spanning the original P4 and its rerelease Persona 4 Golden, as well as spin-offs such as Persona 4 Arena and Persona Q. Not a particularly impressive number as is, but made even worse by the fact that there’s actually only 18 unique tracks, as the remaining of remixes of some of those, with one track even getting two remixes! With Persona 4 alone having 52 tracks, which doesn’t include Golden or spinoffs from P4, I don’t feel like it's unreasonable to have expected more. Additionally, while I understand that not all of P4’s tracks are exactly dance tracks, and the remixes are uniformly bad per say, I like P4’s music, so I would’ve liked even just the option to have the original versions of all tracks here.

I did end up enjoying my time with the game overall, but it’s not as easy a recommendation as I’d hoped. It was really nice spending more time with the Investigation Team, the dancing is fun to watch at least, and the gameplay is still enjoyable. But between a painfully presented story, aspects of gameplay better suited to other hardware, and a small, mediocre track list, I will say it’s not nearly as compelling as it could’ve been.

Where do I even start with Alan Wake 2? Maybe the fact that the game has been 13 years in the making, an obvious passion project that has been stewing within Remedy in some form or another all this time? The mechanical differences that come about from a genre shift and two protagonists? The absolutely bonkers narrative that they’ve spun, calling back to most of the studio’s work since their inception, both blatantly and subtly? The issues, of which I have a few more than I like, some expected, others not? Despite not being as large in scope as an RPG or most AAA open worlds, there’s a lot to go over.

Horror is generally not my shtick. I have not watched a single horror movie and can count the number of horror games I’ve played on one hand. I am, however, very much into Alan Wake. Did at least two runs of both the first game and its remaster, got the XBLA game most people didn’t bother with (which holds absolutely no relevance to this game’s narrative, don’t worry), and even got an entirely different game largely for the ties its expansion has to the series. So it was with cautious optimism I see AW2 was revealed to be a horror game, a slower paced, more contemplative affair compared to the original's general shooter gameplay. I can say that, while I am very much more of an action guy myself, I acclimated to the differences before too long, for better and worse.

Alan Wake 2 follows a standard survival horror combat setup; a third person shooter generally set in dark environments with stiff moving protagonists. Your enemies are the darkness infused Taken, who are faster and more resilient than our protagonists. Light sources, such as flares and your flashlight burn away their shields to leave them vulnerable to conventional weaponry. Combat is tense, as you can lose control of a situation very easily and die very quickly, which makes combat rewarding to get a handle on. Different enemy types call for different tactics, as some flank, others charge, and some have projectiles, so you’ll have to think on your feet. You don’t have to fight every Taken, and are encouraged to avoid unnecessary confrontations.

There’s a limited, RE4 style inventory, and can burn through resources quickly in larger fights, so it pays to explore the environments for ammo and health restoratives. You can acquire more permanent boons such as more flashlight charges or increased rate of fire on weapons through exploration and light puzzle solving, some of which can get pretty taxing. There are a handful of semi open areas that make up the setting, gated off by progression items such as keys or bolt cutters, and they’re rewarding to explore and revisit as you’re able to access more of it

While going to survival horror was the right call I feel, and definitely feels like a natural continuation of the first game both in gameplay and narrative, there’s two changes that I don’t love. The first is the addition of random, very loud jumpscares, which are far more annoying than scary. The second, and far bigger one is the flashlight. It’s spectacularly inconsistent. I haven’t seen this brought up frequently from others and I believe it may be patched by now, but it just didn’t work the way it’s supposed to. It sort of locks on to enemies and other objects of interest, but does not do so at all consistently and can target things you don’t want it to. Whenever I would dodge and then try to flash an enemy immediately, it just wouldn’t damage the shield for several seconds, wasting both resources and time in a way that has gotten me killed. There’s one enemy type that hides in thin air as if it were diving into water, making them harder to see and immune to weapons fire. You’re supposed to use the flashlight to bring them out of hiding but it just… doesn’t work, which forces you to use far rarer and more valuable resources to render them vulnerable. Probably the most unique aspect of Alan Wake combat is infuriatingly inconsistent which is deeply disappointing given everything else the game does right, such as the story and characters.

Both protagonists are equally important, telling two concurrent stories that finally intersect at the end. There’s no predetermined order, but you do go through both in full to reach the end. 13 years have passed from the events of the original, when writer Alan Wake jumped into Cauldron Lake to save his wife. He’s now stuck in The Dark Place, an alternate dimension accessed from the lake. It manifests as a dreary and oppressive corruption of New York City that he’s desperate to escape. The Dark Place empowers art, such as books or music, allowing them to change reality, which Alan does in his “Writer’s Room” to try and place specific contexts for specific locations. For example, a cult performing a ritual in one part of a subway system may open up a pathway when written into another part, and an area that was once clean can shift in an instant to a blood soaked horror scene. It’s fascinating to see different areas react to different contexts, and leads to some interesting environmental storytelling. I viewed every scene at every location regardless of the solutions just out of my own interest.

Meanwhile FBI agent Saga Anderson, newcomer to the series, is sent to Cauldron Lake to investigate mysterious cult murders. Soon after, she finds manuscript pages that seem to dictate future events before they happen. She has her own analog to Alan’s Writer’s Room in the “Mind Place”, where she sorts through evidence that she finds throughout the world to try and solve the various mysterious happenings of Bright Falls. The gameplay here is rather simple, placing pieces of evidence on a case board and profiling people in her head (the game does explain how that makes any sense, but you’ll just have to go with it for a while). It’s usually rather obvious what evidence goes where, but her comments and deductions add nice flavor and character to her story. Whereas Alan has had 13 years to acclimate to the paranormal, seeing Saga’s reactions when things go fubar is a treat as she slowly comes to grips to being trapped in a horror story is engaging, particularly when her story starts becoming personal.

While I can’t say too much about other horror stories, I can say that this one is a wild ride. The overarching narrative is dark and layered, with gruesome murders and cult rituals set alongside some truly mind bending shenanigans, it can take a bit for some of the narrative beats to truly sink in. One of my fears when this was announced to be a horror game was that some of the levity and weirdness from their previous titles would be culled and I was so so glad that my fears ended up being for naught. A major collectible in the form of reenacting nursery rhymes, tv ads featuring the just frankly incredible Koskela brothers, and one Remedy staple set piece that will go down as one of the best moments in gaming this year are just some of what reiterated that Remedy’s tone and style.

Alan Wake 2 is a tad complicated for me. It goes deeper and more weird with its storytelling and presentation than pretty much anything else at a AAA level which absolutely deserves praise. It’s a gorgeous looking game, with a great soundtrack backing it, though I still prefer the first game's more impactful sound design in combat. I also had more than my fair share of audio issues, ranging from cutscene audio not playing, music randomly cutting out, and ambient NPC dialog repeating immediately. I am intensely looking forward to the future of the series, and it is a more than worthy return, but I can’t say I loved everything it had. I expected some aspects to be less up my alley, and I don’t fault it for that, especially considering that I seem to be the only person who never actually got tired of the first game’s combat. That said, a core combat mechanic seemingly not functioning as intended is a harder pill to swallow, and it’s overall a tad buggier than I would’ve preferred. Remedy has been consistent about updating since I played though, so there’s a very strong chance most or all of those issues have been ironed out by now.

An absolute must play for fans of Alan Wake or Remedy in general, and a very engaging horror shooter in its own right, though don’t listen to Remedy when they say newcomers can jump in and not miss a beat. If this looks at all interesting to you, please go through the first game’s story first, whether through Youtube or the remaster of the first game, it is essential to fully grasping this game’s story and world.

Have you ever played a game in one IP largely for its ties to another?

I’ve been on a bit of an Alan Wake binge in the buildup to the release of its long awaited sequel. I knew that one of the expansions to Control had major ties to Alan Wake, and with Remedys psychological thriller being one of my all time favorites, it was only a matter of time before I gave Remedys new IP a shot. Little did I expect to find a world, narrative, characters, and gameplay as engaging as what I was playing this to build up to.

This story is set in the Oldest House, the mysterious and ever shifting HQ of the FBC, or Federal Bureau of Control, an American government agency set up to investigate paranormal activity. Jesse Faden, equally mysterious protagonist who appears to talk as if to a distant entity, arrives looking for someone only to quickly find the Director of the FBC shoot himself and, through her being able to wield the gun dubbed the Service Weapon, the title of Director relinquished to her. While Jesse is the playable protag, the FBC and Oldest House are absolutely the stars of the show and main driving forces of the narrative. Learning about the House and its inhabitants is endlessly fascinating, from the eagerly helpful researcher Emily Pope, to the eccentric and cryptic janitor Ahti, I grew to enjoy every chance I got to encounter new characters. Jesse herself is a bit of a dork, not a standard action hero by any stretch, making her a fun protag.

Shortly after becoming the Director, you’ll encounter the hostile forces of the Hiss, a force of some kind that more or less zombifies those it encounters if unprotected. This is where combat comes in, where Jesse puts that newfound Service Weapon to use, as well as a selection of powers granted by a mysterious paranormal entity simply named the “Board”. It plays out as a third person shooter with a gun that changes form to mostly standard shooter archetypes, pistol, shotgun, sniper, etc., and gain powers useful for both traversal and combat, such as telekinesis to throw objects, levitation to reach new areas, a shield to block attacks, and others. Combat can get fairly hectic, and as most small objects can be used as a weapon, there’s plenty of physics at play with computers, chairs, and lamps all being equally valid options to cave Hiss faces in. It can be quite a sight gazing at the aftermath of a fight with random debris strewn about paired with chunks missing out of nearby support beams.

Exploring the Oldest House is heavily encouraged, both for the many, many collectibles (a Remedy staple) scattered around that detail the day to day operations of the FBC, and for useful mods or crafting materials to improve your combat capabilities. This is unfortunately where the game falters most. Exploring is generally enjoyable, as the level design is interesting and learning about the games world is worthwhile, but it’s let down somewhat by a terrible map system and aggressive enemy spawns. The game has a bit of a Metroidvania or Zelda like structure, encouraging a fair amount of backtracking to reach new areas. The map doesn’t easily distinguish between different floors of an area, making it a pain to use while spawning multiple waves of enemies in areas you’ve already been through, making just getting where you need to go a bit of a slog at times. A fast travel system certainly helps, but doesn’t completely mitigate the issues.

While I’m criticizing, I’ll also touch on the bosses and ending. The bosses are hit or miss. Many of them are creative and engaging to fight, an optional fight against a possessed anchor that attacks by spewing clocks at you being a personal highlight, while others boil down to being souped versions of regular enemies with larger health pools, or otherwise being annoying or awkward to fight. Meanwhile there’s functionally no final boss, with an ending that sort of but doesn’t really tie up Jesse’s reason for being here or the Hiss threat. A sequel was announced, which isn’t surprising, but I would’ve preferred a more satisfying ending for the game I was currently playing, rather than just hoping things to be more thoroughly resolved in the future.

Speaking of the future, we got a taste of it for both Control and Remedy as a whole with its two expansions, The Foundation and AWE, bundled together here. While releasing in that order, narratively I’d say it’s far more cohesive to play them in reverse. The Foundation shines light on the history of the Oldest House, ending with stronger implications towards its future than the original game does, even having an actual final boss! Meanwhile AWE has little to no ties to Controls narrative, taking place in an abandoned section of the House never once mentioned in the main game. Both expansions have similarly fun combat and level design as the base game, but AWE exists near exclusively to build up to Remedys next title, Alan Wake II. It does not tie up any loose ends from Control whatsoever, so can be a bit jarring narratively as an extension to the game. However, if you’re interested in the devs wider work, it gives you plenty to be excited for.

I’ll admit I mainly jumped into this game for the ties to Alan Wake, but I ended up falling in love with it aside from that. With a fascinating setting and Remedys standard brand of weird paired with engaging level design and compelling combat, Remedy hsa quickly become one of my favorite developers, and I eagerly await the continuation of the tale of Jesse and the Oldest House.