Get out of the Dark Place in Alan Wake 2, the sequel to Remedy Entertainment's classic third-person thriller! Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well , and if it's worth buying.

Alan Wake 2 Review Overview

Alan Wake 2 Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
Enthralling Atmosphere and Dreamlike Setting Immersive Presentation Mystery That Pulls You in Deeper and Deeper As You Go	Combat Needs Tweaking Game Can Get Disorientating At Times First Few Hours Doesn’t Have You Play As Alan Wake

Alan Wake 2 Overall

Alan Wake 2 makes a strong impact as an engaging sequel to the original game. Its exceptional graphics, audio elements, and atmosphere grip the player throughout with its myriad of mysteries that keep them guessing what happened to the troubled writer since his last appearance. Although the game could be made into a less disorienting experience, Alan Wake 2 has all the hallmarks of a thrilling psychological adventure.

Alan Wake 2 Story

The game makes you hit the ground running as an FBI agent trailing a string of grisly murders that are seemingly connected to Alan Wake himself. From there, you end up dipping your toes into a myriad of other mysteries that are just as compelling as the main plot - from a string of lunch boxes full of messages directed to you to random nursery rhymes written by a secret government agency. It’s all very, very engrossing stuff.

Alan Wake 2 Gameplay

The game has a great blend of investigation, storytelling, and combat. While investigating, clues are highlighted and easy to pick up. They are then digested for the player in an easy-to-understand way via the Mind Place before being used to explain how the plot moves. Along the way, though, you’ll have to defend yourself, and combat is a lot like in modern survival horror games with an emphasis on ammo conservation and deft maneuvering.

Alan Wake 2 Visuals

Remedy Entertainment’s Northlight Engine does a stellar job of bringing Bright Falls and its denizens to life with beautiful lighting, multiple visual tricks, and an art style that’s both immersive and realistic. The environments are also well-designed - from Cauldron Lake and its surrounds to downtown Bright Falls - no other title can give you a more accurate-looking slice of eerie Americana.

Alan Wake 2 Audio

Most of the tracks in Alan Wake 2 range from the atmospheric to the dreamlike and creepy. They have this quality of presenting the game, even the "real" bits of it as a kind of waking dream. Not exactly enough of a nightmare to terrify you, but enough to unsettle and keep you on your guard. The voice acting is also great, especially by those who performed the roles of protagonist Saga Anderson and her partner Alex Casey.

Alan Wake 2 Value for Money

Thanks to being a digital-only release, the console version of Alan Wake 2 is still at $60, and in exchange, you are thrown into a more than decade-old mystery where there are many cases to solve, mysteries to uncover, and secrets to unlock - all surrounding a gripping, mysterious, and psychological tale. Alan Wake 2 is definitely worth the price tag.

Alan Wake 2 Review: A Tense, Trippy Romp Through the Threshold

Back to Bright Falls, and it couldn’t have been a more triumphant return. Alan Wake 2 is deep. It’s creepy. It’s unsettling. It’s beautiful. But most importantly, it’s gripping. That is its biggest strength. The game will grip you with a huge arm and drag you all the way to the bottom of Cauldron Lake.

Remedy Entertainment couldn’t have made a better sequel to the first Alan Wake in 2010. The Northlight Engine’s visuals are stunning, with lighting that can make the surroundings eerie and at the same time breathtaking. The art direction and the audio also work together to give you a strong vibe inspired by works of David Lynch - just like in the first game, the Twin Peaks vibe is still there, along with a few new influences. It’s insane, to put it lightly. Brilliantly insane. There’s a kind of dual narrative at play, one logical and organized, while the other runs on dream logic. These two narrative threads then meet together at the overlap, producing a surreal experience.

If you were a big fan of the original Alan Wake game, then you’ll definitely be drawn in by Alan Wake 2. Though it’s better if you have already played past Remedy titles, Alan Wake 2 is kind enough and gentle enough to let newcomers join the ride.

If you’re looking for more action, this isn’t the title for you - Alan Wake 2’s strength lies heavily in its story and atmosphere. The actual gameplay itself could use a bit of improvement, especially with the combat, but everything else makes up for it.

It’s hard to speak further about this game without giving too many spoilers. It’s a great story and a decent game. It’ll leave you thinking, and guessing, right until the end.

Pros of Alan Wake 2

Things Alan Wake 2 Got Right
Enthralling Atmosphere and Dreamlike Setting Immersive Presentation Mystery That Pulls You in Deeper and Deeper As You Go

Enthralling Atmosphere and Dreamlike Setting

Graphics and audio are one thing, but if you tie both of them, sending them both in a certain direction the right way, you have an immersive atmosphere. Alan Wake 2 has done it, and the result is a deep, foreboding, continuous dream-verging-on-nightmare. From the very beginning of the game, there’s already a sense of the dream-like and reality bleeding together, with the grittiness of the murder you’re investigating juxtaposed with the intrusion of the Dark Presence.

From there, the game just gets weirder and weirder, and the atmosphere reflects that with dark grays with stark reds in the distance signifying danger, the white light from overhead lamps indicating safety, and the chaotic darkness that act like, as the game calls them, "opposite of sunspots in your eyes" that covers enemies. The surroundings blur and swirl in the air, becoming fuzzy until you focus your eyes on them.

This atmosphere stays for the most part, keeping you in that dream-like state. Even when you get into the more surreal areas of the game, the atmosphere never really gets too fantastical or too realistic - it occupies the gray area between reality and the Dark Place, the so-called Overlap in the game where reality and unreality blend into each other.

Remedy has outdone itself, maintaining a consistent and eerie atmosphere in the game that leaves players feeling like they've gone through a continuous waking dream, just like the characters within it.

Immersive Presentation

Aside from the atmosphere, Alan Wake 2 really makes an effort to present the minds of its characters - FBI Agent Saga Anderson and the writer Alan Wake. Both characters have different ways of thinking and different ways of perceiving the world around them. When you play as either of them, you quickly get a sense of who’s more logical and more organized, and who’s more scattered but insightful.

For example, Anderson has what she calls a Mind Place. She methodically gathers clues, organizes them on a Case Board, lines them up neatly, and makes her analyses. Combining these analyses gives her a breakthrough.

Sometimes, Anderson will have to sit down and profile her subjects, try to get into their minds, and there they’ll reveal clues that she would’ve otherwise never gotten her hands on by simply relying on logic.

I don’t want to reveal much about how Alan Wake’s own "Plot Board" works, but let’s just say that since he’s a writer, he’s a lot less fixed to logic compared to Anderson. Not too illogical though - just like in Alan Wake 1, his story has to be consistent with its own internal logic.

The result is that we get a glimpse at how our lead characters think, and this allows us to be more interested in how their stories go. It’s another way that the game pulls you in deeper, and we’re not even talking about the story itself yet.

Mystery That Pulls You in Deeper and Deeper As You Go

A string of murders, everyone left in a state of bloating, their hearts hacked out, all of them had been missing since 2010, only to reappear recently to be killed. This is the kind of mystery you’ll be starting out with in Alan Wake 2, and from there, it gets weirder and weirder.

The way the story develops in the game is like a trail of breadcrumbs. You investigate clues, talk with NPCs, and make analyses of the case at hand. It makes you feel like a real investigator with how you have to piece together evidence yourself, and how certain pieces of evidence figure not only in one case but in another even larger case. There’s a great many of them too, just from Anderson’s perspective, and all of them will make you wander throughout Bright Falls just to get the pieces of evidence you need and crack the case.

Once you get into the Dark Place with Wake, things get more interesting. By the time you reach that, though, you’re already hooked and you won’t be able to stop - maybe even feel the need to play the game all the way through in one sitting just to know how it ends. You don't need me to fill you in with the details - you'll be hunting for them yourself.

Cons of Alan Wake 2

Things That Alan Wake 2 Can Improve
Combat Needs Tweaking The Game Can Get Disorientating At Times First Few Hours Doesn’t Have You Play As Alan Wake

Combat Needs Tweaking

Combat in Alan Wake 2 can get a bit wonky. It’s still similar to how it was in the original 2010 game - light your enemies with the flashlight, and shoot them once their shield is down. In Alan Wake 2, though, there’s a bigger emphasis on dodging enemy attacks and conserving ammo.

The problem is the lack of cues or indicators to help you anticipate enemy attacks. Unlike in some other games where players are given visual or audio cues to dodge or defend, in Alan Wake 2, players must manually track enemies and time their dodges.

This can be difficult, especially in confined spaces. Since you’re controlling the camera manually, if you don’t have the camera pointed at the enemy and they make an attack, then you’ll have to press the dodge button and pray that the attack does not connect. It doesn’t help that it’s tough to keep track of enemies when you’re healing either.

What happens is that combat feels somewhat clunky, and you somewhat feel helpless in combat. Not because it's intentional for the game's design, but because of a design shortcoming.

The Game Can Get Disorientating At Times

Now let me be clear and say that this could be an intentional thing. Dreams can be rather disorientating at times, and Alan Wake 2 wants to achieve that dream-like state. However, it can get a bit too much, especially if you’re battling a particularly tough enemy and it’s raining and there’s a myriad of visual effects going off onscreen.

There was this particular battle that seemed to take place in a forest that looped on and on, maybe with the help of procedural generation. It wasn’t easy to get my bearings, and the darkness of the whole place, coupled with the visual effects, made it dizzying to look at. Perhaps Remedy can ease up in this regard.

First Few Hours Doesn’t Have You Play As Alan Wake

This is a minor gripe in the larger scale of things, but some players may get a bit impatient with the beginning of Alan Wake 2. Because, if I remember correctly the game is titled "Alan Wake 2," not "Saga Anderson." Playing as another character entirely isn’t exactly a new concept. It’s just that some players may end up growing impatient, asking "why hasn’t Wake come out already?" considering that this is his game, after all.

It takes roughly 3 hours for him to show up in a playable form, and such a delayed introduction might be a bit too long. You would think Wake would play a more central role in his own game from the start.

Is Alan Wake 2 Worth It?

Alan Wake 2 Is One of the Best Psychological Thrillers of the Year

The atmosphere and story of the game alone make it worth the price tag. It’s a surreal, dark experience that is rarely offered by other games, especially in a state that is as polished as it is. Aside from the main story, there are a lot of side cases to solve, and you will want to sniff out every nook and cranny for easter eggs, and plot details, and to just take in the atmosphere this game has. So foreboding yet familiar, dreamy and dangerous, threatening yet inviting, this game is just something else. You’ll be missing out if you don’t get it.

Alan Wake 2 Overview & Premise

In the town of Bright Falls, a string of ritualistic murders have been happening, prompting the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to send field agent Saga Anderson to investigate. At Bright Falls, Anderson finds herself in the middle of a supernatural horror story - with the crime novelist Alan Wake (who went missing 13 years ago) being at the center of it all.

Although Alan Wake 2 is the sequel to the original Alan Wake, it is set up as a standalone experience. You can definitely play Alan Wake 2 without any experience with the previous game. But for returning players, there's an abundance of connective lore and easter eggs to discover.

Alan Wake 2 FAQ

What Are Alan Wake 2’s System Requirements for PC?

Is Alan Wake 2 a Horror Game?

From the get-go, Alan Wake 2 really gets close to becoming a survival horror game. It has all the hallmarks: limited ammo and resources, lots of shadows and darkness, and a foreboding atmosphere that will keep you on your toes. However, in my opinion, it's not exactly a horror game. It can be, but for the most part it's still a psychological thriller with heavy survival horror elements. It's more unsettling than it is scary.

Alan Wake 2 Trailer

Game8 Reviews

Alan Wake 2 Product Information

Title	ALAN WAKE 2
Release Date	October 27, 2023
Developer	Remedy Entertainment
Publisher	Epic Games
Supported Platforms	PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Genre	Third-Person Shooter, Thriller
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	Mature 17+
Official Website	Alan Wake 2 Website

Michael Mendoza Ab..

Reviews video games by day, tries to write novels by night. He's a sucker for open-world games (Bethesda Fallout titles, Mount and Blade Bannerlord, Grand Theft Auto), CRPGs (Planescape: Torment, Disco Elysium), and First-Person Shooters (Call of Duty, Battlefield, and immersive sims like Bioshock..