Alan Wake II

 PlayStation 5
Metascore
89

Generally favorable reviews - based on 71 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 68 out of 71
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 71
  3. Negative: 1 out of 71
  1. The Jimquisition
    Nov 9, 2023
    40
    I adored the first Alan Wake, and I’ve either loved or liked every Remedy game since then. This is the first time I’ve felt so displeased by the studio’s work I’ve actually been angry about it. The pompous writing, the shoehorned mechanics that push a tiresome narrative conceit over the quality of the narrative itself, the archaic combat, the amount of time it spends doing almost nothing, Alan Wake 2 is fucking insufferable most of the time...It’s impossible to tell where the stylistically bad writing of the title character ends and the inadvertently bad game of Alan Wake 2 begins. The difference, at this point, matters not.
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  1. 3DJuegos
    Nov 6, 2023
    Alan Wake 2 tries to do many things. Some of them work better than others, but I still think we have to appreciate that effort for not being "the typical Triple-A". Not perfect, but different. [Recommended]
  2. Kotaku
    Nov 6, 2023
    Wake remains a fascinating protagonist, prickly and sometimes unlikeable, which only makes him feel more human and authentic. Saga holds her own, balancing Wake’s ego and attitude out with warmth, though she is not without her own demons to overcome. But it’s all the strange, personal, uncompromising moments in the story that really make the game sing with a distinct and singular creative energy. In a review of the new film All of Us Strangers, my friend, the film critic Walter Chaw, observes that art actually becomes more deeply relatable and more universal as it becomes more personal. “The miracle of being human,” he writes, “is the more you flay your chest, lay it bare to muscle, then sinew, then bone, exposing your heart fluttering there in its cage, the more familiar your humiliation becomes. The only universal is the personal.”
  3. Polygon
    Oct 26, 2023
    I already consider it a modern horror classic, one that opens up a veritable ocean of possibilities for Remedy’s future. If it takes another 13 years for a game of Alan Wake 2’s caliber to come along again, it will have been well worth the wait.
  5. The Verge
    Oct 27, 2023
    In Alan Wake 2, you are displaced by variety, undermined by unpredictability, and unprepared by uncertainty; it’s a tide of dark design that drowns and leaves you in fetters of what’s expected from survival horror. You will never be comfortable or safe.