The most Remedy of all Remedy games, this has all the virtues of their last few releases going at full blast but still doesn't manage to escape their flaws. The writing is charming throughout: Sam Lake's dry sense of humor shines through the low-budget TV spots and the glimpses we get of Control's FBC, but it's equally capable of pulling at the player's heartstrings. Particularly for a player invested in the people of Bright Falls and in Alan's own story, there's a lot food here.
The large-scale plot is where the game really fires on all cylinders, though. It's meticulous and intricate, a full-on puzzle box that renders Alan Wake 1's opening quote on horror not having a clear explanation deeply ironic in retrospect. It loops in and around itself, tying knots of astounding beauty, wrapping up the emotional core of the game like a gift for the player.
It even pushes the formal boundaries of what a game can be in a way no AAA studio other than Kojipro has dared to do. I'm deeply thrilled to see full-motion video again after being effectively exiled since the 90s, and absolutely head over heels for the way it's used in Alan Wake II. I can't say much more without risking spoilers, but there were more than a few moments that had me shouting gleefully at the screen.
The only problem is, in grand Remedy tradition, the game isn't actually that fun to play. As incredibly gutsy as the plot and writing is, the game design feels shot through with a deep anxiety about not being "game-y" enough. It's filled with little collectables and largely-irrelevant upgrade trees that just feel banal in juxtaposition with the absolute mastery of the rest of the game.
To be fair, it's solidly an improvement on the previous Alans Wake and particularly on Control's agonizing need to act modern-AAA. The combat is no longer the unmitigated slog of AW1 and AWAN. But neither is it fun, especially with the tight resource constraints and intense awkwardness of trying to fumble with the equipment UI in combat.
Nor do the non-action aspects of the play bear the weight they're asked to. The game's photo-and-string conspiracy board simulator feels like sleepwalking. The case board only asks the player to follow a single well-lit path, placing one piece of "evidence" after another until Saga Anderson voices a fairly obvious deduction. It's just a treadmill, an action to take purely for the sake of having the player do something during exposition. That's not inherently a bad thing from a design perspective, but it feels galling in the broader context of the game. It has a conspiracy board and it asks the player to untangle a complex metaplot, but these two aspects of play are totally disconnected from one another.
This glaring contrast between the mediocre reality and a shining possibility is also what makes the combat so frustrating. Alan Wake 2 takes on the ancillary design trappings of survival horror, with limited resources, inventory grid, and threatening enemies, but it doesn't follow through. In order for those limitations to induce interesting decision points, the game also needs to make it possible not to fight enemies and make a victory at least somewhat permanent. Just dropping them into a shooter with respawning mobs ends up with a frustrating mess.
It's a testament to how fabulous the good parts of this game are that I still consider it truly excellent in spite of its flaws. I'll probably play "The Final Draft", its version of NG+, within a few weeks. But I'm disappointed that I can't endorse the entire game as wholeheartedly as I'd like, and I hope one day Remedy gets as confident with their mechanical design as they are with their writing.
The large-scale plot is where the game really fires on all cylinders, though. It's meticulous and intricate, a full-on puzzle box that renders Alan Wake 1's opening quote on horror not having a clear explanation deeply ironic in retrospect. It loops in and around itself, tying knots of astounding beauty, wrapping up the emotional core of the game like a gift for the player.
It even pushes the formal boundaries of what a game can be in a way no AAA studio other than Kojipro has dared to do. I'm deeply thrilled to see full-motion video again after being effectively exiled since the 90s, and absolutely head over heels for the way it's used in Alan Wake II. I can't say much more without risking spoilers, but there were more than a few moments that had me shouting gleefully at the screen.
The only problem is, in grand Remedy tradition, the game isn't actually that fun to play. As incredibly gutsy as the plot and writing is, the game design feels shot through with a deep anxiety about not being "game-y" enough. It's filled with little collectables and largely-irrelevant upgrade trees that just feel banal in juxtaposition with the absolute mastery of the rest of the game.
To be fair, it's solidly an improvement on the previous Alans Wake and particularly on Control's agonizing need to act modern-AAA. The combat is no longer the unmitigated slog of AW1 and AWAN. But neither is it fun, especially with the tight resource constraints and intense awkwardness of trying to fumble with the equipment UI in combat.
Nor do the non-action aspects of the play bear the weight they're asked to. The game's photo-and-string conspiracy board simulator feels like sleepwalking. The case board only asks the player to follow a single well-lit path, placing one piece of "evidence" after another until Saga Anderson voices a fairly obvious deduction. It's just a treadmill, an action to take purely for the sake of having the player do something during exposition. That's not inherently a bad thing from a design perspective, but it feels galling in the broader context of the game. It has a conspiracy board and it asks the player to untangle a complex metaplot, but these two aspects of play are totally disconnected from one another.
This glaring contrast between the mediocre reality and a shining possibility is also what makes the combat so frustrating. Alan Wake 2 takes on the ancillary design trappings of survival horror, with limited resources, inventory grid, and threatening enemies, but it doesn't follow through. In order for those limitations to induce interesting decision points, the game also needs to make it possible not to fight enemies and make a victory at least somewhat permanent. Just dropping them into a shooter with respawning mobs ends up with a frustrating mess.
It's a testament to how fabulous the good parts of this game are that I still consider it truly excellent in spite of its flaws. I'll probably play "The Final Draft", its version of NG+, within a few weeks. But I'm disappointed that I can't endorse the entire game as wholeheartedly as I'd like, and I hope one day Remedy gets as confident with their mechanical design as they are with their writing.