It's been 20 years since they made the last Max Payne entry before Rockstar made 3, 13 years since Alan Wake, which sadly didn't manage to capture audience's attention till much later. In fact, I guess Remedy's biggest crisis came from working with Microsoft, before moving on to their own.
They have a history of pushing for absolute peak fiction, the connoisseurs of cosmic reality warped together with the one we know. Of course, those largely inspired by noir fiction, and David Lynch. Or a mash-up of things only Sam Lake can cook up. Alan Wake II is the game I wish the first game was years ago, it's befitting that they came this far, and finally left another 2023 GOTY banger.
This game is such a step-up from everything else they've made, including Control. Even if the joke can be that it's a bit of a Last of Us or Resident Evil 4 knock off, it brings its own elements and complements the derivative aspects to something that feels new and fresh.
It's been 13 years since the events at Cauldron Lake in Brightfall took Alan Wake, including many others like the residents, tourists visiting, even an FBI agent investigating Wake. Who finally wakes up with a bloated body, naked in the forest, and seeing psychotic images of Scratch.
While the green tint is obviously setting up to be a motif of sorts in the story themes, one other thing that is clear is it's much more graphic and violent as well. Agent Nightingale is fully exposed, gets killed and sacrificed in a satanic ritual with his heart cut out, before tourists interrupted them.
His entirely being exposed in one shot, before it transitions to this frame of the river with the mountains on the background before the game title shows up separately by word. It's a crazy, intense 5 minute opening to a game like this, before we see Wake's real world counterpart of novel Alex Casey, and Saga Anderson, both FBI agents responding to Nightingale's body found.
Playing as Saga, I've gotten to learn about the mind place, just a single button tap and am there. Putting notes, pictures, and some evidence on the wall for each. She is an investigator, so playing in the detective role, Solving each cases, and profiling people.
It helps to navigate the situations, and provide more context from her viewpoint. Because there's a lot of mystery and intrigue here, as Remedy is known for their fluency in the bizarre. The mind place is also where I get to reroll TV footage and play the radio. For stuff that's there for novelty reasons.
Now remember, they do easter eggs, weird references and cameos, for some reason they cast the guy from Quantum Break as the sheriff of the town. While with us looking into the body in the morgue, he almost gives Alan's manuscripts but then the light flickers and he just disappears. Before Nightingale's rotten corpse wakes up, and kills 2 people. Anderson and Casey somehow survives.
I followed him back into the lake where he was found, went further deep in the woods by interacting with some witch puzzle, all the familiar bells and whistles from the first game are coming back. But more guttural, horrifying, and with a bleeding red light as motif. There, I fought off Nightingale.
Well, from here on, it went full survival horror. His presence was terrifying, he was manic, and I kept unloading every round I could, and dodging every attack. I had to open up containers on trees while running away from him, this dead dude was the harbinger of death.
It involves focus flashing with limited charge, before shooting him down. As the prior game have done. Would be easier if they gave me the flare gun or some resting spot. But no, it was constant terror until I finally took him. First boss fight, and am already trembling, that or maybe my PC couldn't maintain 60FPS. Is what I get for using RT with an AMD GPU.
After the fight blew over, a cutscene followed with her speaking to a shade that looks like Alan Wake from the dark place. After the lake floods, with red seeping from the horizon and refracted back, both agents look at the third person before them that happens to be....Alan Wake.
So yeah, the mind games begin here, but it's easier if I had remember everything from AW1, the DLCs, and Control expansion. All of that has led to this. My work in the lake was done, so I was given the option to go back. I didn't, I had an optional quest to investigate another area.
Gameplay doesn't only have mechanical challenges, but also mental situational ones. Enemy are designed to be scary, relentless, and a bit unpredictable. I did fight off some of the taken already, but the wolves are something entirely new. They run in circles before charging at me quick. I also have to figure out whether I can shoot them without shining the light. Considering the limited ammo.
That boss fight, and these encounters eventually created a sense of paranoia where I double check before I check the map or put files together in the mind place. Game rarely autosaves so I have to find these safe spots to manually save. And then there's the puzzles.
It's already difficult to navigate the areas because of how densely dark they get, then there's solving puzzles to unlock crates, which is also one of Saga's case file for the cult's stash. This other investigation was about figuring out folklore tales, anything can happen from this.
I mean, anything. Rewards are charms that acts as stat boosts or death-save items, but half the time the story revolves around wolves hunting and kill forest animals. Then they show up for me to fend off just out of the blue. It's quests like these is why I put my sanity at risk, because of the how connected each of these objectives are, and the way they represent world-building.
Such twisted wonders really keeps me going, there are even Alex Casey lunchboxes that have page fragments, and in a way, used for upgrading weapons as well. I call this kind of thing the "Remedy" flavor, and it is wonderfully plastered everywhere, including the next part.
After Saga's chapter was over, I started with Alan's flashback in the dark place. Where he takes an interview with a talk show host about a book he didn't remember writing. It's just a goofy episode where Sam Lake playing as himself as an actor who played Alex Casey sitting next to Wake.
Promoting the movie, and then a few 4th wall in a wall references being thrown, before things get pretty grim, and it transitions to me playing Alan. Trying to get out of the place, but not possible as the dark presence has a hold on him. Even if you've never played the prior games, the storytelling does a brilliant job of transcribing what exactly is happening.
Ah yes, my old friend Ahti from the old house, somehow he's here to help again. Good to see a familiar face. He'll reappear quite often in the game, but now playing as Alan, I've started to find ways off the broadcast station. Thanks to his help now that I have a key to the door, I was out.
There is also another mechanic involved here, and that is the lightbulb. By holding F, the room and dimension shifts. It's also designed cleverly to be used during exploration. Especially with the shadow threat that is out there. They ain't the same as the forest ones.
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The high production budget was truly being showcased here, mostly from the looks of the decrepit dream version of New York city. The seafoam green/bloody red color is constantly used as motifs for each particular scenes. Wake tries exploring the place to find his way out, only to stumble onto Alex Casey, the character he created, who died a painful dead.
The shadow represents the dark presence, and Scratch, Wake's alter ago that has kept him locked up. They don't even have a physical form, but again, the flashlight is my best friend and eventually exposes them for a quick kill. Sadly, there's not much ammo left in here.
Wake's part of the story is played differently here, he has his own mind room, but it's called the Writer's room. All he needs is some inspiration and collected materials somewhere, then stand in a room of interest, before changing the story which shifts part of the level.
The enemies here are even scarier, some of them zaps past me stupidly fast breaking every object they came to contact with. I had so many claustrophobic situations where I had to run towards the next place out. Forget shooting because there's too many of them.
Just when I thought I got out, the biggest form of the shadow attacked me, and I had to make a run. Listening to the audio of sheer terror from a studio headphone, am telling you, I haven't had this much anxiety since I played Dead Space this year. The subway levels are so sinewy in design, like they took the metroidvania designs from Control, but different in implementation.
Yeah, the overall tone of AW2 is darker, sinister, much gruesome. But there are also a lot of the weird, and joke worthy moments here and there. The developers knew how to have fun. Especially with these two Finnish business twins. Who keeps doing these silly advertisements.
It's filled with all kinds of veritable experiences. First one was a PG-13 Stephen King novel, this is Twin Peaks season 3. Every aspect of it pushes the boundary for gameplay, and storytelling. Even the side content is worth investing into. Fans like me finally got a good one this year.
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