Alan Wake 2 Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Some of the best, most compelling stories make you think about them after they are done and dusted, sitting with you for a while and making you question if you missed anything. Alan Wake has always been about the mystery, with the first game throwing up a metric ton of questions, which were slowly answered through spin-offs, ARGs and even completely separate games. Even then, the mystery wasn’t fully explained, and to some extent, with Alan Wake 2 now in our hands, it still isn’t.

Thirteen long years we have waited for Alan Wake to make his return, but as Remedy finally take the opportunity to tell the next chapter in his story, he’s not alone. Yes, Alan Wake is the titular protagonist, but there’s also FBI agent Saga Anderson. Neither character is more important than the other, this story they share featuring them both in equal measure. You can swap back and forth between them throughout, experiencing their sides of the tale roughly in lockstep, or play almost all of one before tackling the entirety of the other – the choice is yours.

Alan, still trapped in the Dark Place, is trying to fight his way out the only way he knows how, through his writing. The Dark Place has taken on the form of his old stomping ground, New York City, but it’s become a twisted facsimile of itself. Alan’s little trick for getting around sees him use the Plot Board to rewrite reality.

While walking around dark New York, certain areas become scene settings, to which plot points can be applied to change those scenes, opening up new areas to explore. New plot points are discovered through finding Echos, which give Alan visions of story events to inspire him and drive his story forward. It’s a really smart way of engaging you with the multi-layered