Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Review - I played the original game on the Xbox 360 and don’t remember much of it. I just remember it was OK. I thought it would be worth playing the sequel if they think its worth bringing back. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was. Not from a lack of effort from the developers because this is clearly a AAA production, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite land with me. The story is too convoluted and rarely makes any sense. The gameplay mechanics are confusing with no good tutorials. This makes the first part of the game quite a drag as you are fighting just to understand what to do. There are many times in the game I found myself getting stuck without direction. This can lead you to walking miles the wrong way which I don’t appreciate my time being wasted. The environments are also reused a lot and there are many times when the same part of the level will loop as part of the story but leading to confusion again when you’re not sure if you just need to keep looping or you did something wrong.
You control 2 different characters and the gameplay style is very different between them both. You can swap between each character’s story to choose which order you do chapters but I would have preferred the developers chose the best order for me like a normal game. I ended up leaving too many chapters for the Woman character for the end which I didn’t mean to.
The difficulty is all over the place. Sometimes you have hardly any ammo and health packs and the next level, you will be over encumbered with items. Some bosses are incredibly hard (especially the 1st boss), then later bosses will be really easy. Some puzzles are OK, others I found myself needing to check a guide. Using a guide is very rare for me yet there were some puzzles where I didn’t know where to begin in solving them. I even had to use a guide multiple times just to tell me where to go next to save me wasting time wondering around without anything to find. You can spend a lot of time aimlessly walking in some large environments and there is no fast travel.
The most annoying times I had to use a guide was during sections where you are chased by an invisible force. You have to run while the surrounding graphics are blurry so it’s difficult to know where to go. Then the entity appears in front of you, but you can’t see it because it’s invisible so you have to turn around. I had no idea this was happening and I dies multiple times. Even when I was aware that this happens, I still didn’t know where to run because of the blurry graphics and had countless irritating deaths.
Another contributor to difficulty is the run button deciding not to work sometimes, or not knowing whether you are in a run state as you are being attacked so end up pressing the button to walk instead by accident. Leading to unnecessary hits.
There a ridiculous amount of jump scare attempts in this game. I’m not against them but we are talking about 50 of them throughout the game. And only 2 or 3 actually landed with me and actually made me jump. Seems like a case of throw as many as you can, eventually one will land.
One thing this game does differently and successfully, is to merge full motion video within the gameplay. All the characters in the game are also filmed for real and they end up in cutscenes or even gameplay very seamlessly with no loading so it’s impressive. Although it does highlight how far we have to still go to have photo realistic graphics in games.
I did find some of the acting to be poor, surprisingly also by the actor that plays Alan Wake. There is a particular level which really stands out as you walk through a TV studio and the background screens show Alan (the real actor) dancing to Rock music, fully choreographed with backup dancers. New dances are played throughout the whole level and the music is really good too. In fact, the whole game has great music that you could imagine real famous bands playing.
On paper, this game should be a classic that would be talked about for years. Extremely high production values. A crazy, complicated story. Real actors, real video, great music. It really feels like an interactive movie at times. But then the gameplay, while controls are typical for a horror game, the way you go about progression is confusing and often boring when you don’t know where you are going and can’t see your surroundings properly.
Rating – 6/10
Played on PS5
No Cheats used
Deaths cut out
More like this:-
PS5 games - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnIZkuKAW4PFSUZjqr_C5ZY0QxsDuTKi
Switch games - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnIZkuKAW4Nh7Bf5xrkhJ-dnbvr0jCWI
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#alanwake2 #alanwake2gameplay #alanwake2letsplay
Review - I played the original game on the Xbox 360 and don’t remember much of it. I just remember it was OK. I thought it would be worth playing the sequel if they think its worth bringing back. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was. Not from a lack of effort from the developers because this is clearly a AAA production, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite land with me. The story is too convoluted and rarely makes any sense. The gameplay mechanics are confusing with no good tutorials. This makes the first part of the game quite a drag as you are fighting just to understand what to do. There are many times in the game I found myself getting stuck without direction. This can lead you to walking miles the wrong way which I don’t appreciate my time being wasted. The environments are also reused a lot and there are many times when the same part of the level will loop as part of the story but leading to confusion again when you’re not sure if you just need to keep looping or you did something wrong.
You control 2 different characters and the gameplay style is very different between them both. You can swap between each character’s story to choose which order you do chapters but I would have preferred the developers chose the best order for me like a normal game. I ended up leaving too many chapters for the Woman character for the end which I didn’t mean to.
The difficulty is all over the place. Sometimes you have hardly any ammo and health packs and the next level, you will be over encumbered with items. Some bosses are incredibly hard (especially the 1st boss), then later bosses will be really easy. Some puzzles are OK, others I found myself needing to check a guide. Using a guide is very rare for me yet there were some puzzles where I didn’t know where to begin in solving them. I even had to use a guide multiple times just to tell me where to go next to save me wasting time wondering around without anything to find. You can spend a lot of time aimlessly walking in some large environments and there is no fast travel.
The most annoying times I had to use a guide was during sections where you are chased by an invisible force. You have to run while the surrounding graphics are blurry so it’s difficult to know where to go. Then the entity appears in front of you, but you can’t see it because it’s invisible so you have to turn around. I had no idea this was happening and I dies multiple times. Even when I was aware that this happens, I still didn’t know where to run because of the blurry graphics and had countless irritating deaths.
Another contributor to difficulty is the run button deciding not to work sometimes, or not knowing whether you are in a run state as you are being attacked so end up pressing the button to walk instead by accident. Leading to unnecessary hits.
There a ridiculous amount of jump scare attempts in this game. I’m not against them but we are talking about 50 of them throughout the game. And only 2 or 3 actually landed with me and actually made me jump. Seems like a case of throw as many as you can, eventually one will land.
One thing this game does differently and successfully, is to merge full motion video within the gameplay. All the characters in the game are also filmed for real and they end up in cutscenes or even gameplay very seamlessly with no loading so it’s impressive. Although it does highlight how far we have to still go to have photo realistic graphics in games.
I did find some of the acting to be poor, surprisingly also by the actor that plays Alan Wake. There is a particular level which really stands out as you walk through a TV studio and the background screens show Alan (the real actor) dancing to Rock music, fully choreographed with backup dancers. New dances are played throughout the whole level and the music is really good too. In fact, the whole game has great music that you could imagine real famous bands playing.
On paper, this game should be a classic that would be talked about for years. Extremely high production values. A crazy, complicated story. Real actors, real video, great music. It really feels like an interactive movie at times. But then the gameplay, while controls are typical for a horror game, the way you go about progression is confusing and often boring when you don’t know where you are going and can’t see your surroundings properly.
Rating – 6/10
Played on PS5
No Cheats used
Deaths cut out
More like this:-
PS5 games - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnIZkuKAW4PFSUZjqr_C5ZY0QxsDuTKi
Switch games - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXnIZkuKAW4Nh7Bf5xrkhJ-dnbvr0jCWI
DONATE
buymeacoffee.com/retro2vr
paypal.me/Tinkstonten
BTC - 3Q9mg5pjT4YZgAvHQha6izYDrX3nbJqMPZ.
ETH - 0xb2ed8dcbb290beb31ff2f25c6c023b10ee7afb91
MATIC - 0x9051a87257812febda27691fc84bdd54500eb26f
DOGE - DL3afUvT2UxhkoXsUZNXZS4nwxJny3s4Zm
#alanwake2 #alanwake2gameplay #alanwake2letsplay
