Alan Wake 2 [PC, PS5, XBSX|S] 17th october 2023

[Jack Deth]

I'm finding it kind of boring, unfortunately. I was fighting what's his name? The dude in the morgue who goes back into the woods, and he killed me, because your biggest enemy is the flipping camera. It's annoying too how you didn't get much time to think of what to do in the morgue when Hemingway suddenly woke up.

At least I think that was his name.

 

[hughJ]

The overall cadence and substance of gameplay actually reminds me a lot of Myst or similar classic point and click FMV games. The effort seems to be largely directed at story and environment crafting that's there to be passively observed as you walk from A->B, with the 'A' and 'B' being perfunctory puzzle solving or combat. Kind of a weird vibe to be playing something where the interactive moments are what disrupt or break the immersion, rather than what drives it.

Nice artistry, nice engineering, but I don't know if a real-time 3D engine video game is the best medium for this. I think I'd rather have watched the movie version of this than play it, and it would have been a fraction of the cost to produce, more consistently paced, and it wouldn't be contending with a mixed quality of experience dependent on demanding hardware specs. If the game isn't completely butchered by video compression maybe Geforce Now would be the best way to play it for those without $2k video cards.

 

[davis.anthony]

10hrs in and it's starting to get super repetitive now, combat and game-play mechanics aren't deep enough for 10hrs+ of single player in my opinion.

I got to the end of the cinema and was like, suppose I'll go through the same thing a few times before it finally lets me complete, it's super predictable now.

Story seems to drag on for no reason other than dragging it on too.

If it didn't look at pretty as it does I likely would have stopped playing it by now, but I'm a graphics whore so I gotta whore myself over to its graphics.

 

[trinibwoy]

10hrs in and it's starting to get super repetitive now, combat and game-play mechanics aren't deep enough for 10hrs+ of single player in my opinion.

I got to the end of the cinema and was like, suppose I'll go through the same thing a few times before it finally lets me complete, it's super predictable now.

Story seems to drag on for no reason other than dragging it on too.

If it didn't look at pretty as it does I likely would have stopped playing it by now, but I'm a graphics whore so I gotta whore myself over to its graphics.

Did you play the first one? It was exactly the same. There isn’t a lot of variety in the combat or enemies. There are a few different environments but it’s all very samey which is understandable given the story. It really is an interactive novel with combat to check the gaming/challenge box. I enjoyed it but skipped American Nightmare after reading about the insane difficulty spike. Alan Wake + frustrating combat is not fun.

 

[davis.anthony]

Did you play the first one? It was exactly the same. There isn’t a lot of variety in the combat or enemies. There are a few different environments but it’s all very samey which is understandable given the story. It really is an interactive novel with combat to check the gaming/challenge box. I enjoyed it but skipped American Nightmare after reading about the insane difficulty spike. Alan Wake + frustrating combat is not fun.

Yes I did but I don't remember the first game being as long and the story seemed to develop more quickly so it kept my attention easier.

 

[Jack Deth]

I'll maybe go back to this later. But meh. I cannot say I care much for it.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Alan Wake 2: Update 12 notes — Alan Wake

Latest update notes for Alan Wake 2.

www.alanwake.com

Some PS5 performance improvements and some visual and lighting fixes across all platforms. Bunch of other stuff.

 

[Jack Deth]

Despite how hard and boring it is, I think I ought to get back to it later on. After all, what other survival horror games are there to play? Konami hasn't even gave us any news on the Silent Hill 2 remake and the other games, for ages now.

The Silent Hill 2 Remake is definitely not canceled, Bloober Team confirms

Silent Hill 2 Remake, which revives the horror game classic alongside Townfall, Ascension, and Silent Hill F, is not canceled, Bloober says.

www.pcgamesn.com

 

[Scott_Arm]

Couple things about this game. I've come to turning the lens distortion off so I can use more aggressive DLSS and still have it look sharp. I find the lens distortion is mostly just a warping of the image that softens it a lot, but I haven't noticed any other visual "character" that you lose by turning it off.

Input lag is not great. The game must support Reflex for frame generation, but there's no option in the menus. I don't know if it auto turns on with any form of DLSS, but if it does then the game has bad input lag. Doesn't make a huge difference in this game, but it's way more laggy than I'm used to.

Surprisingly I can actually run path tracing in some of the Alan Wake areas and get framerates that are close to what I get in the forest areas playing as Saga with ray tracing off.