This one's complicated. I've been sitting on my thoughts on this game for months. Alan Wake II is indeed an impressive production- Remedy continues to deliver some of the most outstanding visuals and high craft presentation in the industry. -but but but BUT---

-But. Let's slow down. Something is festering under the surface here. The praise Alan Wake II has received simply does not align with the experience I had, at all. And I think it really sealed the deal on an idea I've been ruminating on more and more- the idea that Video Games are simply the incorrect medium in which to tell certain stories. Or at least, that more artists need to be asking themselves "why does this story need to be a video game?"- and if they can't answer that question? Well then maybe they need to seriously reconsider their goals and move to a different medium, or re-examine the relationship between games and the stories they tell entirely.

Sam Lake- I respect you and your work- I respect your Avant Garde storytelling, I appreciate seeing more Lynchian influences in games, I like your characters and the visual flair with which you present your ideas, and I smiled wide when Alan came out to do a live performance at the game awards- but Alan Wake II should have been a prestige television show. At every turn while playing this game, I was frustrated to find how little the mechanics and narrative of this game coalesced into any kind of satisfying or cohesive experience. In fact- I found they often destructively interfered. Worse yet is how often the game seems to pay lip-service to the idea of making the story more interactive- wasting a gargantuan amount of time and effort on both the developer and player's part with entire mechanical systems that get in your way and try to pull the wool over your eyes. A trick that, for many, unfortunately seems to have worked. I'll get to that further down.

To some degree this isn't a new problem- I'd argue past Remedy games, including Alan Wake as well as Control (which I enjoyed far more) display a similar dis-interest / lack of sensitivity to evolving how stories are told in games. Which to be fair, is normal in this industry. 'Story In Games' is such an underexamined academic subject that your average consumer of games, as well as your average developer, have never stopped to question the current state of things. This makes it hard to criticize Remedy to much- the way the story is handled in something like Control is extremely standard and what you'll find in almost any AAA game.

And often this can be OK. The uncomfortable way story in games has plateaued into a sort of stable limbo isn't that way for no reason- it exists because it works. Better yet, the format puts minimal stress on the development team, and is extremely easy and comfortable to consume for a society that has grown accustomed to the storytelling hallmarks and pastiche of a filmic medium that is to games 100 years their senior, and has had much more time to permeate culture.

And all that to say that it's often easy to forgive- I can play 'Control' and largely overlook this quality- while still acknowledging the problem and ultimately holding it back from being something I'd consider transformative or important to the medium, and slightly dinging how I'd 'score' it on my own personal scale, for all that matters.

The difference then, when looking at Alan Wake II compared to past Remedy games, falls on it's new 'investigation' systems- the Case Room/Board and the Writer's Room/Board. I'll just cut to the point- these mechanics were so shockingly shallow that they detracted from the game. Every time I needed to engage with these systems (which is frequently) both the story and game's pace slammed to a screeching and distracting halt. The lie that Alan Wake II tells is that these breaks in pace are going to be worth it- the promise seemingly being made to me when introduced to these systems early on was that I'd soon find myself playing investigator, using these systems to examine and engage deeply with the game's story, using lateral thinking to uncover hidden truths in the narrative and making spatial progress while I'm at it. Unfortunately, the systems never really evolve past their tutorials.

All the Case Board amounts to is nothing more than busy work- stop and click on the 16 pre-requisite UI items before you can advance in the game. And sprinkle an excessive amount of enforced pauses and flavor animations on top so that the process takes minutes instead of seconds. The case board basically amounts to "this meeting could have been an email" in the form of a game mechanic. There are no choices to be made in this system, you're never actually tasked with playing the part of the investigator. Connecting clues to suspects or drawing connections between cults and their members? Not really. Just click the glowing menu item and pat your back as Saga solves the case in your stead.

My problem isn't really that the game presents a straightforward narrative in which Saga works through the case herself, it's that you wasted my time with the illusion that I'd get to do that myself. And that you continue to do so for the duration of the story. For this system to have worked, there'd have needed to be less guidance, more red-herrings, and consequences explored for making incorrect investigative assumptions. As it is you simply exhaust the available glowing pips and listen to some long-winded ( albeit still well written ) diatribes.

I'd have rather been presented a dry UI menu or been rolled directly into a more traditional ( and skippable ) cutscene in which Saga presents her case and moved on with the story. Cut the chaffe. Loading into the case room, going to the board, placing the pins, moving over to the interrogation table, talking to 4 characters, returning to the case board, placing more pins... it's tedious and a tad insulting. I understand the desire for all this flavor- it's the sort of thing you'd have loved to show in your movie or television show, but it is not something worth playing through if it's not going to be mechanically inventive.

Almost all the same gripes apply to the Writer's Room, but I think it fares -slightly- better. From a narrative standpoint- re-writing the game's script in order to effect the real world? That is a fantastic idea with interesting implications and appropriate synergy with the game's narrative themes- really. But the only thing fantastic about the execution here is how much of a missed opportunity it is. Same diagnosis as the case board- not enough options, not enough red-herrings, to little consequence for mistakes. The result is also the same, it turns into a tiring process of guess-and-check, of ticking boxes. Since you are almost always locked to a confined space when the mechanic is required, and provided so few options, it's simply a game of trying them all. Switch story, walk around the 2 available rooms, click an item, switch to the next one. It never gets complicated enough for me to classify any of these moments as "puzzles". It's saving grace being that it's briefer and more mechanically consequential than anything that happens on the Case Board.

I could easily see a better version of the Writer's Room- one in which there is a significantly larger pool of writing prompts, and sometimes multiple stories existing simultaneously across multiple spatial contexts across the game's open world. More noise in the system would obfuscate solutions and provide opportunities for the player to use lateral thinking and make genuine leaps in logic in order to progress, maybe even uncover secrets and hidden narrative context. Imagine needing to fill in 2 or 3 details of a narrative madlib, and not only that- you need to know spatially where in the world it will be relevant to boot. If you want people to avoid guess-and-check, guess-and-checking needs to be rendered impractical by sheer volume of options, or more intensely punished.

I'll also make special callout to the Angel Lamp mechanic- which is an odd inclusion in that it is basically just a better version of the Writer's Room ( Moreso in terms of current execution and how it plays, rather than in terms of concept, narrative implication, or the potential in the system ) Being a lot snappier to use, and a tad less spelled out when it's employed. The most disappointing thing about this mechanic to me ultimately is that the potential depth it could have had if it more frequently crossed over and synergized with the Writer's Room puzzles was never really capitalized on. Could have made for some engaging spatial puzzles, while also creating some good thematic juice wherein you write new stories and then illuminate details within them to make discoveries. As it stands the two mechanics usually didn't cross-talk. I think the designers probably realized the unfortunate reality of the two mechanics eventually- which is that the Angel Lamp and the Writer's Room basically serve identical mechanical purposes, and in their bewilderment at this realization, and with how deep into development they likely were, just conceded with siloing the two mechanics. In their current forms? One of them should likely have been cut, and the other given more attention.

To cap off my discussion of the 'investigation' mechanics, I'll just say that ultimately the more straightforward narrative presentation in 'Control' or even past Alan Wakes served those games better- I found the constant pace breakers in AWII made it hard for me to appreciate or process the narrative, and at times left me feeling a bit resentful towards it for getting in the way and clogging the pipes. I'll give Alan Wake II a consolation trophy for trying. I think I'd rather Remedy be starting to take baby steps towards exploring how to tell stories in games, they just happened to trip and fall on their noses in this case.

But is that all really enough to condemn the game? There's still a lot of narrative flare to be enjoyed and appreciated, EVEN within these flawed systems. But unfortunately the game tripped and fell on it's face a second time, and practically got a concussion in the process. And the second rock on the road? The game's combat.

I don't really know what happened. I really enjoyed the combat in Control- and when Alan Wake II was teased and announced I got excited. Alan Wake 1 had extremely rudimentary combat that was a tad boring, but didn't get in the way to much. So surely there were lessons learned, and Alan Wake II would deliver something at the very least more engaging than that, yeah?

What they tried to do with the combat here is commendable, I can see the plan- something a bit more RE4, more frantic and aggressive- duck and weave, reload, one- maybe two exchanges will decide things. You die fast, so does the enemy. BAM- it's over- just like that, an exciting adrenaline high. But like most well-laid plans, the problems came with the execution. There's just something so... gummy? About Alan Wake 2's combat systems. Something unreliable and wishy-washy. Dodging doesn't feel reliable, switching weapons, reloading, aiming, and firing all feel unresponsive. Feedback for what Saga/Alan is doing at any moment isn't quite clear, done reloading? Still switching? Is the dodge animation over yet?

There's certainly something wrong here in regards to feedback- the sounds and animations are just not snappy, they don't communicate state transitions enough for me to make confident choices and responses in the heat of the moment. I feel like this is one of those things where realism is getting in the way. In a desire to keep things cinematic and grounded, perhaps they felt there was no room for snappy, 'gamey' animations and sound? I'm not sure. Not to mention the inconsistent interruptability ( or lack thereof ) of various actions. I could be reloading and an enemy may have knocked me out of the animation, meaning it never finished. But the feedback is so poor that I couldn't tell. Then when I go to shoot nothing happens, I go in for a dodge to correct for my mistake, but saga was amidst an unskippable animation of lowering her gun, but it was hard to read that, so she turned around while continuing to lower her weapon, which LOOKS like a dodge but isn't, I get hit instead. Then the buffered dodge comes out after that, I attempt to switch to a heal item, then use it. Only for it not to get used because I actually never switched, since switching items can't be engaged mid dodge since that is also an animation priority action. But the healing animation is equally unreadable, so I presume the healing input worked and switch to my weapon, then take another hit from behind and die, quite confused because I assume I healed somewhere during all that mess.

All of this could have been fine if I felt empowered to read Saga/Alan's state and make appropriate calls, but well, I couldn't? For the record I played the game on hard- and these fumbles often resulted in a death. AND despite this I somehow had a comically overflowing amount of healing items, because most deaths were an omni-shambles of misreads as described above- not something that felt natural or in my control.

Because of the aforementioned problems, I never felt the game allowed me to present any "mastery" over it's systems. No matter how familiar I was with the enemies and their attack patterns, or how prepared I was with reloaded weapons and a stock of grenades, or how perfect my aim- A clean combat encounter that was going well could end suddenly, and It didn't often feel like my fault. The result was combat in this game was just, annoying? Not difficult. I didn't really want to engage with it. I kind of cringed when enemies showed up and just desperately wanted to get it over with. Something I can't say I felt in Control, where I felt I could confidently navigate the arena, switch weapons, and use abilities without concern.

This had trickle down knock-on effects, too. The game incentivizes a lot of back-tracking to clean up some of it's collectibles, find optional weapons, and seek out more optional backstory and Control easter eggs. But when you attempt to do so it dumps enemies on you randomly like it's Christmas morning. And with how annoying they are to engage with, I grew fatigued by this really quickly. It doesn't help that enemies in AWII are actually great at chasing you long distances- if you attempt to simply run from encounters you're going to get hunted down and torn apart from behind by wolves, speedster enemies, or projectiles.

And so, due to the combat, I abandoned caring to do side content. Not to say that the side content was worth doing- which made it quite easy to abandon.

The world of Alan Wake II feels off- hollow and veneered in a way that seems to odd to not be intentional? Like- it might be intentional. We are in a manufactured reality formed by a story, after all. But this aspect of the world goes so under-examined that I also couldn't tell if it WAS intentional? It probably is? But just kind of another small vector in which the game fails to communicate it's ideas properly.

Anyhow all this kind of sums up the ways Alan Wake II lost me with it's mechanics. I loved looking at it, listening to it- embracing the atmosphere and character- but to much got in the way. The narrative clashes with the mechanics, both weakened by the other. The game kind of ends up being less than the sum of it's parts in a way disruptive enough to be noticeably different then past remedy outings.

For me, all these issues compounded in a fashion that sort of left the narrative strung out to dry as well. Got me wondering what's even the point?

Perhaps it was all the pace breakers and distractions, maybe it was general eye-rolling malaise at engaging with the combat? Maybe it was the flat feeling world of 2 dimensional extras? Maybe it was the hypnotic impatient trance I fell into when the investigation mechanics were busy disrespecting my time and intelligence? I'm not sure- but something just didn't resonate with me and I found I got very little from the story and it's twists and turns. It never really gripped me- I found it hard to care about Alan or Saga.

Odder still was the game's seeming disinterest in exploring the concept of swapping between our protagonists. With their two worlds bound through time and space via Wake's writing- could we have not explored some mechanical consequences to being able to play both sides? It seems all to obvious that the player should be able to manipulate Saga's reality by playing as Wake- and perhaps in some regard the inverse as well. I know the NARRATIVE explores this idea- but again, this is a videogame. If it's not something I get to engage with why is it even there? As it stands there's almost no reason to allow the player to swap on their own terms- other than backtracking. Alan and Saga only need to be swapped between in order to lift arbitrary narrative barriers by making linear progress- another illusion of control this game employs.

I've followed Alan's story from the beginning- and one thing I can also say for sure is that Scratch was never particularly compelling as a character or a concept to begin with- a rather cliche idea that the story acts as if it has deeper things to comment on than it actually ever does. I get it- It's just not that poetic or deep.

There's just a lot of muddy messages and thematic ideas that are conjured for their style rather than their substance- a lot of Lynchian motifs and Stephen King pastiches swirling around being evoked in ways that feel self-indulgent and lacking the underlying meaning for which they were originally employed, incurious to their own form of delivery. To much telling, not enough showing. Scenes that seem to only exist to allow the team to flex their technical filmmaking prowess but string you along and never resolve, while you stand in a dark theatre for 20+ minutes with no discernable end in sight, forever blue-balled by the nagging question "why can I even control anything right now?"

And again the entire time the questions deafeningly ringing around my skull-

What does this story say about Video Games? What does the Video Game have to offer to the story?

And an answer to either never comes.

Toss this one on the pile- Additional evidence for my mounting case file. Because the praise this game receives only further illuminates the idea that Games as a medium remain immature- misunderstood- underexplored- and that the public is still pretty blind to the way Filmic language can deceive. Being strategically employed to craft a competent and largely entertaining veneer, that largely succeeds only when examined under the expectations of an entirely different artistic medium- Learn to look down, why are you holding the controller? The medium is the message- something that was absolutely pivotal to Lynch's body of work.

Alan Wake II is impressive, sometimes beautiful, crafted with talent and passion by likeable people- And we should acknowledge that while also being able to recognize that despite this, it still fails.

Goofy ass jank buggy game that's often actually harder if you play it with a friend and honestly that's kind of hilarious.

Steals almost all of it's charm from it's predecessor, but hey at least you get a bunch more Impact battles and they're still fun.

See this one through and you'll laugh, cry, cuss, and shout "WHAAT!?" a lot.

Also gets the record for 'worst controls on a level select screen' I've ever fucking seen -bar none- and that is really quite special.

Honestly this game's ambition is commendable- it's occasionally pretty fun. Most of the time it's even nice to look at... But, y'know- it's DK64.

I mean, it's just sadistically designed. It seems that often the motive behind this game's design was "How can we occupy a kids time as long as possible" , and it sure succeeds at that goal.

But there's just so much character to this game, the personable animations, complete earworm sound design, all the playable characters, the ridiculous minigames that vary from LITERALLY BROKEN to kind of sick, the atmosphere and impressive colorful/dynamic lighting (for the era), and really just how nonsense it is that a game about 5 apes collecting bananas was given so much love and attention. This game is so 'video-gamey' and full of ridiculous scenarios and sincere cartoonish absurdity in a way it's unlikely we'll ever see out of AAA ever again- and it's really quite hard not to smile in the face of all that. It's a product of its time and a team of absolute lads hamming it up in their prime.

That said, it's still full of an INSANE amount of padding, runs horribly, lacks any real lateral thinking to most of it's arbitrary tasks and rewards, involves a lot of running around vacuously large maps, and is handily overshadowed by Banjo Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, and Conker's Bad Fur Day. This game just feels like a giant list of chores in a way its contemporaries managed to avoid by giving their collecting better justifications- A little more narrative context, somewhat more sensible logic behind what abilities you use, and when or where you use them. Not to mention you'll at least be playing the correct character when you stumble into a new scenario... All those things unsurprisingly go a long way.

There's some great quality of life mods to improve the experience and I really do suggest playing with the ability to switch Kongs from anywhere, and maybe something so that you don't have to turn in your bananas 5 separate times? But I can't judge an idealized version of the game, only what RARE put out into the world.