Alan Wake 2 Review- An indie wolf among AAA sheep
Alan Wake 2 is a very atypical game from more than one perspective. First and foremost, there's the fact that the studio behind this title (Remedy Entertainment) is quite small by modern standards, even though you wouldn't be able to tell by the graphic fidelity of the game.
Alan Wake 2 decidedly feels made by a team of extremely passionate people who put all they had into this for multiple years, and the result shows in a coherent and very inspired piece of gaming culture, worthy of sitting next to the likes of Resident Evil among the best of the action-horror genre.
The game takes place 13 years after the first Alan Wake game (which is funny because that is also the real timespan between these two games, with Alan Wake 1 being made in 2010). In this time, Remedy has progressed a lot and has gained an identity of its own: highly polished and creatively complex games, often with a supernatural side and tackling psychological topics, with an eye for live-action cutscenes.
This game does most things brilliantly and I was thoroughly gripped by the narrative for its 20h duration. Speaking of narrative, I think it is time we tackle that.
Narrative
I had not played the previous Alan Wake game before this one, And I was a little bit worried that this might be a pretty significant oversight and that it may impact my enjoyment of this second game in the series; That was not the case, as characters are mostly isolated from the first game initially, and slowly unravel bits of trivia that may or may not jug your memory on past events.
The story starts in a rather complicated manner and it is not immediately apparent why and how things happened. Slowly, though, it starts to make more sense and by the end, you get comfortable with the kind of mental gymnastics required to make sense of this world.
Story conclusion spoilers
Despite the apparent open-ended nature of the ending, I felt quite satisfied with how it did things, and a subsequent New Game+ playthrough revealing additional story beats only solidified this feeling. This lack of a tangible conclusion fits the genre brilliantly and this game's style and feel.
I also felt the game did a good job of weaving two separate storylines seamlessly, while also allowing the freedom of tackling the storylines in any way you see fit. You can freely change whose main quests you are tackling, without ever feeling like you got the order wrong.
MEGA Spoiler: One of the most memorable gaming moments
I am not entirely sure if this is quite the correct section for this, but I must give special mention to the We Sing chapter. If you played the game, you know exactly what I am talking about.
Throughout the entire sequence, I was in awe of what was happening on screen. It's one of those moments that you'll forever have in your memory, for other games to be compared against.
The whole composition of that moment is, without a doubt, perfect. I am amazed this got made. The production value of this sequence is so high that I bet Sam Lake ( one of the game directors) had to pitch it real hard in order to justify the development cost, but boy am I glad they managed.
Gameplay
The gameplay side of things should be rather familiar if you've played any 3rd person Resident Evil games, or Dead Space. You have a varied array of weapons, move rather clumsily and enemies take multiple headshots to down and routinely swarm you from several directions.
In addition to these, the twist in the Alan Wake formula is the presence of a flashlight, serving a double purpose: stunning and enabling damage dealing. What I mean by the second point is that some enemies are immune to your preferred means of destruction until you focus a beam of light on them.
The flow of the combat is rather satisfying if nothing revolutionary. Slightly problematic is the length of the game. In the roughly 20h it takes you to go through this game, your offensive options receive little change since hour 2. This makes for an increasingly frustrating set of combat encounters, especially towards the end, when the game pits you against more enemies than ever before, and I found myself sprinting through them toward my objective every time I had the opportunity to do so.
It feels like the combat would have been more suited for a 12-14h game, rather than 20. This is again a common point between this game and Resident Evil 4. I just do not feel the combat variety is enough to carry it through 2oh of horror-driven encounters, and would have preferred more quiet times instead of a few more filler combat encounters.
Alan and Saga do not feel meaningfully different in their combat approaches, which in itself is not a problem, but compounds the aforementioned tedium problem.
The world
What Remedy did with their proprietary Northlight engine is nothing short of groundbreaking. They created a world that is so true to life that it would be very hard to tell when the game switches from live-action to in-game if not for the stylized approach they take with their live-action sequences ( heavy film grain and pinpoint lighting).
I was blessed enough to play this game on a HDR-enabled monitor and I was often flabbergasted at the sheer level of detail on display. The lighting and materials work get a very special mention, because I think they are pretty much perfect, and this comes from someone who did not experience them at their fullest ( no path tracing and Low RTX effects).
This is one of the most impressive island-based open-world games I have ever seen. If the term island-based open-world game confused you, what I mean to say is that linear levels are routinely combined with open-ended levels that let the player explore in whatever order they wish.
Techy Nerd talk
The sole problem with the ridiculous fidelity of the game is the system requirements ... this game struggles to reach high settings even on a high-end RTX 4000 GPU. This is not necessarily indicative of graphics quality though, meaning that even the Low preset is equivalent to other games' High, so do not get discouraged by clicking onto 'Low' if that's all your GPU can handle, it will still look outstanding.
Slight disclaimer for any GPU without mesh shading capabilities ( look into if yours does or does not), as the game will be nearly unplayable even on a GTX 1080 Ti due to this.
Conclusion: Grade A+
Overall, I had an absolute blast with Alan Wake 2, and I appreciate what Remedy pulled off here even more than I probably should. This game feels like it came from a very passionate place, and with an "innocence" that's rarely encountered in today's gaming landscape. There are no tricks here, only the passion project of a group of people, being sold at a cheap (compared to other games) price, and without any shady microtransactions or hidden XP boosts. Just an old-fashioned finished game experience reminiscent of the 2000s.
The combat is fun but gets a tiny bit old by the end, and there's a constant sprinkling of eye candy. These, coupled with one of the most memorable in-game moments in all my time playing games make for an experience I'll look fondly back to for years to come.