Alan Wake 2: An amazing experience of immersive horror gaming

After 13 years of waiting, Alan Wake’s sequel is finally here. Although the first game got some critics about its gameplay, lots of gamers loved it by playing and watching. It was a strange concept just like Remedy’s other games: A desperate writer who holds a flashlight and gun in his hands fighting with shadows.

Alan Wake 2 brings back our old writer friend Alan Wake with some new characters, gameplay structure and an immersive storyline. Be ready for what’s coming. Alan Wake 2’s will give you goosebumps when you’re playing it in a livestream.

Horror games and Alan Wake

There are some games in which you gather your friends and just scream and also, there are some other games in which you’re experiencing an atmosphere, a horror story. But there are also another type of horror games which offer the gamer not only scary moments, but also an immersive story with enjoyable gameplay elements.

You can count lots of titles in this type of games. Resident Evil’s, Silent Hills’ and other immersive horror games which are both gameplay or atmosphere focused. Those titles are mostly perfect for a livestream because of their attraction.

Singleplayer or a multiplayer game, both streamer and audience love to experience a horror game. But the thing is, while a multiplayer horror game, such as Outlast Trials, can mostly work for creating a fun livestream because of the group interaction, single player horror games need a different type of immersion.

Of course, a game with just jumpscares can make you scared and create enjoyable scenes for a livestream but that won’t stay last. If you’re searching a memorable immersive horror single player experience for your livestream with beautiful storytelling, next gen graphics and gameplay, Alan Wake 2 is here for us.

Wake up Mr. Wake, it’s your turn

Alan Wake 2 continues after the events of the first Alan Wake game. Some gamers may have lost interest to this sequel because of this situation. Although Alan Wake 2 can stand on its own feet, knowing the events of the first game makes everything much more enjoyable and clear.

But don’t worry, in every case you will find yourself in Alan Wake’s head and his writings. You will be a part of this story. Not only the game’s but also his story.

I don’t want to spoil anything from Alan Wake 2 because you need to experience the plot twists for yourselself, but I’ll talk about how Alan Wake 2’s immersive storytelling and the world building work is amazing.

Alan Wake 2 perfectly introduces its world and worldbuilding to gamers. Just checking out the atmosphere and understanding the events of the story is enough to catch the gamer’s interest. This is an important situation for a live streamer because if the story and the universe of the game can’t attract the audience, you can’t go ahead with the stream.

But Alan Wake 2 presents its universe wonderfully and tells a story which absorbs the gamers. Characters, dialogues and the direction of Alan Wake 2 is what makes it perfect. And while the game offers a fluent story, it never compromises from its horror concept. You will be on guard in every second of this game.

Game’s direction is amazing in terms of the structure, storytelling or both the in-game or live action cinematics, but I still need to say that this game’s language may be a little bit hard to understand. Alan Wake 2 wants to make the gamer think about the events of the game and simultaneously combine them. So this will be an another challenge for casual gamers, just keep that in mind.

How can a flashlight be a weapon?

The first Alan Wake game’s gameplay was enjoyable alongside its story, but it had some problems too. Most of the gamers and critics talked about how the gameplay was not fun enough to hold the gamer in it. But Alan Wake 2 finally comes up with a fresh gameplay for the series.

The concept of ‘’a flashlight and a gun’’ still goes on and the game structure is no longer “just go straight and shoot”. Actually, Alan Wake 2 tries to offer different experiences for each episode during most of the game.

While you can play Alan Wake 2’s some of the chapters just as a Resident Evil episode, in which you can freely roam in a map and unlock some mysteries defeating enemies, you will be also experiencing pure linear single player third-person shooter sequences.

Alan Wake 2’s gunplay is not the best. If we compare, Resident Evil Remakes make this job much better but this tempo changes help to keep the game alive. One chapter be a detective, in another one find your way via changing your manuscprity, and just kill lots of shadows in another one! Now the gameplay just works, and it is pretty fun.

Your audience should see your face when you’re out of ammo and a shadow cultist run to you. This is not the hardest game in terms of source managment, such as Resident Evil, but you still can’t play Alan Wake 2 as if it’s just an ordinary horror themed third-person shooter.

There are also gameplay elements in which you should activate your detective instincts. In your mind place with Saga, you will be figuring out some of the interesting cases of the game. One of the most interesting gameplay addition of last year’s games.

Alan Wake 2: A true next-gen horror game

Before talking about how Alan Wake 2 looks and performs, lets talk about its replayability. Alan Wake 2 is more likely to be an one time experience. Once you finish Alan Wake 2, there will be no significant reason to play it again unless you want to play the new game+ for a couple of new scenes, but that’s not completely a new experience.

I would still praise Alan Wake 2 because of its gameplay time. You can finish this game in 15 or more hours and that’s a huge amount of gameplay time for a single-player horror game. Especially because horror games don’t take that long to finish, but Alan Wake can both offer a long gameplay and also do that without boring the gamer.

With this immersive storyline combined with gameplay elements, you will have such a fun time, or scary. In either way, that will be a great experience for who wants to play and watch a horror game.

We should also talk about how amazing this game looks aside from its art design and atmosphere. Technically speaking, Alan Wake 2 looks perfect and uses next-gen gaming techs, such as ray tracing and DLSS 3.5 frame generation. If you’re a streamer who reviews or talks about PC hardwares or softwares, Alan Wake 2 will be a good benchmark test for you, besides all its features of a great game.

Performance on the other hand, as you can guess, Alan Wake 2 looks perfect but also needs a powerful PC to run it well. I’ve tested Alan Wake 2’s PC version on Epic Games Store (not avaible on STEAM) and I can’t say that it does a great job.

I wouldn’t say Alan Wake 2 is broke on PC but I’m sure it still needs some improvements. Even on my PC, which has RTX 3070, couldn’t run it fluently. The performance was good enough to play it but also it wasn’t a stable experience. Alan Wake 2 would probably make you spend time on video settings a lot. But I didn’t run across any bugs or broken elements.

Anıl Keskinbaş

A gamer who loves to talk and analyze video games/game sector in his writings, videos and streams !