12th Game Completed In 2024 (I think)
Whew boy, what a heckin game.
I'll start right off the cuff and tell you, if you want to play this game, just save yourself a lot of misery and play it on Story difficulty. I'll get back to why in a bit.
So my history with this series... I liked Alan Wake 1, but didn't love it. Played Quantum Break, really enjoyed it. Control is the best of the bunch, and probably still is. But the way that Remedy has finally managed to write everything together in a cohesive way is really great.
I'll start with the story. Alan Wake 2 is very much a psychological thriller that plays with the very nature of writing itself to tell a story. It's gone way past the whole, "Writer writes thing that come to life!" concept of the original, and really embraces this whole universe where pretty much anything is possible - so long as it plays by its own rules. The way Remedy has blended video games, live action film, and music performances here is just... Absolute master class. The game really is as good as people say it is, and this is absolutely one of those landmark, must-play titles. Without a doubt. I even got the (admittedly very easy) Platinum trophy!
As I mentioned in a previous update for this game, I really like what they've done to integrate their past games, even using Quantum Break - a game they don't have the rights for - in really clever ways by simply using the same actors and providing a reasonable narrative explanation for why they aren't the exact same people. Warlin Door is probably one of my absolute favourite characters in gaming right now, and if you've played Quantum Break and Alan Wake 2, you'll understand exactly why. Showing us a battered and bruised Federal Bureau of Control after the utterly cataclysmic events of Control, and how they continue to press on in their uniquely bureaucratic means of dealing with the supernatural, was a real treat, with the Lake House DLC honestly being one of the better parts of the game for me.
Unfortunately though, actually playing it can be an exercise in extreme frustration. The detective and puzzle components of this game are some of the best I've seen - you're constantly thinking and trying to make deductions, and it never feels like the game is pulling moon logic. If you pay attention to the story and read between the lines with contextual clues, you are given a TON of information to piece together your own little theories. I had so many "Ohhhhhh!" moments as the plot revealed itself, and the game makes you feel really smart for correctly guessing. The puzzles are a similar bag - it's a great mix of math puzzles, riddles, scavenger hunts, all very cleverly designed such that I can proudly say I never had to use a guide. There's no "guess what the developer is thinking" here, it's all quite reasonable.
But the combat is where everything falls apart.
Simply put, this game is exceptionally poorly-balanced with a massive gulf between story difficulty and normal difficulty, exacerbated by some truly terrible bugs, mechanics and design. "Just get good at the game, forehead!" Here's the thing though. I was dying frequently, but still drowning in healing items. The biggest problem here is that, on normal difficulty and higher, enemies can and will corner you, combo you, and leave you in a position where you literally cannot dodge or move. 2 or 3 hits from most enemies will take you from full health to death, and because healing has such a ridiculously long animation, it's way too hard to actually heal in combat. But on top of that, the dodge simply doesn't work - the input window is super tight, and quite often, you will still take damage from the enemy's follow-through, even if you dodged their blow. On top of this, enemies can Naruto run and teleport all over the very dark, heavily-treed maps making them super hard to hit, or even see where they are attacking from. The game has aim-assist, but it likes to target roughly a foot to the right of your actual target. Animations are a massive problem here too, because healing, reloading and dodging all have these really obnoxious animation times that make it nigh-impossible to do much of anything when you have a fella with an axe practically sniffing your neck hairs. It's utterly maddening, and I'm kicking myself for waiting until the final few hours to drop the difficulty.
The game has a few other bugs too. It really, really likes to ignore inputs for no discernable reason. This is a problem I'm seeing frequently in this generation of games, where even something as simple as opening the map will not work until your character is at a dead stand-still. This also happens in combat, where you'll mash square to reload, and it just doesn't register until the 8th press, at which point it starts a glacially slow reload animation that can (and will) be interrupted. There also seems to be a major bug with how the game registers flags, as I would frequently be in a position where map icons would not disappear after collecting an item, or I would open a locker only to spawn both an opened and closed locker in the same space... But maybe we can blame that second one on an AWE. I also really didn't like how light reflecting off shiny surfaces looked really grainy and crappy. Weird nitpick, but it bothered me.
Despite all that complaining, this really is a special game with some truly top-notch writing, directing and theming.
There's a lot of really great stuff in here, from the detective stuff, to the reality-shifting stuff, to the angry talking painting, to the allusions of bigger forces at play in this world, to the FBC people being casually annoyed by world-changing events. I do feel the story is perhaps 10 hours too long, with the Alan Wake portions in particular really dragging way too long in the middle of the game, but overall, I do think it's absolutely worth your time if you like horror, heady sci-fi, or just weird, surreal shit.
Oh, and for those who have beaten the game... There's a whole second ending gated behind NG+ that, alongside the Lake House DLC, really set up a tremendously interesting future for this superseries.
