It’s been 13 years since Remedy Entertainment released the originalAlan Wake, and now fans finally have the chance to playAlan Wake 2. Sadly, many of the hardcore Remedy fans who have been waiting over a decade to see where the story would go next will likely be walking away fromAlan Wake 2feeling underwhelmed.
TheoriginalAlan Wakewas horror-adjacentwithout fully embracing the genre, butAlan Wake 2is all-in, for better or worse. Anyone playingAlan Wake 2looking to be scared is likely going to be disappointed, though. While the game is dripping in bizarre imagery and certainly has some effectively creepy moments, it mainly relies on tired jump scares where a face flashes on the screen and makes a loud noise. Being startled isn’t the same as being scared, and attempted jump scares like this are cheap. They lose their effectiveness fast, especially inAlan Wake 2since they happen so frequently.
Alan Wake 2fails at being scary, but that doesn’t mean the game is devoid of moments that are disturbing or otherwise put players on edge. For example,Alan Wake 2’s live-action segmentshave an eerie quality to them, especially the ones focused on Alan Wake. Wake’s sections of the game tend to be spookier in general, as he finds himself trapped in The Dark Place, a twisted nightmare version of New York City.
The titularAlan Wake isn’t the only playable characterinAlan Wake 2. Joining Wake on his new horror adventure is FBI agent Saga Anderson, who arrives in Bright Falls with her partner Alex Casey to investigate a string of ritualistic murders in the area. Saga is a great addition to theAlan Wakecast, with Melanie Liburd doing a fantastic job at making the character feel believable despite the extraordinary circumstances she wrestles with in the game.
Saga’s role as an FBI agentgives her sections of the game a true crime,Twin Peaksflavor, with players tasked with collecting evidence by finding key items and interviewing people. Saga keeps track of cases in her Mind Place, a memory palace not unlike what Hannibal Lector uses in the Thomas Harris novels, where Saga “physically” stores information, maps, weapon upgrades, and more. Players can instantly jump to Saga’s Mind Place almost whenever they’d like to add new evidence to the case wall or “profile” the various characters Saga meets in the game.
It’s a sound idea on paper, but the detective work inAlan Wake 2is a big letdown in practice. The game doesn’t make the detective work engaging or challenging in any way. Players don’t have to think critically about where they’re putting evidence on Saga’s case wall; most of the time it’s obvious where something goes, but trying to put evidence in the wrong spot has no consequences beyond Saga muttering under her breath. Saga’s profiling technique may have been a good opportunity to challenge players with unraveling a mystery or two, but instead, the game uses it to simply give information away. Saga’s profiling helps her come to conclusions that would be impossible to know given the evidence she’s collected, and while there is an explanation for this, it’s not a satisfying one.
Alan Wake has his own version ofSaga’s Mind Place, but it takes the form of his writer’s room. Here, Alan manipulates the story as it unfolds. Story ideas can be collected by solving simple puzzles, which can then be applied to scenes to dramatically change the environment in The Dark Place. It’s impressive how the game world changes almost instantly after a new plot idea has been attached.
Alan Wake 2’s reality-shaping gimmickshelp it stand out, but it otherwise plays like a traditional survival-horror game. Combat should feel familiar to fans of the newerResident Evilgames, with theAlan Waketwist of needing to stun most enemies with a flashlight first. Shooting inAlan Wake 2is punchy, powerful, and fun, but there’s not enough of it. Many enemies can be so easily avoided that there’s no reason to fight them at all, and the game has few forced-combat encounters. Survival horror purists may think this is a good thing, but most will endAlan Wake 2with a collection of flares and med-kits they never had a good reason to use.
Most of the enemies players encounter inAlan Wake 2are “Taken” humans that are corrupted by The Dark Presence, but there are also a few more unique enemy types to shake things up. The huge wolves that players come across in the woods nearCauldron Lakeare a real highlight, particularly the first time players encounter them in the dead of night and see their flashlight beam reflected off the beasts' eyes.
Alan Wake 2has a handful of standout combat encounters, but most of the gameplay revolves around solving puzzles and navigating its large, sometimes confusing environments.Alan Wake 2has detailed maps players can collect for each area that help a lot, but it’s still easy to get turned around in the game, especially in the Dark Place as Alan Wake. The size of each area inAlan Wake 2is also a detriment, as players have to spend too long walking from one place to the next, and they have to repeat these treks multiple times throughout the game. The large size ofAlan Wake 2’s areas is somewhat justified in that players can go off the beaten path to find collectibles and extra resources, but that ultimately means even more backtracking.
TheAlan Wake 2gameplay experience consists of a lot of walking, a lot of talking, and a lot of puzzle solving, with the occasional combat encounter thrown into the mix. Some fans may like this balance, but others will prefer more action.Alan Wake 2’s narrative, meanwhile, is likely to be similarly divisive. Some will be enthralled from start to finish, while others will be frustrated by the game’s use of deus ex machina (which admittedly could be an attempt at meta commentary on Stephen King’s work, but nevertheless leaves a lot to be desired).Alan Wake 2’s narrative also lacks the much-needed levity supplied by characters like Barry Wheelerin the first game, resulting in an overwhelmingly grim and serious story in desperate need of some comic relief.
Along with the narrative shortcomings, there are other issues inAlan Wake 2that drag the overall experience down. Multiple times throughout the game the yellow dot indicating that there was new evidence for the case wall would appear when there wasn’t actually anything to add, leading to confusion about how to advance the story. Another small, but annoying glitch made it so it was impossible to access anything on the far-right side of the inventory when using a controller. This was circumvented by using a mouse instead, but it was a problem that never went away in our playthrough.
It’s not thatAlan Wake 2has a lot of technical problems, but the ones it does have are infuriating. In one instance,Saga’s case wallglitched to where evidence could be placed literally anywhere on the wall, regardless if it was put in the right spot. What seemed like a goofy but harmless glitch then took a turn for a worse, as it became clear that Saga was trapped at her case wall with no way to back out of the Mind Place or get back into the game proper. This forced a reset that cost 30 minutes of playtime.
Saga getting stuck and unable to do anything was a recurring theme when it came toAlan Wake 2’s more catastrophic bugs. During an intense boss fight, Saga was knocked to the ground and upon getting back to her feet, she was suddenly unable to use her gun or flashlight. All that she could do was run and punch, making the boss fight impossible since the flashlight was required to complete it. This forced another restart, ruining what was otherwise one of the game’s better boss battles.
Another issue reared its ugly head at the end ofAlan Wake 2, derailing the conclusion’s momentum. After a particularly epic moment, the screen went black minus some UI elements. Due toAlan Wake 2’s theme of light versus dark, this seemed like it could have been a deliberate choice, and so we waited to see if anything materialized. Nothing ever happened. Reloading the save left us with the same result, so we loaded a slightly older save, got back to the same point, and once again were met with a black screen. Switching the graphics from High to Medium quality and then reloading again finally fixed the issue.
We testedAlan Wake 2on a PC powered by a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080.Alan Wake 2’s PC requirementscall for an RTX 4070 to run it on Ultra settings and get the most out of Ray Tracing, but a 3080 should still have no problem running the game. It ran fine for the most part on High, except for the weird situation with the black screen at the end, and Ray Tracing seems like it needs DLSS 3.5 to deliver its full effect. The good news is that even with Ray Tracing turned down,Alan Wake 2is easily one of the best-looking video games ever made.
Alan Wake 2is a stunner, with incredibly realistic facial animations and a gorgeously detailed game world. It’s no exaggeration to say that there are certain areas inAlan Wake 2that look indistinguishable from real life. The absurdly steep PC requirements may rub some people the wrong way, but there’s no denying that Remedy has delivered something truly special when it comes to graphics.
Alan Wake 2deserves recognition for what it has accomplished with its graphics and audio design, but many will be let down by the gameplay and story. Even if the game’s rather frustrating technical problems didn’t exist,Alan Wake 2would still be a disappointment because of its shortcomings in those departments. That being said,Alan Wake 2is home to some of the best moments in any game this year, with two sequences in particular standing out as especially memorable. To go into detail would be to spoil them for anyone who plans on playing the game, but rest assured that despite its issues,Alan Wake 2has a few bright spots that may still make it worth it for hardcore fans of the original game. Others will want to hold out for a patch and a sale.
Alan Wake 2
WHERE TO PLAY
A string of ritualistic murders threatens Bright Falls, a small-town community surrounded by Pacific Northwest wilderness. Saga Anderson, an accomplished FBI agent with a reputation for solving impossible cases arrives to investigate the murders. Anderson’s case spirals into a nightmare when she discovers pages of a horror story that starts to come true around her.Alan Wake, a lost writer trapped in a nightmare beyond our world, writes a dark story in an attempt to shape the reality around him and escape his prison. With a dark horror hunting him, Wake is trying to retain his sanity and beat the devil at his own game.Anderson and Wake are two heroes on two desperate journeys in two separate realities, connected at heart in ways neither of them can understand: reflecting each other, echoing each other, and affecting the worlds around them.Fueled by the horror story, supernatural darkness invades Bright Falls, corrupting the locals and threatening the loved ones of both Anderson and Wake. Light is their weapon—and their safe haven — against the darkness they face. Trapped in a sinister horror story where there are only victims and monsters, can they break out to be the heroes they need to be?
Alan Wake 2launches October 27 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X. Game Rant was provided with a PC code for this review.
