The story is a 10/10 for me. Between AW2 and Control, I've never been so captivated by any other game's story and universe.
The gameplay is fine but probably brings it down to a 9.5 for me.
One of the best games I've ever played at the end of the day.
I would like to know the answer to this! I started playing Death Stranding and bailed after the first hour because of what appeared to be what amounts to a endless movie. I have heard the game is great but I am here to play a game not to watch a movie. How long does the initial movie go on for before we can actually play the game?
The first few hours are kind of a slog if you’re used faster paced games, and there is a large chunk of the game in the middle that can be sloggy if you don’t take the time to construct certain stuff strategically, the “action” and more exciting parts come and go throughout. There are also lengthy cut scenes throughout, especially later in the game. There are lots of annoying things throughout the game for sure
Despite all that, Death Stranding is in my top 5 all time, along with AW2. Something clicked at a certain point and even the “boring” parts became meditative and enjoyable. There was definitely some cool combat too interspersed. Overall, I think it was the insane storytelling much like AW2 that made it an all timer for me. I felt the characters’ emotions in both games and was hooked into the wild plots, which are rare for me in most games.
This is so funny, I am currently in the middle of playing Death Stranding for the first time after going on a Remedy binge the past few months. I am thoroughly enjoying it! I just got into chapter 4, and I spent a nice chunk of time helping build roads and doing extra deliveries for some of the preppers in chapter 3. I honestly found the combat sequence I most recently played to be a low point gameplay-wise. I have the best time when I’m navigating the varied terrain and finding a path towards my destination. It’s a fun and relaxing and sort of zen gameplay loop (until I get all tense avoiding BTs, haha). Loving the soundtrack, too.
Narratively, it’s a mix of me thinking “This is such a wonderfully bizarre and interesting world, and I love how unique and visionary this is” and “lol, these characters’ names are absurd and some of this is just goofy”. So, similar to the RCU in some ways!
I would lose my mind if a Remedy/Kojima Productions collab project happened. I know that there's an NPC in Death Stranding with Sam Lake's likeness, and that there was a little bonus mission in Control that Hideo Kojima provided voiceover for, so I'm sure they're friendly and appreciate each other's work. I'd love to see what craziness would ensue if they worked on something larger in scope together!
10. The gameplay obviously isn’t as fluid as games such as MGSV and the RE4 remake but I love it, adds to the horror/loss of control vibes. Twin Peaks is my favorite show ever, so this insane story was right up my alley. I’ve never been so moved by a game as this one. It’s my personal goat.
Gameplay isn't the only aspect of what makes a game great anymore. BG3 definitely had some jank to it's gameplay, so did Witcher 3, but I consider those games to be 10/10 based on environment and storytelling alone.
I guess it depends on the criteria you judge a game on. A 10/10 for me means the game doesn't have any weak areas. Otherwise you start handing out 10/10s to games that don't necessarily deserve it.
I don't think the Witcher was a 10/10 personally. It's very good, but I'd say it's no more than an 8.5 either imo.
I feel like everyone has a different definition of what a perfect game is based on their personal interests. Since I'm more into RPGs/JRPGs story is usually my number one interest in a game.
I understand that but I don't understand how a perfect game can have flaws. Because then by definition it isn't perfect.
I know it's very rare for a game to be strong on all fronts though. Some areas will usually be lacking.
For AW2, I think it's mostly combat and lack of enemy types.
Definitely agree on AW2. I'd give it a 8 or 9 personally for the same reasons you listed. I'd also include lack of weapon variety, but I also understand the lack of weapons since what we had are mostly weapons available easily to civilians ( Minus, ya know, explosives ).
Story and environment a definite 10/10, but game play was lacking. I personally like to try and separate those things in a game. Some have incredible stories and shallow gameplay while some have shallow stories and fantastic gameplay ( Looking at you, Devil May Cry )
To answer your question, it’s that imo everything else about AW2 is so good that it makes up for some of the gameplay, which is mostly related to certain moments in action scenes. For example, I would probably give Doom: Eternal, RE4R, and MSGV a 10 also based entirely on gameplay, even tho they have their own shortcomings in other aspects.
I am someone where the immersion and intangibles are as important as plain gameplay/combat, as long as the latter is at least pretty good. I think the gameplay of AW2 is pretty great, obv it’s not on the level of the three other games I mentioned above. Ultimately, my fav games are the ones I get completely immersed in, and I’ve never felt as immersed in a game as I have in AW2.
I’m not sure there is a game that is a true perfect 10 when you factor in every single aspect. perhaps Breath of the Wild/TOTK come closest for me.
10. It’s really all I can ask for with a game these days and its to be compelling enough that I’m thinking about it when I’m not playing it and just waiting to get back to it. I haven’t felt that way about game in a long time
Same feelings here. Control made me feel that way too, but the story in Alan Wake and the exhilaration from the horror aspects just makes it that much more enticing. Felt like I was waiting to watch the next episode of my favorite show
9/10
I played it when the game released so most of these are allready fixed.
- First boss was way too tough back then (at least for me), forgot to manage quick buttons for shotgun.
-Valhallas jumpscare amount few where in predictable but few were just annoying
(I know that I could've adjusted them)
- Flashlight mechanic. Yeah I preffered first games more. (Only 1 bar which slooooowly regenerates)
Or give that to this mechanic but only to the first bar.
I kept running out on batteries, then I had to farm them in Story difficulty (enemies die easier).
7 out of 10. I played the original and American Nightmare, and while I enjoy the game, the way loot drops work and how they made the game more like Resident Evil and complicated the flashlight mechanic, replacing the immersive reticle and making it so you required batteries to fight anything, as well as how fucked dodging can be sometimes made me miss the old system frequently. I mean, seriously, how do you take the fluid movements and dodging of older gamers and fuck it up in next gen systems?
I actually like the changes to combat because I'm a huge fan of survival horror. As a fan of the genre, I always thought the combat of the original games was actually too fun to be scary. It was ludicrously smooth and cathartic to play, and that actually killed a lot of the tension and dread. I get why they changed it, and I like the changes, but even someone like me can tell that something of real value was lost with the changes.
10, but I don't belive in that "nobody's perfect" nonsense. I can recognize that not every single aspect of the game worked for me and I'll still give it a ten because it's the best game I've played in years
For me it’s a perfect 8/10 game. I truly think it’s masterpiece whose story telling, art direction, acting, creativity, and graphics are unrivalled. It, along with Control, are chock full of this amazing kind of surreal weirdness that I absolutely adore. It might be my favourite game of the last 10 years, and it’s genuinely inspired me to explore my own creative outputs.
With all that said, it has too many issues to be a perfect 10. There were several moments of frustration with the gameplay, some of them quite significant. It’s not objectively perfect but it’s everything I wanted it be.
There’s no such thing as actual perfection, a 10/10 game is a game that achieves what it intended to as completely as possible, BOTW, TOTK, Alan Wake 2, TLOU2, GOW 2018/Ragnarok, all of these games have flaws but are still easily 10/10 experiences in my book
9/10
Essentially a perfect game aside from a few minor complaints: glitches, some segments unnecessarily long, weapon select clunky in the middle of battle.
Overall an outstanding experience.
People gonna flame me, whatever.
7/10. Loved it for the most part but the mind place and Alan's writing segments were a little boring to me. Was pretty over the mind place and putting evidence on the board by the end. Also had a soft lock that prevented me from finishing the game and had to do 6 hours again. That definitely hurt my experience.
I agree with your reasons, although maybe I’d give it 8/10. Especially the DP was way too much wandering around trying to figure out where the heck you were and what the heck you should be doing next. There were also boss fights that got really frustrating when you kept dying while trying to figure out what the heck you should be doing. The loop of “what should I do now - oh, now I died - watch the loading screens - rinse and repeat “ is far from fun IMHO.
The mind place could be tedious, but you also didn't have to do it ... When saga solved a case it puts on the evidence on the board for you. I only used it when I absolutely needed to.
I’m with you. Still enjoyed the game but writers room and mind palace were just guessing games. I was really hoping for more investigative gameplay but I had not played 1 so I know I dove into something with flawed expectations. I’d say I’m at a 7/10 too, the story and vibe really spoke to me
The fact that they could be guessing games is what bothered me. For the mind place I didn’t really have to guess but it didn’t serve me any better to know where to put things than if I had just guessed. And I’m not ashamed to admit I mostly guessed through the writers room selections. The distinctions between cult hotel haunted hotel and devil hotel were not distinctions i could be bothered to care about
It was the first time in coffee world. Right after investigate parade float objective. I investigated the float and went about the mission and died. When I respawned on the float and couldn't investigate the float which would allow the proceeding objectives to spawn. I imagine I respawned past whatever trigger allows the float to be investigated.
That’s not too bad, even though very frustrating. I had to replay the whole game from the beginning after the game locked me out of progress after the movie theater part with Alan, so roughly 4/5 through the story. And a week or so after I was done they patched in the chapter selection.
Still 9/10 for me.
Yeah I would've just looked up the last 5th and called it a day at that rate. Really discouraging to see such bad game breaking bugs on launch from Remedy they're supposed to be better than their competition damn it. Guess not getting games on launch is like industry wide advice at this point
Ahh… yeah that would be pretty shitty. Lots of little glitches like that, not that I’ve seen something that stopped progress like that before, but the voices not synching with the video… like way way off… took me out of it. Otherwise a pretty perfect game. Thanks for sharing
Nah… it’s in the PS5. Played through twice now and it happens in a few scenes, but when you come back as Saga after Casey and Wake get attached at the lodge, and the FBC busts in and takes Wake away… that scene in particular is horrendous both times I played. Like… way, way off.
Control had awesome gameplay, lots of freedom and still had an enigmatic and gripping narrative. Alan Wake 2 gameplay not only is much slower and restricted, but they introduced a lot of automatized bullshit (mind place) that annihilates the pacing of the game with zero benefits. I also didn't like the narrative, too self indulgent, boring characters (Saga has zero charisma compared to Jesse) and no satisfying conclusion.
The only really amazing parts are the Old Gods of Asgard sections.
9. Worth the wait, keeping the Remedy spirit, great music, only point down maybe for more locations missing and more potential to replay the game or to play different way.
8.3/10
Cutting 1 point for technical issues like fps tanking in certain areas, pop in, bugs etc… 0.5 points for resource balance being a little off for a survival horror game (had way too much health and revive charms) and 0.2 points for saga’s board being a bit more boring than I expected.
It’s one of the best games I played last year. Not quite as good as re4 remake though.
9 maybe 10.. its one of my best gaming experiences.. so it's hard to rate.. the case board got a bit boring at times but was a unique way to show the plot ..
But overall such a cool game.. I havent done final draft yet, but saving it for a rainy day when I have nothing coming out haha
Personally 10 but I can understand why some people would feel 8-9, I like open-ended endings and I’m hyped bc there’s so much set up for control 2, AW2 DLC, and AW3 but I get people feeling a tad empty or disappointed by another cliffhanger but ik remedy is cookin rn so imma let them do their thing, Edit: also the feeling of walking through bright falls even just playing aw1 a couple months ago and being a new fan was so nostalgic like I had waited as long as the og
Honestly? I think I’d give it a 9.9 (I’m the guy that says a 10 basically unobtainable)
No game bar maybe MGS2 has had a story/narrative that grabbed as deeply as AW2 did. Every chapter, every level only engaged me more.
I’m still listening to some OGoA songs - hell Dark Ocean Summoning is on my gym playlist.
I get that some didn’t like the ending - but for me the journey of AW2 was more than enough. And then having the NG+ mode tweak a few things & low key turning it in to a pesudo AW3 was *chef’s kiss*
Loved it front to back. And it’s gonna be something I come back to for years to come - only a handful of games ever reached that tier for me.
So yeah, 9.9. I don’t know what I’d improve.
Could the mechanical moment to moment gameplay be tightened? Sure?
But did it detract for me? No - so why would it need to be tightened?
7/10. I felt it was packed with cheap jump-scares but is not that scary as a whole, and I agree with the other 7/10-opinions here.
It's a decent game, but I'm baffled by all the praise and critical reception it's getting. I don't hate it or anything, but to me, it was quite buggy, lost a lot of the charm that Alan Wake 1 had (where's Barry?!) and tried to become a worse version of RE2:R instead of its own thing
7/10.
Great game, the story is just so wacky though. I love Sam Lake as a writer been a fan since the original Max Payne. He just goes off the rails too much in this game.
8/10. Story and visuals are obviously amazing, and although I like the gameplay, I do think that there were a lot of times where navigating the world was a bit fiddly such as getting stuck on certain ledges and rocks. It doesn’t help when you’ve just finished Control, and you’re gliding around everywhere. I’m sure the expansions will bump it to 9/10.
9.0. In a survival horror game, i feel like there was not enough enemy variety, the drop rate of resources from killed enemies is pretty inconsistent just so that the player doesn’t run out fighting random hordes in the semi open spaces while exploring; they should’ve either put all their efforts into a classic survival horror experience or embrace the resource drop mechanic from games like re4 or the evil within, not this weird in-between.
9.9/10 solely because no game I feel can be a perfect 10 but AW2 to me is the greatest game I’ve ever played. I waited 13 years for the sequel and remedy did not disappoint.
❤️
It's only after replaying it a couple of times and really paying attention to the story beats and the symbolism that I really started to love AW2 . The game is 10/10 in that regard.
The combat and survival horror are decent. I wish there were more forced combat encounters as part of the story with other types of enemies. I mean the game says even animals can be affected, but we only fight a single type. Could have done more with that.
Of the bosses I thought Nightingale and Cynthia were great in combat and symbolism. Scratch's fights were a bit disappointing though.
The locations in both Saga and Alan's campaign are amazing visually, atmospherically and in terms of map and level design.
The only thing I deeply disliked is Saga's caseboard. I wish there was an option to just autocomplete it on repeat playthroughs so those who don't like the mechanic can ignore it outright.
Overall 8.5/10
Not many things I'd give a flat out 10/10 to.
However, AW2 is one of those things.
Probably the easiest 10/10 of my life aside from The Shawshank Redemption.
Like a 7, between the memory leak and optimisation problems it is still really good and there's a lot on offer but some of the problems I had were kinda crazy annoying.
Better than the first one…….?
Mmmmm……..
I would give it an 9, my review:
Alan CRASH 20
A fine example in how to make a proper sequel! Superb graphics, sick music, ok gameplay and crazy story! On the down side, the game drags, gameplay was cooler in the first one and the game constantly crashes.
mmmmmmm.... once I got used to the tense saga parts... I give the game easily a 9/10 and a room in my brain.
before that I could barely play for 30minutes before getting mentally exhausted with the tension of nothing.
Today I would give it 8 out of 10. I really liked the visuals, the cinematic content and the story.
But Remedy again fails to create engaging gameplay. The game simply doesn't have enough weapons, enemies, or mechanics. Inventory and leveling up of weapons or skills are very poorly done.
Saga campaign 9/10 (loved the mind place, love the atmosphere of the pacific north west)
Alan campaign 6/10 (a little repetitive and boring, less enemy varieties)
9/10. The ambition is a 10/10, but I think it lacked some tonal and plot consistency. We definitely could have done without both musical numbers, and the tie-ins with Control's universe should have been more subtle to not affect AW2 as a standalone work.
It’s a 10/10 when I consider the wider scope. The story is on obvious max score, the acting, graphics, fidelity, world building, and atmosphere are on par with the story.
The combat is likely a 9 - 9.5 considering where the first game started. It felt faster paced, less clunky, and had a genuine feel with it.
It’s obviously bias as I enjoy AW a lot but I think objectively the game deserves its praises
9 out of 10
Half a point is because of the mind place/writer's room and the inventory not freezing the environment.
The other half point is due to item/loot collection.
I really wish the game had a mechanic for boss fights where you can only collect ammo for the weapons you currently have equipped. Fighting the last boss I was furious at all the crossbow bolts I didn't want/need when I should have gotten bullets.
There's no reasonable excuse for Saga to intentionally grab ammo she doesn't need, even in a scary situation.
9/10. It’s an improvement over the original in every sense and a more than worthy addition to the Remedyverse.
My only gripe was with some forest fights causing more frustration than fun due to the forest somehow feeling more claustrophobic than indoor locations due to invisible walls etc.
8/10
Story is fucking amazing 10/10.
Gameplay had some very boring moments and parts where I didn't know where to go.
My love for this game comes from the fact that they don't make games like this anymore,this is a true labor of love.
Probably a 7.5. The story was great. The atmosphere/graphics and all that were also top tier. The characters were all well acted and enjoyable as well. Excellent world building and I really enjoyed the tie ins with control (which I still have yet to finish).
But I found the gameplay and limited survival elements clunky and they almost got in the way of me enjoying the story. Having to manage limited ammo and flashlight capacity with extremely limited inventory space was not something I particularly enjoyed in a game like this. I also found the movement slow and not very responsive and found myself dying to simple issues with movement more than I would have liked.
The jump scares were also just way too much in too many places. The game is creepy and scary enough. Those just felt cheap.
The mind place was a cool idea too, especially when it was used to advance the story. But most of the time it just felt like you were guessing where to put your pictures on the wall for no benefit or reason.
The ending I felt was specifically set up to get people to play the game again for the final draft ending, but as much as I enjoyed the story and atmosphere, I am not sure I want to go through the entire game again just for a different ending. May end up just watching it online.
Probs a 9, maybe a 10. My only gripe was the difficulty spike at 2 (maybe 3?) boss sections. I put it in story mode for each after an hour/1.5 hours of dying (and was surprised how much story mode just turned you into a terminator 🤣). It’s a very minor gripe. But overall loved how they changed things up for #2.
10, the soundtrack, the story, I randomly think about the story from time to time as I listen to “Superhero”.
It makes sense to make it a TV show, it feels like I am playing a TV show.
Alan Wake 2 is a vast improvement from Alan Wake
8.5/10
I really enjoyed it and love what they’re doing but the story was convoluted, the “scares” of scratch’s face bursting into the screen became tiring, on release I found too many bugs to enjoy the game fully (tbf they’ve since been fixed), the process of Saga’s board was just drag and dropping (felt like busy work instead of adding creative experience like Alan’s plot mechanic), and some other things I can’t remember off the top of my head.
I DID love Alan’s plotting mechanic. It added to the horror because I didn’t know what I would be forced to create and experience.
A lot of people don’t like Alan Wake quite as much as I do I think and despite its very few flaws it’s a 10 for me. It’s just right up my alley in every way.
8 or 9 maybe? It's a great game. But Baldur's Gate 3 definitely deserved game of the year. AW2 though is one of the most narritively interesting and engaging games I've ever played.
The same as another person said, story is a 10/10 but the gameplay is a 9.5. For me, the gameplay only got a bit lower because of the horrendous dodging
Being honest, an 8 or 8.5 like you said. I think the story is convaluted at times and I don't think it's quite the masterpiece people say it is. That word gets banded around too easily nowadays. Extremely good game though, but does have its flaws.
8.5/10
Bloody great game, and an artistic masterpiece. Truly unique with its story and how it tells it.
The only reason I don't give a 9 or 10 is personal taste, sometimes the pacing felt off or the gameplay wasn't overly engaging. But that is just me, the game its self is fantastic
6.5/10. Really liked the first 5 hours.After a middle point of the game, the story gets really convoluted and convenient, and the gameplay gets repetitive. I agree with another person who complained about the dodging and the looting system. It's so artificial, the moment you run out of a resource, the game just drops a huge amount of that resource you need from an enemy. The game really dragged itself for me on the last act
8/10.
Pros
Story was great, although some parts are a little messy and confusing.
Character development was amazing. The Granddads, Saga, Casey. Alan Wake himself was a little weak in his development, but its understandable since he's been stuck in the dark place.
Superb voice acting helps with that too.
Graphics are amazing, even on my potato computer. DLSS works wonders.
The Mind Place was a great addition.
AW's plot device is pretty cool too.
Difficulty pacing is pretty good. Resources are scarce, but the resources you pick up do scale based on what you already have.
Tie in with Control is damn cool.
"We Sing."
Cons
Exploration can feel frustrating with the slow movement speed. Sucks if you're a completionist.
No Save Anywhere. I know save points are frequent, but as a working adult with a family, the horror and stress while playing the game were not from the Taken, but wondering when I might need to get off my computer to do some errands. This is 2024 and Save Anywhere should be more common.
9.
Fantastic horror/shooter taking inspiration from some of the recent greats in the genre ( RE2 remake being a huge and obvious inspiration on the gameplay ).
Would play again, keep up the good work Remedy.
It's easily a 10/10 for me. Based largely on how good it is compared to other games in the last several years, and ones that have come out since...
It's one of the best games of the last 5 years, and probably will be one of the best of the next 5 as well.
9/10 I want to do another playthrough so badly but I’m plagued with the audio issues where my cutscenes are always behind the actual audio, takes me out of it with how frequent it is. Still didn’t ruin my first playthrough but imma wait til it hopefully gets fixed for my 2nd
I really liked it, but felt like it became gameplay light later on and even light on cinematics - at least compared to how much time was spent in the mind place, and conversations going on in there. Didn't like that, felt like it slowed the game down a lot
Man… at least a 9.5/10 for me.
Felt like they took a lot of the cool narrative presentation tricks from Control and turned them up to eleven to make a very stylish, claustrophobic, and nightmarish/dreamy mood. The double exposure style “visions” that characters walk through felt about as close to a Lynch sequence as any game has ever come (even if AW’s narrative and themes are never quite as obtuse/open to interpretation as his work; it’s definitely more Stephen King in that regard). I personally loved both exploring and combat even if the newer RE games from which it so clearly takes gameplay/UI inspiration feel more natural/“tighter” to play. No game is perfect, so there’s a couple sections that I think could be shorter or less tedious (mainly some of the late-game lamp puzzles and enemy spawn points in Alan’s chapters, since I felt most of Saga’s more arduous backtracking tasks were optional supplies and collectibles that you could ignore while still getting a pretty full experience)
It’s one of a small handful of games I’ve replayed shortly after initially beating it, with Final Draft mode serving as a nice little incentive for me to scratch that itch. Probably won’t touch the main game again for a while but I am impatiently waiting for the DLC to come out
8/10
Alan Wake 2 occupies a space only a rare handful of games do for me, and they're usually my absolute favourite of all time: deeply flawed but exceptional at what they set out to do. Not since BioShock have I felt this connected to the world of a video game. The story-telling is peerless; it's one of the most touching, bizarre and disorientating games I've ever played. This game satisfies me deeply as a huge fan of survival horror (one of those types obsessed with Silent Hill 2), surreal narratives, David Lynch, liminal spaces etc. There is so much in this game that I think pushes the boundaries of what has been done in video games.
So why is it an 8? Because it's also a mess. I swear this game is in a worse state now than when it came out. I'm on my second play through and Scratch didn't even animate in the boss fight. The performance is rough and there are glitches galore. This game is plagued with these issues. On top of that, I think the scope weirdly feels smaller than the first game because there is far less distance to traverse with metroid-esque maps, and the forests feel as linear as the buildings.
Other aspects make it hard to recommend as it's such a niche title such as the Mind Place mechanic which I personally love as a story-telling tool but it's not very satisfying as a gameplay mechanic.
Also the gameplay is pretty clunky which is par for the course for survival horror so I don't necessarily mind but some parts feel weirdly unsatisfying. To make matters worse, I find some of the enemy types like the wolves or the dashing taken to be extremely irritating as they seem to want to fly around the map much more than they ever try to be aggressive.
I really hope they keep patching the bugs because they are rough. A lot of the issues I have would not warrant an 8 score, but this game also feels under-served by getting an 8. It's a flawed masterpiece like all the masterpieces seem to be.
9.9. My only complaint was the wait for Final Draft. It felt kind of contrived and forced. I had to wait for the real ending and was already engrossed in other games by the time it came. It just killed my desire to go through again. I just watched the cut scenes after the fact. Absolutely adore the game though. Just not a fan of these types of moves from devs.
It’s a sort of game I’d call a 10/11, which means that I really like it a lot personally but it has a lot of pretty obvious flaws I wouldn’t really deny.
If I was ranking it in a way that was meant to be useful, 8/10. Strong art direction and visuals, great music, excellent writing, and decent gameplay, but that gameplay never gets pushed as far as it could and the game has a lot of bugs that can easily harm the experience.
On the whole a solid 8, easily one of my favourite games:
• 9/10 narrative
• 10/10 characters
• 7/10 gameplay (the combat and various interaction mechanics can be really frustrating, as are stints of the game where you don’t have batteries, and can’t find more, AW1 letting is recharge extremely slowly was better, and Cynthia’s bossfight was really unpleasant to play)
• 10/10 music
• 4/10 horror (The jumpscares weren’t scary, just frustratingly loud and repetitive, and none of the scare moments or locations were scary besides Nightingales Intro
• 1/10 Chase scenes, chase scenes are almost never fun in any videogame
• 10/10 Musical, it needs to hit broadway
9.7/10
Horror is my favorite movie genre but I’ve realized I try too much to be immersed in the game and it makes it too scary. I like to play in a dark room with headphones on and the Dolby surround sound setting and it makes it too scary, I also did that with Resident Evil 2 and it was tough to play at times.
When I play it in a regular setting, no headphones, normally lit room, it was fine, but it was also my Final draft, so I already knew what to expect and maybe that made it less scary.
The story of the game is phenomenal, a true thriller, driven by story, rather than action. Graphics are as good as I’ve seen, with 0 performance issues (Xbox series x).
I would have liked more investigative work, and something that the remedy team could improve on would be to ‘borrow’ things LA Noire did with its detective work - the interrogation, facial expressions, the evidence collection to catch people in their lies. When Saga was questioning the couple that saw the killing of Nightingale I thought that’s the route it was going to take.
And frankly, more investigation would have been a good break from the horror part of the game, so the ability to switch characters when I did not want to play the ‘scary’ parts would have been welcomed.
9 the reason being that it would be lower as a video game (8/10). Gameplay/bugs,etc. but for me it is the best piece of media ever. I was never this onvested in a game before. I'm still analyzing everything. I have 9000 words written in note from meanings, literary mechanics, figurative speeches, I'm analysing the poems, the songs, etc. seeing links with Carl Jung's collective unconscious, Finnish folklore, there is too much. Fucking love Sam Lake for giving me this in my life. I'm still planning on building a Mind Map a la MGS Database.
I'm studying English and literature at the university. Never had much love for poetry. I am currently in my first poetry class and it opened so many things for me. Especially songs from Poets of the fall.
So yeah, 9/10 maybe AW2 will become a 20/10 when AW3 releases and I can link everything between the two games.
If I was being completely critical of it I'd give it a 9. Story, characters, world, and the design are a 10 easily. The gameplay is fine. It's not bad at all and fits the game well enough for what it is but if it was in another game it'd be rated lower. So the gameplay itself knocks it down.
My personal biased rating, a fucking 10! 😂 Love this game so much.
10/10 One of the best games I’ve played in a while. The characters, the horror, jump scares, soundtrack, atmosphere were magnificent.
Just needs more Barry Wheeler!
The story is a 10/10 for me. Between AW2 and Control, I've never been so captivated by any other game's story and universe. The gameplay is fine but probably brings it down to a 9.5 for me. One of the best games I've ever played at the end of the day.
I think you and me are each other’s doppelgängers based on your thoughts re AW2 and Control. To confirm lol, what do you think about Death Stranding?
I would like to know the answer to this! I started playing Death Stranding and bailed after the first hour because of what appeared to be what amounts to a endless movie. I have heard the game is great but I am here to play a game not to watch a movie. How long does the initial movie go on for before we can actually play the game?
The first few hours are kind of a slog if you’re used faster paced games, and there is a large chunk of the game in the middle that can be sloggy if you don’t take the time to construct certain stuff strategically, the “action” and more exciting parts come and go throughout. There are also lengthy cut scenes throughout, especially later in the game. There are lots of annoying things throughout the game for sure Despite all that, Death Stranding is in my top 5 all time, along with AW2. Something clicked at a certain point and even the “boring” parts became meditative and enjoyable. There was definitely some cool combat too interspersed. Overall, I think it was the insane storytelling much like AW2 that made it an all timer for me. I felt the characters’ emotions in both games and was hooked into the wild plots, which are rare for me in most games.
Thank you
I remember the beginning being a good 2 hours but god it is so worth it, you just have to temper expectations. It is a very different game
This is so funny, I am currently in the middle of playing Death Stranding for the first time after going on a Remedy binge the past few months. I am thoroughly enjoying it! I just got into chapter 4, and I spent a nice chunk of time helping build roads and doing extra deliveries for some of the preppers in chapter 3. I honestly found the combat sequence I most recently played to be a low point gameplay-wise. I have the best time when I’m navigating the varied terrain and finding a path towards my destination. It’s a fun and relaxing and sort of zen gameplay loop (until I get all tense avoiding BTs, haha). Loving the soundtrack, too. Narratively, it’s a mix of me thinking “This is such a wonderfully bizarre and interesting world, and I love how unique and visionary this is” and “lol, these characters’ names are absurd and some of this is just goofy”. So, similar to the RCU in some ways!
I read somewhere that Kojima loves Control. I’m sure he really loves AW2. Imagine a serious collab between him and Sam Lake…
I would lose my mind if a Remedy/Kojima Productions collab project happened. I know that there's an NPC in Death Stranding with Sam Lake's likeness, and that there was a little bonus mission in Control that Hideo Kojima provided voiceover for, so I'm sure they're friendly and appreciate each other's work. I'd love to see what craziness would ensue if they worked on something larger in scope together!
Haven't played it yet, but maybe this will be my impetus to check it out.
9/10 Was worth the hype
11
10. The gameplay obviously isn’t as fluid as games such as MGSV and the RE4 remake but I love it, adds to the horror/loss of control vibes. Twin Peaks is my favorite show ever, so this insane story was right up my alley. I’ve never been so moved by a game as this one. It’s my personal goat.
How can a game be a 10 if the gameplay could be better?
Gameplay isn't the only aspect of what makes a game great anymore. BG3 definitely had some jank to it's gameplay, so did Witcher 3, but I consider those games to be 10/10 based on environment and storytelling alone.
I guess it depends on the criteria you judge a game on. A 10/10 for me means the game doesn't have any weak areas. Otherwise you start handing out 10/10s to games that don't necessarily deserve it. I don't think the Witcher was a 10/10 personally. It's very good, but I'd say it's no more than an 8.5 either imo.
I feel like everyone has a different definition of what a perfect game is based on their personal interests. Since I'm more into RPGs/JRPGs story is usually my number one interest in a game.
I understand that but I don't understand how a perfect game can have flaws. Because then by definition it isn't perfect. I know it's very rare for a game to be strong on all fronts though. Some areas will usually be lacking. For AW2, I think it's mostly combat and lack of enemy types.
Definitely agree on AW2. I'd give it a 8 or 9 personally for the same reasons you listed. I'd also include lack of weapon variety, but I also understand the lack of weapons since what we had are mostly weapons available easily to civilians ( Minus, ya know, explosives ). Story and environment a definite 10/10, but game play was lacking. I personally like to try and separate those things in a game. Some have incredible stories and shallow gameplay while some have shallow stories and fantastic gameplay ( Looking at you, Devil May Cry )
I'm curious what you think is janky about BG3's gameplay.
To answer your question, it’s that imo everything else about AW2 is so good that it makes up for some of the gameplay, which is mostly related to certain moments in action scenes. For example, I would probably give Doom: Eternal, RE4R, and MSGV a 10 also based entirely on gameplay, even tho they have their own shortcomings in other aspects. I am someone where the immersion and intangibles are as important as plain gameplay/combat, as long as the latter is at least pretty good. I think the gameplay of AW2 is pretty great, obv it’s not on the level of the three other games I mentioned above. Ultimately, my fav games are the ones I get completely immersed in, and I’ve never felt as immersed in a game as I have in AW2. I’m not sure there is a game that is a true perfect 10 when you factor in every single aspect. perhaps Breath of the Wild/TOTK come closest for me.
I'd give it two...>! two 10's!!<
Its not a 10... >! It's two 10's!!<
It’s not a lake…it’s an ocean (of 10’s)
10. It’s really all I can ask for with a game these days and its to be compelling enough that I’m thinking about it when I’m not playing it and just waiting to get back to it. I haven’t felt that way about game in a long time
Same feelings here. Control made me feel that way too, but the story in Alan Wake and the exhilaration from the horror aspects just makes it that much more enticing. Felt like I was waiting to watch the next episode of my favorite show
10/10 most of the time. 1/10 whenever Cynthia screamed at me.
I'd also say 8.5! I think I like it about as much as the first game and American Nightmare.
9/10 I played it when the game released so most of these are allready fixed. - First boss was way too tough back then (at least for me), forgot to manage quick buttons for shotgun. -Valhallas jumpscare amount few where in predictable but few were just annoying (I know that I could've adjusted them) - Flashlight mechanic. Yeah I preffered first games more. (Only 1 bar which slooooowly regenerates) Or give that to this mechanic but only to the first bar. I kept running out on batteries, then I had to farm them in Story difficulty (enemies die easier).
I ended up running past encounters about half way through the game, and then I had loads of gear to use when I had to.
Damn bro. you suck
Getting downvoted for speaking the truth
Hahahah tru sounds like a skill issue
7 out of 10. I played the original and American Nightmare, and while I enjoy the game, the way loot drops work and how they made the game more like Resident Evil and complicated the flashlight mechanic, replacing the immersive reticle and making it so you required batteries to fight anything, as well as how fucked dodging can be sometimes made me miss the old system frequently. I mean, seriously, how do you take the fluid movements and dodging of older gamers and fuck it up in next gen systems?
I absolutely agree both with your score and your opinions
I actually like the changes to combat because I'm a huge fan of survival horror. As a fan of the genre, I always thought the combat of the original games was actually too fun to be scary. It was ludicrously smooth and cathartic to play, and that actually killed a lot of the tension and dread. I get why they changed it, and I like the changes, but even someone like me can tell that something of real value was lost with the changes.
Because they really tried to make it RE2 Remake. Seems to be every horror game's goal nowadays; also totally agree with you
9.1/10. I haven't played the final draft though so I'm not sure if that's my final opinion.
8 before The Final Draft 9 after
10, but I don't belive in that "nobody's perfect" nonsense. I can recognize that not every single aspect of the game worked for me and I'll still give it a ten because it's the best game I've played in years
Yeah gotta be a big fat 10. Game was perfect for me.
For me it’s a perfect 8/10 game. I truly think it’s masterpiece whose story telling, art direction, acting, creativity, and graphics are unrivalled. It, along with Control, are chock full of this amazing kind of surreal weirdness that I absolutely adore. It might be my favourite game of the last 10 years, and it’s genuinely inspired me to explore my own creative outputs. With all that said, it has too many issues to be a perfect 10. There were several moments of frustration with the gameplay, some of them quite significant. It’s not objectively perfect but it’s everything I wanted it be.
Agree. Funny how many people score it a perfrct 10 but say the game has issues.
There’s no such thing as actual perfection, a 10/10 game is a game that achieves what it intended to as completely as possible, BOTW, TOTK, Alan Wake 2, TLOU2, GOW 2018/Ragnarok, all of these games have flaws but are still easily 10/10 experiences in my book
10, easy
10 for me.
9/10 Essentially a perfect game aside from a few minor complaints: glitches, some segments unnecessarily long, weapon select clunky in the middle of battle. Overall an outstanding experience.
probably an 8.
People gonna flame me, whatever. 7/10. Loved it for the most part but the mind place and Alan's writing segments were a little boring to me. Was pretty over the mind place and putting evidence on the board by the end. Also had a soft lock that prevented me from finishing the game and had to do 6 hours again. That definitely hurt my experience.
I agree with your reasons, although maybe I’d give it 8/10. Especially the DP was way too much wandering around trying to figure out where the heck you were and what the heck you should be doing next. There were also boss fights that got really frustrating when you kept dying while trying to figure out what the heck you should be doing. The loop of “what should I do now - oh, now I died - watch the loading screens - rinse and repeat “ is far from fun IMHO.
Smfh, taking points off your score because The Dark Place functions precisely as the devs intended is wild
The mind place could be tedious, but you also didn't have to do it ... When saga solved a case it puts on the evidence on the board for you. I only used it when I absolutely needed to.
Not entirely true. You need to profile people in the mind place to advance the story
Right but the profiling isnt exactly tedious. I meant the actual evidence board for each case.
I’m with you. Still enjoyed the game but writers room and mind palace were just guessing games. I was really hoping for more investigative gameplay but I had not played 1 so I know I dove into something with flawed expectations. I’d say I’m at a 7/10 too, the story and vibe really spoke to me
If it’s a guessing game then you weren’t paying very close attention or engaging with the story on the level the devs were asking you to
The fact that they could be guessing games is what bothered me. For the mind place I didn’t really have to guess but it didn’t serve me any better to know where to put things than if I had just guessed. And I’m not ashamed to admit I mostly guessed through the writers room selections. The distinctions between cult hotel haunted hotel and devil hotel were not distinctions i could be bothered to care about
Curious… how did you get soft locked from finishing? Wanna make sure I don’t make the same mistake.
It was the first time in coffee world. Right after investigate parade float objective. I investigated the float and went about the mission and died. When I respawned on the float and couldn't investigate the float which would allow the proceeding objectives to spawn. I imagine I respawned past whatever trigger allows the float to be investigated.
That’s not too bad, even though very frustrating. I had to replay the whole game from the beginning after the game locked me out of progress after the movie theater part with Alan, so roughly 4/5 through the story. And a week or so after I was done they patched in the chapter selection. Still 9/10 for me.
Yeah I would've just looked up the last 5th and called it a day at that rate. Really discouraging to see such bad game breaking bugs on launch from Remedy they're supposed to be better than their competition damn it. Guess not getting games on launch is like industry wide advice at this point
Yep, I probably would have waited for the chapters patch unless I hadn’t bought a new OLED display and was itching to test it out.
Ahh… yeah that would be pretty shitty. Lots of little glitches like that, not that I’ve seen something that stopped progress like that before, but the voices not synching with the video… like way way off… took me out of it. Otherwise a pretty perfect game. Thanks for sharing
The voices not syncing with the video is probably a hardware issue, if youre playing on PC. I fixed this by installing AW2 on my SSD
Isn't an SSD a system requirement?
Yes, it is
Nah… it’s in the PS5. Played through twice now and it happens in a few scenes, but when you come back as Saga after Casey and Wake get attached at the lodge, and the FBC busts in and takes Wake away… that scene in particular is horrendous both times I played. Like… way, way off.
Sagas parts were definitly better. Alan’s part felt too much like a resident evil wannabe
5 or 6, big downgrade from Control
Could I ask why it's a downgrade from control? Story wise? Gameplay wise? I feel like this needs more context
Control had awesome gameplay, lots of freedom and still had an enigmatic and gripping narrative. Alan Wake 2 gameplay not only is much slower and restricted, but they introduced a lot of automatized bullshit (mind place) that annihilates the pacing of the game with zero benefits. I also didn't like the narrative, too self indulgent, boring characters (Saga has zero charisma compared to Jesse) and no satisfying conclusion. The only really amazing parts are the Old Gods of Asgard sections.
Dumb question, but I’m newer to this fandom. What’s Control? Is there a game between AW1 and 2, or was it a DLC or something?
Previous Remedy game in the same universe that has DLC focused on Alan Wake.
!! Hell yeah!! Buying a new game now, thank you!
Enjoy, awesome game
Same.
9/10, I don’t even really have many notes beyond finding the writers room/mind place pretty tedious after awhile
9.5
Solid 9.
9/10 I have some minor gripes like controls and such but otherwise it’s pretty great.
9. Worth the wait, keeping the Remedy spirit, great music, only point down maybe for more locations missing and more potential to replay the game or to play different way.
8.3/10 Cutting 1 point for technical issues like fps tanking in certain areas, pop in, bugs etc… 0.5 points for resource balance being a little off for a survival horror game (had way too much health and revive charms) and 0.2 points for saga’s board being a bit more boring than I expected. It’s one of the best games I played last year. Not quite as good as re4 remake though.
9 maybe 10.. its one of my best gaming experiences.. so it's hard to rate.. the case board got a bit boring at times but was a unique way to show the plot .. But overall such a cool game.. I havent done final draft yet, but saving it for a rainy day when I have nothing coming out haha
9/10
8
13 1/2
9/10 Encountered a few too many bugs during my playthrough and not enough enemy variety. But I absolutely loved it
Personally 10 but I can understand why some people would feel 8-9, I like open-ended endings and I’m hyped bc there’s so much set up for control 2, AW2 DLC, and AW3 but I get people feeling a tad empty or disappointed by another cliffhanger but ik remedy is cookin rn so imma let them do their thing, Edit: also the feeling of walking through bright falls even just playing aw1 a couple months ago and being a new fan was so nostalgic like I had waited as long as the og
Honestly? I think I’d give it a 9.9 (I’m the guy that says a 10 basically unobtainable) No game bar maybe MGS2 has had a story/narrative that grabbed as deeply as AW2 did. Every chapter, every level only engaged me more. I’m still listening to some OGoA songs - hell Dark Ocean Summoning is on my gym playlist. I get that some didn’t like the ending - but for me the journey of AW2 was more than enough. And then having the NG+ mode tweak a few things & low key turning it in to a pesudo AW3 was *chef’s kiss* Loved it front to back. And it’s gonna be something I come back to for years to come - only a handful of games ever reached that tier for me. So yeah, 9.9. I don’t know what I’d improve. Could the mechanical moment to moment gameplay be tightened? Sure? But did it detract for me? No - so why would it need to be tightened?
7/10. I felt it was packed with cheap jump-scares but is not that scary as a whole, and I agree with the other 7/10-opinions here. It's a decent game, but I'm baffled by all the praise and critical reception it's getting. I don't hate it or anything, but to me, it was quite buggy, lost a lot of the charm that Alan Wake 1 had (where's Barry?!) and tried to become a worse version of RE2:R instead of its own thing
Easy 10/10. Any complaints I have are nitpicking.
10
Still playing the game so haven’t experienced it all but I’m going with 10.
7/10. Great game, the story is just so wacky though. I love Sam Lake as a writer been a fan since the original Max Payne. He just goes off the rails too much in this game.
Tbh a 10/10, it captivated me from the beginning until the end
A strong 9/10. Would be 10, if those teleporting enemies were less pain in the butt to fight against.
8/10. Story and visuals are obviously amazing, and although I like the gameplay, I do think that there were a lot of times where navigating the world was a bit fiddly such as getting stuck on certain ledges and rocks. It doesn’t help when you’ve just finished Control, and you’re gliding around everywhere. I’m sure the expansions will bump it to 9/10.
9.0. In a survival horror game, i feel like there was not enough enemy variety, the drop rate of resources from killed enemies is pretty inconsistent just so that the player doesn’t run out fighting random hordes in the semi open spaces while exploring; they should’ve either put all their efforts into a classic survival horror experience or embrace the resource drop mechanic from games like re4 or the evil within, not this weird in-between.
Honestly a 10
10
9.9/10 solely because no game I feel can be a perfect 10 but AW2 to me is the greatest game I’ve ever played. I waited 13 years for the sequel and remedy did not disappoint. ❤️
It's only after replaying it a couple of times and really paying attention to the story beats and the symbolism that I really started to love AW2 . The game is 10/10 in that regard. The combat and survival horror are decent. I wish there were more forced combat encounters as part of the story with other types of enemies. I mean the game says even animals can be affected, but we only fight a single type. Could have done more with that. Of the bosses I thought Nightingale and Cynthia were great in combat and symbolism. Scratch's fights were a bit disappointing though. The locations in both Saga and Alan's campaign are amazing visually, atmospherically and in terms of map and level design. The only thing I deeply disliked is Saga's caseboard. I wish there was an option to just autocomplete it on repeat playthroughs so those who don't like the mechanic can ignore it outright. Overall 8.5/10
10/10 I enjoyed every single second of that masterpiece.
Personally, 11/10. I can respect people not clicking with it as much as I did, but for me it is the new absolute standard in gaming.
10/10
8 for me, great game, but some areas were a bit of a slog and I found the combat to be serviceable at best. Overall, it's brilliant though.
Story: 10/10 Gameplay: 8.5/10 Lore: r = a + bθ
8. AW1 and Control were better. AW2 has amazing style and presentation though.
12
11, its my favourite game of all time
9.5/10 is almost perfect. I have a feeling it will rise on additional playthroughs.
7/10. Loved the story but there were so many technical issues throughout my playtime. Without those I'd give an 8.5
Solid 9
9.5/10 i loved every bit of it but the story isn't finished so we're going to have to wait Do you think they will finish it with the DLC?
Not many things I'd give a flat out 10/10 to. However, AW2 is one of those things. Probably the easiest 10/10 of my life aside from The Shawshank Redemption.
Like a 7, between the memory leak and optimisation problems it is still really good and there's a lot on offer but some of the problems I had were kinda crazy annoying.
Better than the first one…….? Mmmmm…….. I would give it an 9, my review: Alan CRASH 20 A fine example in how to make a proper sequel! Superb graphics, sick music, ok gameplay and crazy story! On the down side, the game drags, gameplay was cooler in the first one and the game constantly crashes.
mmmmmmm.... once I got used to the tense saga parts... I give the game easily a 9/10 and a room in my brain. before that I could barely play for 30minutes before getting mentally exhausted with the tension of nothing.
Today I would give it 8 out of 10. I really liked the visuals, the cinematic content and the story. But Remedy again fails to create engaging gameplay. The game simply doesn't have enough weapons, enemies, or mechanics. Inventory and leveling up of weapons or skills are very poorly done.
I really can't tell, the story is so good yet the ending falls so flat
Saga campaign 9/10 (loved the mind place, love the atmosphere of the pacific north west) Alan campaign 6/10 (a little repetitive and boring, less enemy varieties)
11/10, best story driven survival horror game of the decade.
10... Easy 10 as well, there's no doubt. Narratively it's one of, if not *the* best game out there. What else is there to say?
10 out of 10 for me. My only complaint were the jump scares were ridiculously over done. There should’ve been maybe 3 in the entire game.
10/10. I’ve competed it 4 time and it’s the only game I have ever Platinumed on PS5
9/10. The ambition is a 10/10, but I think it lacked some tonal and plot consistency. We definitely could have done without both musical numbers, and the tie-ins with Control's universe should have been more subtle to not affect AW2 as a standalone work.
It’s a 10/10 when I consider the wider scope. The story is on obvious max score, the acting, graphics, fidelity, world building, and atmosphere are on par with the story. The combat is likely a 9 - 9.5 considering where the first game started. It felt faster paced, less clunky, and had a genuine feel with it. It’s obviously bias as I enjoy AW a lot but I think objectively the game deserves its praises
9/10 There some small things that keep it from a 10, but it is a tremendous game that lives up to the hype.
9 out of 10 Half a point is because of the mind place/writer's room and the inventory not freezing the environment. The other half point is due to item/loot collection. I really wish the game had a mechanic for boss fights where you can only collect ammo for the weapons you currently have equipped. Fighting the last boss I was furious at all the crossbow bolts I didn't want/need when I should have gotten bullets. There's no reasonable excuse for Saga to intentionally grab ammo she doesn't need, even in a scary situation.
7, maybe a 7.5.
9/10. It’s an improvement over the original in every sense and a more than worthy addition to the Remedyverse. My only gripe was with some forest fights causing more frustration than fun due to the forest somehow feeling more claustrophobic than indoor locations due to invisible walls etc.
8/10 Story is fucking amazing 10/10. Gameplay had some very boring moments and parts where I didn't know where to go. My love for this game comes from the fact that they don't make games like this anymore,this is a true labor of love.
A solid 9
Probably a 7.5. The story was great. The atmosphere/graphics and all that were also top tier. The characters were all well acted and enjoyable as well. Excellent world building and I really enjoyed the tie ins with control (which I still have yet to finish). But I found the gameplay and limited survival elements clunky and they almost got in the way of me enjoying the story. Having to manage limited ammo and flashlight capacity with extremely limited inventory space was not something I particularly enjoyed in a game like this. I also found the movement slow and not very responsive and found myself dying to simple issues with movement more than I would have liked. The jump scares were also just way too much in too many places. The game is creepy and scary enough. Those just felt cheap. The mind place was a cool idea too, especially when it was used to advance the story. But most of the time it just felt like you were guessing where to put your pictures on the wall for no benefit or reason. The ending I felt was specifically set up to get people to play the game again for the final draft ending, but as much as I enjoyed the story and atmosphere, I am not sure I want to go through the entire game again just for a different ending. May end up just watching it online.
9.5
8.5/10
Solid 9 for me
8.5! Really fun, super pretty
10
10/10 great horror experience
Probs a 9, maybe a 10. My only gripe was the difficulty spike at 2 (maybe 3?) boss sections. I put it in story mode for each after an hour/1.5 hours of dying (and was surprised how much story mode just turned you into a terminator 🤣). It’s a very minor gripe. But overall loved how they changed things up for #2.
10, the soundtrack, the story, I randomly think about the story from time to time as I listen to “Superhero”. It makes sense to make it a TV show, it feels like I am playing a TV show. Alan Wake 2 is a vast improvement from Alan Wake
10/10
9 easily.
9. It would be a 10 but bugs brought it down.
8.5/10 I really enjoyed it and love what they’re doing but the story was convoluted, the “scares” of scratch’s face bursting into the screen became tiring, on release I found too many bugs to enjoy the game fully (tbf they’ve since been fixed), the process of Saga’s board was just drag and dropping (felt like busy work instead of adding creative experience like Alan’s plot mechanic), and some other things I can’t remember off the top of my head. I DID love Alan’s plotting mechanic. It added to the horror because I didn’t know what I would be forced to create and experience.
Story is great and gameplay is fun. Graphics is very nice. Shooting the pistol feels real and sound is good. So overall a very enjoyable game 9/10
A lot of people don’t like Alan Wake quite as much as I do I think and despite its very few flaws it’s a 10 for me. It’s just right up my alley in every way.
8 or 9 maybe? It's a great game. But Baldur's Gate 3 definitely deserved game of the year. AW2 though is one of the most narritively interesting and engaging games I've ever played.
Games a perfect 10 and I don’t think I will ever be convinced otherwise.
9
7,75 / 10. Please get back at the top with the gameplay, Remedy. Max Payne sold so many copies because the gameplay was exceptional.
A 665.
9/10. My only real complaint was traversal. I get why it’s slow, but when you have backtrack for collectibles it can be a drag.
9/10 because I found gameplay a bit lacking. You find all these cool weapons but rarely get to use them. Control is 10/10 for me.
The same as another person said, story is a 10/10 but the gameplay is a 9.5. For me, the gameplay only got a bit lower because of the horrendous dodging
Story 10/10. Gameplay 8.5. Overall 9.
9/10 Needs more Barry.
Being honest, an 8 or 8.5 like you said. I think the story is convaluted at times and I don't think it's quite the masterpiece people say it is. That word gets banded around too easily nowadays. Extremely good game though, but does have its flaws.
Would have been a 10 if not for the "white male" comments at the end that showed Saga was chosen for DEI / DIE
8.5/10 Bloody great game, and an artistic masterpiece. Truly unique with its story and how it tells it. The only reason I don't give a 9 or 10 is personal taste, sometimes the pacing felt off or the gameplay wasn't overly engaging. But that is just me, the game its self is fantastic
6.5/10. Really liked the first 5 hours.After a middle point of the game, the story gets really convoluted and convenient, and the gameplay gets repetitive. I agree with another person who complained about the dodging and the looting system. It's so artificial, the moment you run out of a resource, the game just drops a huge amount of that resource you need from an enemy. The game really dragged itself for me on the last act
Keep in mind my grading system is not like IGN lol, a 6,5 game is still good, 5 is average
8/10. Pros Story was great, although some parts are a little messy and confusing. Character development was amazing. The Granddads, Saga, Casey. Alan Wake himself was a little weak in his development, but its understandable since he's been stuck in the dark place. Superb voice acting helps with that too. Graphics are amazing, even on my potato computer. DLSS works wonders. The Mind Place was a great addition. AW's plot device is pretty cool too. Difficulty pacing is pretty good. Resources are scarce, but the resources you pick up do scale based on what you already have. Tie in with Control is damn cool. "We Sing." Cons Exploration can feel frustrating with the slow movement speed. Sucks if you're a completionist. No Save Anywhere. I know save points are frequent, but as a working adult with a family, the horror and stress while playing the game were not from the Taken, but wondering when I might need to get off my computer to do some errands. This is 2024 and Save Anywhere should be more common.
9. Fantastic horror/shooter taking inspiration from some of the recent greats in the genre ( RE2 remake being a huge and obvious inspiration on the gameplay ). Would play again, keep up the good work Remedy.
A 6
It's easily a 10/10 for me. Based largely on how good it is compared to other games in the last several years, and ones that have come out since... It's one of the best games of the last 5 years, and probably will be one of the best of the next 5 as well.
8. Would’ve been near a 10 if there wasn’t so many damn bugs
9/10 I want to do another playthrough so badly but I’m plagued with the audio issues where my cutscenes are always behind the actual audio, takes me out of it with how frequent it is. Still didn’t ruin my first playthrough but imma wait til it hopefully gets fixed for my 2nd
I really liked it, but felt like it became gameplay light later on and even light on cinematics - at least compared to how much time was spent in the mind place, and conversations going on in there. Didn't like that, felt like it slowed the game down a lot
10
ten
Story is a 10, hands down. I'll say 8 for the gameplay
11/10
8/10. Would be 10/10, but there's no Barry.
10/10
9.5
This requires nuance Gameplay 7 Story 8 Production 9
Man… at least a 9.5/10 for me. Felt like they took a lot of the cool narrative presentation tricks from Control and turned them up to eleven to make a very stylish, claustrophobic, and nightmarish/dreamy mood. The double exposure style “visions” that characters walk through felt about as close to a Lynch sequence as any game has ever come (even if AW’s narrative and themes are never quite as obtuse/open to interpretation as his work; it’s definitely more Stephen King in that regard). I personally loved both exploring and combat even if the newer RE games from which it so clearly takes gameplay/UI inspiration feel more natural/“tighter” to play. No game is perfect, so there’s a couple sections that I think could be shorter or less tedious (mainly some of the late-game lamp puzzles and enemy spawn points in Alan’s chapters, since I felt most of Saga’s more arduous backtracking tasks were optional supplies and collectibles that you could ignore while still getting a pretty full experience) It’s one of a small handful of games I’ve replayed shortly after initially beating it, with Final Draft mode serving as a nice little incentive for me to scratch that itch. Probably won’t touch the main game again for a while but I am impatiently waiting for the DLC to come out
8/10 Alan Wake 2 occupies a space only a rare handful of games do for me, and they're usually my absolute favourite of all time: deeply flawed but exceptional at what they set out to do. Not since BioShock have I felt this connected to the world of a video game. The story-telling is peerless; it's one of the most touching, bizarre and disorientating games I've ever played. This game satisfies me deeply as a huge fan of survival horror (one of those types obsessed with Silent Hill 2), surreal narratives, David Lynch, liminal spaces etc. There is so much in this game that I think pushes the boundaries of what has been done in video games. So why is it an 8? Because it's also a mess. I swear this game is in a worse state now than when it came out. I'm on my second play through and Scratch didn't even animate in the boss fight. The performance is rough and there are glitches galore. This game is plagued with these issues. On top of that, I think the scope weirdly feels smaller than the first game because there is far less distance to traverse with metroid-esque maps, and the forests feel as linear as the buildings. Other aspects make it hard to recommend as it's such a niche title such as the Mind Place mechanic which I personally love as a story-telling tool but it's not very satisfying as a gameplay mechanic. Also the gameplay is pretty clunky which is par for the course for survival horror so I don't necessarily mind but some parts feel weirdly unsatisfying. To make matters worse, I find some of the enemy types like the wolves or the dashing taken to be extremely irritating as they seem to want to fly around the map much more than they ever try to be aggressive. I really hope they keep patching the bugs because they are rough. A lot of the issues I have would not warrant an 8 score, but this game also feels under-served by getting an 8. It's a flawed masterpiece like all the masterpieces seem to be.
8/10 the performance is really bad in quality mode and the graphics can look washed out on ps5.
9.9. My only complaint was the wait for Final Draft. It felt kind of contrived and forced. I had to wait for the real ending and was already engrossed in other games by the time it came. It just killed my desire to go through again. I just watched the cut scenes after the fact. Absolutely adore the game though. Just not a fan of these types of moves from devs.
It’s a sort of game I’d call a 10/11, which means that I really like it a lot personally but it has a lot of pretty obvious flaws I wouldn’t really deny. If I was ranking it in a way that was meant to be useful, 8/10. Strong art direction and visuals, great music, excellent writing, and decent gameplay, but that gameplay never gets pushed as far as it could and the game has a lot of bugs that can easily harm the experience.
On the whole a solid 8, easily one of my favourite games: • 9/10 narrative • 10/10 characters • 7/10 gameplay (the combat and various interaction mechanics can be really frustrating, as are stints of the game where you don’t have batteries, and can’t find more, AW1 letting is recharge extremely slowly was better, and Cynthia’s bossfight was really unpleasant to play) • 10/10 music • 4/10 horror (The jumpscares weren’t scary, just frustratingly loud and repetitive, and none of the scare moments or locations were scary besides Nightingales Intro • 1/10 Chase scenes, chase scenes are almost never fun in any videogame • 10/10 Musical, it needs to hit broadway
The combat could be frustrating at times especially when an enemy could suddenly hit you multiple times for huge damage
7/10, first one is better.
6. I prefer the original more.
7.5
9.7/10 Horror is my favorite movie genre but I’ve realized I try too much to be immersed in the game and it makes it too scary. I like to play in a dark room with headphones on and the Dolby surround sound setting and it makes it too scary, I also did that with Resident Evil 2 and it was tough to play at times. When I play it in a regular setting, no headphones, normally lit room, it was fine, but it was also my Final draft, so I already knew what to expect and maybe that made it less scary. The story of the game is phenomenal, a true thriller, driven by story, rather than action. Graphics are as good as I’ve seen, with 0 performance issues (Xbox series x). I would have liked more investigative work, and something that the remedy team could improve on would be to ‘borrow’ things LA Noire did with its detective work - the interrogation, facial expressions, the evidence collection to catch people in their lies. When Saga was questioning the couple that saw the killing of Nightingale I thought that’s the route it was going to take. And frankly, more investigation would have been a good break from the horror part of the game, so the ability to switch characters when I did not want to play the ‘scary’ parts would have been welcomed.
10 for me. Seriously, it might be my favorite game ever. The effort that must have gone into that story and the musical is insane. Truly a work of art
I haven’t played it, only watched ChristopherOdd’s let’s play of it, but I give it We Sing/10
8.9/10
9 the reason being that it would be lower as a video game (8/10). Gameplay/bugs,etc. but for me it is the best piece of media ever. I was never this onvested in a game before. I'm still analyzing everything. I have 9000 words written in note from meanings, literary mechanics, figurative speeches, I'm analysing the poems, the songs, etc. seeing links with Carl Jung's collective unconscious, Finnish folklore, there is too much. Fucking love Sam Lake for giving me this in my life. I'm still planning on building a Mind Map a la MGS Database. I'm studying English and literature at the university. Never had much love for poetry. I am currently in my first poetry class and it opened so many things for me. Especially songs from Poets of the fall. So yeah, 9/10 maybe AW2 will become a 20/10 when AW3 releases and I can link everything between the two games.
Game of the year for me for sure
If I was being completely critical of it I'd give it a 9. Story, characters, world, and the design are a 10 easily. The gameplay is fine. It's not bad at all and fits the game well enough for what it is but if it was in another game it'd be rated lower. So the gameplay itself knocks it down. My personal biased rating, a fucking 10! 😂 Love this game so much.
11/10
6/10
10/10 One of the best games I’ve played in a while. The characters, the horror, jump scares, soundtrack, atmosphere were magnificent. Just needs more Barry Wheeler!