When Alan Wake II first came out in October of 2023, I was definitely interested and intrigued. As a writer myself, a video game in which you play as a writer who is altering reality by writing in a space that exists outside of reality definitely grabbed my attention and made me think, “I wish I came up with that.” However, there were a few things that made me ultimately decide to wait until the game went on sale.
The first reason is that I had not, and still haven't played the first game. I assumed there would be essential information in the first game that I would need to play the second and fully understand the events of the second game. It feels like I'm more like twenty hours into the game, but I'm only ten hours into the game according to the stats page on the Xbox app. So far, I haven't felt like I'm lacking knowledge necessary to understand what's going on. Maybe my understanding of the plot would be better if I played the first game, but it's not detracting from my experience in the slightest.
The second reason is that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 came out around the same time. I was absolutely ecstatic to play that game and pretty much nothing was going to pull my attention away from it. This, I feel, is a pretty valid reason as Spider-Man 2 is an incredible game. However, after playing Alan Wake II for apparently only ten hours, I can already say that it is an equally good, albeit very different, game.
The third reason is that the standard seventy dollar price tag that comes with all modern games now is usually absurd. Many, many games are being released incomplete, buggy, and boring. Many games that are released complete, bug free, and fun still aren't worth the seventy dollar price tag because they're short or just not fun enough to warrant seventy dollars. There simply aren't many games that I've bought for full price that I didn't know would be worth it before buying them. Black Myth: Wukong was the only game I've purchased in a very long time, other than Alan Wake II, that I wasn't excited for before I bought it that ended up being incredible.
Alan Wake II is absolutely worth the cost. I bought the ultimate edition of the game for only forty dollars during Xbox’s Black Friday sale and it is so worth it. It's made me wish I played the game sooner. I would have gladly paid full price for this game. Not many games make me say that.
Alan Wake II is the first game I've played that truly, genuinely feels next gen. The graphics are absolutely stunning. The voice acting is great across the board. The live action sequences are incredibly well done and have some sort of filter over them that blurs the line between real images and computer generated ones. The combat is fun and just hard enough to make me aim carefully. The upgrade system for both Alan Wake and Saga Anderson is interesting and influential enough to make me want to come back and play more. The puzzles are well designed and make me want to scour the map for doll pieces to complete them. The game is truly incredible.
Then, I find out that Alan Wake II has not broken even when sales are compared to costs. That is an absolute shame. Alan Wake II and the team that developed it deserve to make a boatload of cash. I also don't want to see games like it go away. It's certainly not an indie game, but, like the current landscape of cinema, a lot of games that aren't established franchises go unnoticed. Unless they're free to play games that make their money through battle passes and skin purchases, many games get passed over by the public eye. Thank goodness Wukong got the publicity it deserved, but Alan Wake II simply didn't get the same recognition.
As consumers, we vote with our wallets. If the only games we're buying are Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, a skin on Fortnite every now and then, and every battle pass that comes our way, massive franchises and free to play games will be all that are left. Does that mean every title that isn't part of a larger franchise deserves to be purchased? Of course not. As consumers, we also need to send the message that we will pay for games but only if they are quality.
As Alan Wake II is a game of the highest quality, it made me sad to see it didn't sell particularly well. In fact, I almost feel bad for buying the ultimate edition of the game on sale when I gladly would have paid full price for it.
Have you played Alan Wake II? Did you enjoy it? Let me know in the comments!