A part of me suspected we'd never see the end of Alan Wake's story. The original game, which was released on the Xbox 360, was a modest hit that never seemed to garner enough of a following to justify a full-on sequel. DLCs and spin-offs like American Nightmare kept him in the spotlight a bit longer, but it seemed like poor Alan would spend the rest of his fictional life trapped in an eternal cliffhanger — until Remedy's amazing Control hit the market and brought a new adventure in the same world as well as tantalizing hints to Wake's fate. After over a decade, we finally get to return to the world of Alan Wake. Was it worth the wait?

Alan Wake 2 opens up 13 years after the original game. Alan Wake the writer vanished from the face of the Earth, and as far as everyone else is concerned, he's just one more missing person. When the small town of Bright Falls begins to see a sudden surge in serial murders, FBI agent Saga Anderson is sent to investigate. She's barely in town for a day before she finds herself embroiled in a bizarre mystery involving the dead returning to life and mysterious cults. At the center of everything is Alan Wake, who has spent the last 13 years trapped in The Dark Place, a hellish reality where fiction becomes fact. Now he needs Saga to rescue him before the dark power that fuels The Dark Place escapes and brings its evil to the entire world.

Alan Wake 2 might be a sequel to Alan Wake, but the game feels a lot like Control in execution. It has a much heavier emphasis on the subtle but surreal and simple rituals can change the world around you. Live action and in-game engine scenes are mixed, and silhouetted figures speak to you.

This is mostly to its benefit. There will be people who loved the first game and are annoyed at how heavily Alan Wake 2 borrows from its more recent predecessor, but Control was a very cool concept, and it's nice to see it expanded outside of its enclosed setting. I really enjoy how unabashedly strange the story gets without being self-effacing. Saga doesn't spend half the story acting like these bizarre occurrences can't be real but quickly adjusts and works to figure out the rules. This definitely helps make her more sympathetic as a character.

The only real downside to the plot is that it is often surreal and a touch difficult to follow. Some of this is obviously intentional, with a lot of oddity for the sake of oddity, or intentionally obscured details to add to the sense of mystery. Sometimes, it depends on you remembering obscure details from Alan Wake, Control, and their respective DLCs — and it's not exactly great about explaining those. I've played all of those games, and I still needed to pause from time to time to double-check a wiki to remind myself of certain details.

As you might expect, there are two separate playable characters in Alan Wake 2, each with distinct concepts. FBI agent Saga spends most of her time in the "real world" of Bright Falls and its surrounding area, while Wake spends more time in the surreal nightmare world of The Dark Place. This isn't just a thematic difference; it has a significant impact on how the characters act and feel.

Saga is an FBI agent in the vein of Hannibal's Will Graham. She's not just an expert at piecing together random clues, but she can also get into the head of the people she's chasing. Within the game, this plays out through her use of a clue board and profiling. Saga has a "mind place" inside of her head, a fictional cabin in her brain where she can retreat to get her thoughts in order. Inside the mind place, she can create long, complex case files by attaching various clues that serve the twin purpose of giving players a convenient overview of the many interweaving plot beats and allows her to come to conclusions and get hints about what to do next. Saga can also "profile" suspects, which is less about profiling and more about mind-reading. If she has enough clues, she can get hunches, which give her a seemingly supernatural insight into the minds of the people she's investigating.

This means Saga's gameplay is like an adventure title. You'll go into various areas around Bright Falls and search for clues about what is going on. Some clues are for flavor, while others are needed to advance the plot. Not every clue is strictly necessary. One rather cool feature is that puzzles have clues that you can gather to make them easier, but you don't have to gather them, and the puzzles be solved by paying attention. Most of the areas she explores are grounded in reality, such as a trailer park or an inexplicably coffee-themed amusement park.

For comparison, Alan doesn't have things quite so easy. The world he exists in is one of dream logic, with the world literally being influenced by what he writes and does. Early on, Alan finds a magic lamp that allows him to store the light that he finds. The world he is in changes if it is well lit or not, with passages appearing and vanishing or objects in the environment changing wildly. Removing the light near a car causes it to transform into a police car with flashing sirens, and it attracts nearby enemies.

It only gets more complex once Alan starts getting story ideas. Many areas in Alan's world are "scenes," which represent important moments in the "book" he is writing. Alan can get ideas from the environment, and he can use these ideas to change the scenes. If he is thinking about a missing FBI agent, he can adjust a subway tunnel to show what happened to him. If he's thinking about a cult, that same tunnel may contain clues and hints about the cult's overall goals.

Of the two playable characters, Alan feels more intriguing. Saga's real-world setting grounds her and her actions, and it makes the surreal and supernatural stand out more, but Wake's metanarrative powers allow for much more creative area design. The two balance out one another; Alan's mind-bending segments can get a little exhausting, and exploring Saga's more (relatively) grounded environments is more straightforward.

It evokes much of what I liked best about Control. The surreal physics and dream logic of the world make it genuinely fun to explore. It's a lot of fun to figure out the logic behind a magic ritual or how Alan is supposed to twist reality to reach his location. It isn't particularly difficult most of the time, but there's enough spice in the game's various puzzles and challenges to keep players engaged.

Combat in Alan Wake 2 borrows a lot from the first game's basic concept. Most enemies are creatures of darkness and shadow, so they're not bound to reality. Instead, they are twisting, writhing beings that dart around like a J-horror monster and can't be easily damaged. The only way to stun them and render them vulnerable is by hitting them with a beam from your flashlight or another powerful source of light. Once an enemy is rendered vulnerable, you can shoot them to deal damage and eventually put them down.

There have been some adjustments to the combat, largely toward adding to the basic fights beyond dodging and shooting. The dodge mechanic has been retuned, so it is less powerful and requires you to time it better, so you don't stagger enemies for as long. In exchange, enemies have more vulnerable spots. Many have standard weaknesses, like headshots, but others have a glowing point on their bodies (usually on the back or another hard-to-reach place) that cause absurd damage when shot. This invites you to do things like shoot an enemy's leg to stagger them, so you can follow up with a shot to the back. You get a variety of weapons as the game progresses, including pistols, shotguns, and flare guns. Saga can upgrade her weapons by finding manuscript pieces scattered throughout her levels, while Wake can find Words of Power that give him boosts to weapons and stats. Ammunition and inventory space are limited, so you'll want to make sure to prioritize whatever functions best for your play style.

The biggest problem in Alan Wake 2 is that combat is the most dull and uninteresting aspect of the game. It isn't actively bad, but any time I got into a fight, I just wanted it to be over so I could return to the stuff that the game does well. It's also easy to compare it to Control, which had a more engaging and interesting approach to combat. To the game's credit, it seems well aware that fighting isn't its strong suit, so there is significantly less combat than in Alan Wake and Control, but I would've rather had it be more engaging.

There are a lot of various side-quests to complete. There are scattered collectibles located throughout both protagonists' worlds, many of which ask you to solve basic puzzles. These range from having to find the code to a safe to figuring out the exact steps to a magic ritual. You'll even find various experiments the FBC has set up around Bright Falls to monitor its "fiction into reality" abilities; neat little stories are tied to the experiments. Most are straightforward, but they add a lot of flavor to the narrative.

Alan Wake 2 looks absolutely fantastic. The environmental design features much more variety than either the first game or Control, and a lot of effort has obviously been put into making each place feel distinct and interesting. There are a ton of little details that give the world life, and it runs shockingly well despite this. Even if you don't have all of the bells and whistles on, the game looks excellent, and the extra bits of shine help put it above and beyond.

The audio plays a big part in giving the game a horror feel, and more than once, I jumped as I heard a spooky voice whispering in my ear. The voice acting is largely good, but it occasionally feels too muted for its own good, and the soundtrack is fantastic.

Alan Wake 2 doesn't quite reach the highs of Control, but it's still an excellent game in the same vein. The atmosphere is almost unmatched, and it's an incredibly fun world to get lost in for hours at a time. The by-the-numbers combat is only a problem because I want to get back to the weird and surreal exploration as quickly as possible. Fans of the wild world Remedy has created will find a lot to like in Alan Wake 2, but newcomers might want to play through Control first to avoid being completely lost when a random janitor shows up and starts singing Finnish songs.

Score: 8.0/10