Alan Wake 2 (XSX|S/PS5/Epic Games Store). Digital only. Gamespot 10.

Right, finished. I think, I dunno and to be honest I’m not sure I care. I’m so annoyed at this game, it’s so unbelievably frustrating. I want to give it a complete pasting but I can’t because honestly it’s quite good. Having said that I can definitely understand the 4/5/6 out of 10s more than the 10s.

The good is really bloody good, the world, the music, the environments, how ambitious it is, the mix of live action and gameplay. It does some really cool stuff and the musical moment is genuinely brilliant. It’s a great horror game with some truly chilling moments, the Alan Wake death screen, the drowned woman plot line and Alice Wake killing herself. All really dark and moody and properly scary stuff.

The bad though is just interwoven through the whole game and every single strawberry floating moment I was willing it to be better. The main culprit is undoubtedly the combat. I will not hear out any apologists for it, you may get more used to it on subsequent playthroughs but it is just entirely dysfunctional. From the unclear enemy forms to the light mechanic, to the whole strawberry floating point of it. You quickly learn there is absolutely no point in engaging with combat encounters unless the game forces your hand. There’s no reward for killing enemies and the frustration just interrupts the flow of exploring. It’s properly crap.

Speaking of the game interrupting itself, my god does this game begrudge you playing it. Slapping things up on a wall, watching cutscenes, looking at tv ads, doing profiles of characters, NPCs rambling on about crap. It’s almost like the game knows it’s core mechanics are just flat out not good enough so it tries to distract you from engaging with them for more than 10 minutes at a time. Control may have had more waffle in it than this but it was much more easily ignored.

The game looks nice, not jaw dropping (at least not on PS5) but what the gooseberry fool is up with the lighting. It’s so strawberry floating janky. It’s like the game always wants you to have the torch on so even when it’s the middle of the day, the second your out of direct sunlight everything goes a weird shady orange and you can’t see gooseberry fool. It’s such a weird look, Anne it’s supposed to be part of the atmosphere but it pissed me off more than anything else.

Finally the story, it’s just whatever. Remedy sure can build a world but the most off putting thing here is that Sam Lake clearly strawberry floating loves this gooseberry fool to death and he’s just spinning round circles loving the world he’s created and himself in it and you’re just watching thinking ‘can we get to the strawberry floating point please’. Control is pretty meandering but you have such a clearer focus on the moment to moment structure. I’m watching the second bought of end credits now and I don’t know if it’s the end of the game or a fake out and I’m really half way through as honestly nothing really seems to have been resolved and I don’t really understand the point of anything I’ve done.

Needless to say it’s been a very disappointing experience. I’m on the hook now for all the DLC and I guess I’ll go through it but boy this really could have been a worldy if it had better game direction. Instead it’s just a colossal missed opportunity with some great moments and maybe one of the best game soundtracks ever.

8

Apparently this has done shockingly badly in America, with Player Engagement Tracker saying Alan Wake 2 didn’t rank in the Top 150 played games on PlayStation or Xbox for October.

Did the original do well?

It's possible because of no physical disc at the moment.

KK wrote:Apparently this has done shockingly badly in America, with Player Engagement Tracker saying Alan Wake 2 didn’t rank in the Top 150 played games on PlayStation or Xbox for October.

Did the original do well?

How is this tracked? I'm struggling to believe that's right, with it hitting 11th in the PS download charts for USA in October.

https://blog.playstation.com/2023/11/08 ... downloads/

I don't think 11th is a particularly great result mind you but I can't see how that tracks with the Player Engagement Tracker result you posted.

According to npd, “Our Player Engagement Tracker delivers more insightful analysis into consumer habits with behavior metrics that track player retention, title cross-play, time spent, active users by title and platform, and more, evaluating activity down to daily active users, and measuring engagement down to minutes played.”

I’m presuming the game would have also needed to have sold really poorly on Xbox, and of those that have bought it, only then played it for a few hours at most before moving on to something else. The other possibility is that everyone bought it on PC (which isn’t included in the data).

The combat was easily the worst thing about the original game. Surely it can't be even worse in this :dread:

The more of a horror feeling and the detective elements sound interesting, but if Alan is as annoying and unlikeable as before and the combat's still bad, then I think that kills my interest in this.

Lotus wrote:The combat was easily the worst thing about the original game. Surely it can't be even worse in this
The more of a horror feeling and the detective elements sound interesting, but if Alan is as annoying and unlikeable as before and the combat's still bad, then I think that kills my interest in this.

Oh it is.

I've replayed Alan Wake soon after finishing AW2, and there is a huge difference in combat.

At least Alan's stamina is a lot better in the sequel. In the original, it's saying that if you are overwhelmed by the taken, run for the safety of lights... yeah that would be great if Alan didn't go out of breath after a minute of running.

The sequels combat feel a lot heavy than the original. It's far worse when you are fighting the wolves (bastards, the lot of them.) The game is a bit unfair when you are fighting faster enemies that outmanovers your turning which feels like a tank enriched in treacle.

I've just realised that AW2 don't have any possessed objects.

Pretty spot on review.

Started playing this last night (only played it for like an hour or so so far). After 13 years of waiting why on earth did they make the first thing you play a "walk slowly forwards to trigger-JUMP SCARE-this cutscene" section :lol:

Big fan of how Hannibal it feels so far considering the one director is called Will Graham. Reckon they only hired him for the name?

Based on the story I wouldn't put it past Sam Lake

At this point is Sam lake basically the western Hideo Kojima?

Trelliz wrote:At this point is Sam lake basically the western Hideo Kojima?

No way. Sam Lake actually seems to have some humility :lol:

Received a 9/10 in Edge this month.

Free update this Monday.

New Game Plus mode, new manuscripts and new ending and Nightmare difficulty.

Zilent Night wrote:
Trelliz wrote:At this point is Sam lake basically the western Hideo Kojima?

No way. Sam Lake actually seems to have some humility

I know what you mean but I think some of that other people's promotion of Kojima rather than his own.

It was nice to see Remedy picking up so many awards even if AW2 didn't particularly hit for me.

Real ending locked behind NG+ :dread:

Hexx wrote:

Real ending locked behind NG+

It's up on YouTube already.

I think they just held off that part of ending just for this update. Thankfully its free. Still I would be a bit peeved off if I replayed it, looking forward to the ending and go "That it?"

Sad to see that the impressions in here were not overly favourable, I just completed it (first playthough) and thought it was fantastic.

Picked this up on the Iceland Store for £28 (including international payment fees which totalled 95p).

Doubt I can go wrong for that price. No VPN required.

Alan Wake 2 (XSX|S/PS5/Epic Games Store). Digital only. Gamespot 10.

Who is online

Affiliates