Alan Wake II – A Hilarious Nightmare of Toasters and Terrors
It’s been a mere thirteen years since Alan Wake’s spouse mysteriously vanished in the peculiar town of Bright Falls. Trying to review Alan Wake II is a bit like herding caffeinated cats – it’s an exercise in controlled chaos. Alan Wake II is a rollercoaster ride that moves from a leisurely stroll through psychological intrigue to a wild dash of survival action. It’s like attempting to complete a puzzle with missing pieces, the flaming toasters only add to the fun.
In a year brimming with gaming gems, Alan Wake II shines like a UFO in a haystack. The story unfolds across two realities, and surprisingly, it’s more coherent than trying to understand modern art. In the present day, we inhabit the shoes of FBI Agent Saga Anderson in Bright Falls, investigating ritualistic murders. The opening hours of procedural investigations make you feel like a detective chasing leads while avoiding supernatural spatulas.
Alan Wake II introduces Saga’s magical caseboard, a metaphysical organization tool. It’s like a magical device I wish I had when watching complicated TV shows. It corrals clues and character profiles better than I can juggle flaming toasters and watermelons.
Alan Wake II’s settings are like peanut butter and jelly for horror enthusiasts. Bright Falls offers picturesque landscapes, much like the postcards you’d send from your last family vacation, where Aunt Maude got lost in the corn maze. But the game’s take on New York steals the spotlight. Imagine the nightmare after binge-watching Taxi Driver while consuming a year’s supply of cheese – that’s the Big Apple in Alan Wake II. It’s like a kaleidoscope on a rollercoaster, thrown in a blender with a neon rave for ghosts.
Alan’s reality introduces some head-scratching environmental puzzles. Using a paranormal table lamp, he absorbs light from one source and redirects it to create a safe zone. It’s like a DIY disco in the dark, and it gets more complicated over time. I’ve had fewer headaches solving a Rubik’s Cube in the dark while riding a unicycle and juggling flaming toasters. Wait, did I mention toasters earlier?
Instead of a boring evidence board, Alan’s world involves searching for plot elements in the form of floating orbs. It’s like trying to find your car keys in a room filled with helium balloons, except the car keys unlock eerie scenes from Alan’s Alex Casey novels. These scenes twist reality, bringing us one step closer to the dark place’s exit. It’s like trying to figure out why cats stare at invisible things, but with more existential dread.
The game’s narrative and meta-mystery are as confusing as assembling a jigsaw puzzle in a house of mirrors while riding a rollercoaster through a funhouse. The cherry on top is Creative Director Sam Lake, who plays multiple roles in this psychological carnival. It’s so meta that I expected to find a Russian nesting doll labeled “Inception.”
The game’s combat system builds upon the original’s flashlight-focused battles, adding some zest to the proceedings. Enemies are literal shadows, and burning away their darkness shields with a flashlight feels like a light show at a disco for poltergeists. Alan Wake II’s unlimited sprint ability feels like a cheat code in a world where most characters can’t run ten yards without wheezing like a leaf blower.
Enemies are a mixed bag, from hulking brutes with sledgehammers to darting wolves and multi-limbed mirror monsters – like an art installation gone rogue. Some even throw darkness projectiles, which I can only describe as an aerial rave for gloomy spirits. It’s like attending a virtual poetry slam, except the poems are laced with shadowy doom.
Boss fights are where the game flexes its dark muscles. From an up-close brawl with a reanimated tree-branch-wielding corpse to a nerve-wracking showdown against darkness blobs, the game’s like a Halloween party where everyone brings their A-game. I haven’t seen this many shades of darkness since my last Eminem album.
What’s genuinely creepy, though, are the whispering apparitions in Alan’s reality. They’re like the chatty neighbors who won’t leave you alone when you’re trying to mow your lawn, but when they don’t dissipate, they become a problem. It’s like dealing with that one friend who laughs at their own jokes, but suddenly their jokes involve lurking in the dark.
Alan’s mental health isn’t the only shaky thing in the game. Saga’s skill upgrades are about as balanced as a one-legged pirate on a seesaw. It’s like baking a cake with ten times the frosting but only one layer. Saga faces survival-horror stereotypes like repairing fuse boxes and solving combination locks that require a degree in advanced lockpicking (from the University of Keys and Locks).
There’s also a dearth of new Night Springs episodes, but the quirky commercials that replace them, featuring the Koskela brothers, provide a good laugh. It’s like swapping your usual brand of cereal
Still, any issues I had with Alan Wake II sank without a trace like an out-of-towner in Cauldron Lake, washed away by the torrent of other things that it gets right. It undoubtedly takes a lot of inspiration from film and television, taking the Twin Peaks-meets-The Twilight Zone base of the original and mixing in the best bits of True Detective, Seven, Inception, and more into the pot. But it also folds in some nods to some modern gaming classics, blindsiding you with truly unnerving, Inscryption-like fourth-wall trickery and eerie full-motion video moments that recall 2022’s found-footage freak out, Immortality.
Any issues I had with Alan Wake II sank without a trace like an out-of-towner in Cauldron Lake,
