If pushed, I’d describe my 2024 gaming habits as eclectic, but that would actually be a lie. All my favourite games for the year are actually very similar: they are all the best. Unfortunately, the realities of sharing website space with several less-correctos means they didn’t all make this year’s advent calender.
]]>There must be hundreds of typewriters in the hall, their collective clacks a tidal wave of soulless automation, rising up to greet agent Kiran Estevez as she enters, pistol and flashlight in hands. Exploring rooms to the side, Alan Wake 2: The Lake House’s star finds whiteboards and documents revealing the typewriter’s purpose: to mimic Wake’s writing. Pages are graded along criteria such as ‘style’, ‘tone’, and ‘content’, then “fed into the algorithm” as references until “near-identical stories” to Wake’s can be produced.
“If Jules could simply cut the painter open and pull the painting out of him, he would,” reads one of the real Alan’s typewritten pages. That’s Jules Marmont, the obsessive head of the titular FBC centre. The Marmonts - Jules and his wife Diana - are running experiments to forcibly and synthetically create works of art, aiming to mimic creative passion convincingly enough for the paranatural entity inside Cauldron Lake to respond, as it has in the past.
]]>Remedy's Alan Wake 2 has now "recouped most of its development and marketing expenses", CEO Tero Virtala has announced in a business review for January-September 2024. Speaking as somebody who would quite like there to be more Alan Wake games - or at least, moderately weird and pretty decent blockbuster singleplayer horror games - I am both pleased by this news and a little troubled that Remedy's eldritch forest fable (which came out in October 2023) has yet to break even.
]]>Remedy have released the first proper in-game trailer for Alan Wake 2's second expansion, The Lake House. It's billed as even more of a horror experience than the base game, and takes place in a research facility run by the Lynchian ghostbuster organisation you may have encountered in Remedy's paranormal shooter Control. As such, the expansion forms a direct connection between the games, and may - read: definitely will - harbour a few clues about the story of the forthcoming Control 2.
]]>Last year we reported horror game Alan Wake 2 would be getting a couple of expansions. We've already had one of these in the form of Night Springs. And Edwin noted that the other would probably be a crossover with Remedy's other big game, Control, featuring secret government agency, the Federal Bureau of Control. He was right, judging by the trailer shown at yesterday's PlayStation Showcase.
The Lake House DLC is due out in October, and does indeed feature a facility run by the shady organisation whose job it is to keep powerful "altered items" from running amok. But it looks like somebody let a messed-up oil painting out of its cage.
]]>Ho, wayfarer! Beware slight spoilers for Alan Wake 2 in the passages ahead.
Deep in the Dark Place of Alan Wake 2 there is a forest that is not a forest - a zig-zag tunnel adorned with murals of a grisly woodland scene. Entering that tunnel, you find yourself sealed in at either end. But the mural suggests a way out: it changes when you turn around, following an unspoken narrative. It's a device as delicate as the graffiti elsewhere in the Dark Place is obnoxious. In hindsight, it feels like an example of "metsänpeitto", a concept from Finnish folklore about forests which, as writer Sinikka Annala explains, saturates the design of Alan Wake 2. It's a fascinating idea I'd love certain much larger, less intriguing video game worlds to learn from.
]]>Night Springs is a fictional TV show within the world of Alan Wake 2, so of course that's also the focus of the meta-horror action game's expansion. It's three episodes, and it's out in under 24 hours.
]]>As if you needed more proof that Baldur's Gate 3 is, in fact, a pretty damn fine video game, Larian’s D&D RPG swept through the video game BAFTA awards yesterday, picking up five of the British entertainment org’s top trophies. Even more impressively - after all, Baldur’s Gate 3 winning a shedload of awards is old hat by now - its latest Best Game triumph means that the sprawling RPG-slash-fanfic machine is now the first video game to win all five of the industry’s major Game of the Year awards.
]]>Alan Wake 2, last year’s best horror game, best game overall or best-game-featuring-an-unexpected-but-extremely-welcome-musical-dance-number depending on who you ask, has shifted over a million copies. Musical dance numbers don’t come cheap, though, so it’s still yet to turn a profit - despite outpacing the momentum of any of Remedy’s previous games, including Control.
]]>There's life in the ol' Alan Wake 2 yet. Last year's multimedia horror extravaganza game has a new patch, and of note is that it includes chapter select but, interestingly, also the "much-requested option to tune down the horror flashes", according to the notes here. What is a horror flash, you ask? It's that thing where a horror game or film or TV show suddenly flashes up a semi-transparent image of like, a monster, or a screaming woman, or a big weird eye. A jump scare meets the Kuleshov effect.
]]>I will not lie to you, reader, I used up about 95% of today's remaining creative energy/caffeine on that headline joke, but let's charge our flashlights, sharpen our hooks and struggle on through the body copy anyway. Remedy's Alan Wake is joining Behaviour Interactive's Dead By Daylight as a playable Survivor, having been conjured from his writing desk by the latter game's villainous Entity.
Mind you, I'm a little unclear on the causality here. The press release includes a cheeky quote from a lost Alan Wake manuscript in which the perennially troubled horror author suggests that he is the creator of Dead By Daylight's universe, not Behaviour Interactive. "As I searched for a way out, memories of a script I wrote for Night Springs about a fog-engulfed place flooded back," it reads. "Surrounded by the same fog, I became a pawn - trapped. I must find a way out. Rewriting that script is key." Oh Alan. Have you tried laying off the coffee and going for a stroll, now and then?
]]>At last, every door on the RPS Advent Calendar has been ripped open, leaving nothing but foil wrapper remnants, and the odd pixel crumb of the digital delights once contained within them. But that doesn't festivities are over! Like a Boxing Day bubble and squeak, we've gathered together all of our favourite games of the year once again, this time in one handy location. If you've been following along with our Advent goings-on, you'll already know what our game of the year picks are for 2023, but just in case you missed them, here's the list in full. Enjoy!
]]>Before you open this door on the Advent Calendar, make sure you have enough batteries for your mega-powered torch. The environment be damned, throw those spent batts on the floor where you stand and open-palm slam the new ones in, because light is the only way you're getting out of here alive.
]]>Razer have just launched, in a teamup with UK retailer Laptops Direct, one of the more unusual Black Friday deals I’ve seen thus far. In addition to several-hundred-quid savings on various Razer Blade gaming laptops, these also come bundled with a Razer Edge Android tablet and its Kishi V2 Pro controller – a bonus package worth £450 by itself. A free bag, worth £89, is thrown in as well, as is a copy of Alan Wake 2 for selected models. Potentially, then, you could walk away with £579 in freebies, all on top of your savings on the laptop itself. Interesting.
]]>Last week on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast, Alice and James use the Frasier-inspired browser RPG as a springboard to talk about The Simpsons a lot. And also fan-made video games, like a weird SpongeBob SquarePants fever dream that James experienced while full of milk and chili, and the Waterworld arcade game (as imagined in The Simpsons). Plus, we talk about games we've been playing recently, which includes Alan Wake 2. Alice does an unhinged rant while unaware she is once again ravaged by Covid.
This is why episode 35 is coming out a week after it was supposed to: yes, I had coronavirus the entire time! Apologies for the delay. But, you know, not like loads, I was pretty sick.
]]>It is perhaps ironic that in attempting to crystalise my thoughts about Alan Wake 2 - a game about a novelist with such crippling writer's block that they end up spawning an entire evil doppelganger of themselves to sabotage their own work - I, too, have been hopelessly staring at a blank screen for the better part of 24 hours. I have not, thank goodness, reached the stage where my psyche's split in two (yet), but this spiral of self-doubt has now got to the point where I simply have put words, any words, in front of one another to write my way out of this hellish pit of despair.
Alan himself goes through a similar ordeal of writing to escape as he tries to find a way out of the prison-like dimension known as The Dark Place, where he's been trapped since the events of the first game - and I take heart from the fact that it's clearly well-worn territory for the folks at Remedy as well, such is the forensic precision in the way it's portrayed onscreen: a chaotic, supernatural tornado that not only threatens to unravel Alan's own identity, but also the wider world as we know it. It's imposter syndrome writ large, and honestly, Remedy are pretty on the money with this one. Horace is not a pretty taskmaster when the words stop coming.
]]>Fresh from the release of Alan Wake 2 - and apparently with a view to driving me nuts, because I haven't had a chance to play Alan Wake 2 yet - Remedy have shared some titbits about future projects. These include the modestly-known about Control 2, a sequel to the paranormal Brutalist telekinet 'em up that is seeing "good progress", and the forthcoming remakes of Max Payne 1 and 2, on which Remedy are collaborating with GTA and Max Payne 3 developer Rockstar.
Further afield, there's the mysterious Condor project, a co-op multiplayer Control spin-off (pictured above) that builds on Remedy's experience crafting the single-player component for wayward service-based shooter CrossfireX. And at the very edge of sight, there's the faint outline of something called Codename Vanguard, about which naff-all is known. Could it be that "crazy, huge budget, dark gothic fantasy" Remedy's creative director Sam Lake would like one day to make?
]]>You can probably guess what’s coming. Alan Wake 2’s PC performance has been the subject of nervous uh oh-ing since well before the release of its onerous system requirements; Remedy comms director Thomas Puha even implored players to "look at the image quality" instead of framerates, like Dean Learner exalting the storytelling of Punch of Judy.
Actually, that’s not fair. Alan Wake 2 is much more enjoyable than Punch and Judy. And, like Remedyverse predecessor Control, there is something impressive about just how much visual tech you can choose to put on show: ray tracing, path tracing, Nvidia Ray Reconstruction, frame generation via DLSS 3, the lot. This wealth of options has produced the most intricate settings guides I’ve put together in ages, and you can consult it yourself lower down this page.
]]>You haven't even downloaded Remedy's Alan Wake 2 yet, assuming you're planning to, which means it's already time to start thinking about what you'll do once you've finished it. Apologies, the news beat is a cruel mistress and the present is always past, but in my defence, jumping irresponsibly around the timeline does make sense for a supernatural horror game that follows two characters through different dimensions.
Remedy's plans for the game include a chunky New Game+ mode, aka "Final Draft", which will hopefully arrive in late November, and two DLC packs, Night Springs and The Lake House. The first concerns Alan Wake's fictional in-game TV show, a homage to the Twilight Zone, while the second involves "an independent government organization" that can surely only be the Federal Bureau of Control.
]]>This isn't a Mega-Scoop for the Ages, but it's a fun little story. Tucked away in one dark corner of Remedy's latest horror extravaganza Alan Wake 2 you'll find an arcade cabinet machine dedicated to the very first game the Finnish developer ever made.
]]>The Alan Wake 2 review embargo lifts today, but ours needs a bit more time in the oven. Review code only came in late Sunday night, and for a game so heavily reliant on the thrust and resolution of its story, it's imperative I get to the end of it before I deliver my final verdict. Alas, the business of running a website does not play nicely with tight review deadlines like this, but what I can tell you after 15-odd hours of play is that it's really sunk its claws into me good and proper.
Alan Wake 2 is a much creepier, more unnerving kind of horror game than its predecessor, doubling down on its fiction-meets-reality schtick while also piling on the scares and interlacing it with unsettling imagery of teeth-gnashing, inkblot-stained doppelgangers to ratchet up the tension. In many ways, this is a game that owes as much to Resident Evil 7 as it does its own lineage in the genre, and the dual narratives of its two protagonists, FBI agent Saga Anderson and Alan himself, arguably make this Remedy's most sophisticated tale yet.
]]>Alan Wake 2 is out in a little under a week, and Remedy have just announced its PC system requirements. Things I learned: I probably can't play Alan Wake 2.
]]>Who had ‘playable remake of Alan Wake inside Fortnite’ on their 2023 bingo card? Nobody? Well, nevermind: either way, you can now relive the events of Remedy’s battery-powered horror game before its sequel comes out later this month.
]]>In the nicest possible way, and with the greatest of respect, Remedy's comms director Thomas Puha would like people to stop fixating on frame-rate and resolution and get on with their bloody lives. Or at least, that's my summary of his thoughts following the recent announcement on Xitter that Alan Wake 2 will have a performance mode on PS5 and Xbox Series X, allowing consoleers for whom responsiveness is a priority to eke a higher frame-rate out of a game "built from the beginning as a 30fps experience focusing on visuals and ambiance."
Puha has subsequently been chatting to press about the creation of the mode and Alan Wake 2's visuals at large. In what has become a time-honoured ceremony for any AAA game developer a month or two before release, he took a moment to observe that focussing on frame-rate vs resolution is missing the wood for the trees. (The trees in question do take a toll on Alan Wake 2's performance, but we'll get to that further down the page.)
]]>Alan Wake 2 outfit Remedy Entertainment have "always" felt pressured to make their games longer, creative director Sam Lake has observed in a new interview which also picks apart the differences between the forthcoming midwestern spookalot, out this October, and the 2010 original. Lake added that, Remedy's sense of audience expectations notwithstanding, he himself has difficulty setting aside hours for longer games. "[It's] just struggling with finding time and you know, being interested in a story, wanting to see it through," he said. "So it can even be daunting at times to start playing a game that you know is really, really long."
]]>Epic is taking the fight to Steam by rolling out a new revenue sharing model in the form of Epic First Run, an initiative that will offer developers up to 100% of revenue for six months if their PC game remains exclusive to the Epic Games Store.
]]>Action-horror sequel Alan Wake 2 showed up to last night’s Gamescom festivities with a cryptic trailer (below) that showed the studio’s signature Lynchian mystery, an upside-down New York, and some interesting live-action scenes. But references to Remedy’s past games have been the big conversation driver, especially since the studio is building up a “Remedy Connected Universe.” Creative director Sam Lake has now clarified that time-bending shooter Quantum Break and the Max Payne games aren’t cool enough to join the Remedy-verse, while also breaking down their approach to these shared-world games.
]]>As with Half-Life 2 RTX, Nvidia have taken to Gamescom to make a heap of DLSS announcements. Chief among these is an upcoming new version, DLSS 3.5, which will add to DLSS 3’s existing toolkit of upscaling and AI frame generation with a new trick named Ray Reconstruction. And it sounds pretty clever, if currently limited in application.
]]>Alan Wake 2 has been delayed, but only for ten days. The survival horror sequel will now release on October 27th. In an announcement posted on Twitter, the official Alan Wake account wrote that they "hope this date shift gives more space for everyone to enjoy their favorite games."
]]>After making their name with Max Payne's joyous gun bonanzas, Remedy Entertainment now seem pretty over guns but can never quite hang up their holsters. I've been playing Quantum Break since it arrived on PC Game Pass, and I'm finding their oft-forgotten time-bending shooter is yet another modern Remedy game full of boring gunfights even as it gives you supernatural powers that could replace guns. Their apparent disinterest in gunfights is especially felt in a game so into telling a story that it ends chapters with TV-length live-action episodes starring actual Lance Reddick. Looking back over their past games, agh, as much as I want spooky investigations, I can't get excited about their next, Alan Wake 2.
]]>Behind an ominous door next to a pizza joint, I bore witness to 30 minutes of Alan Wake 2 in an extended presentation based on the trailer you might have seen at the sumSummer Game Fest showcase. I didn't get to see any of Alan himself, but I did get to see a slice of horror, investigation, and action as the other playable character Saga Anderson. And without a doubt, Remedy are making a big push for this to be a detective game alongside a survival horror one. My first impressions? Yeah, strong.
]]>Today at the Summer Game Fest Max Payne Sam Lake from Remedy came on stage to talk a bit about the studio's second most famous son Alan Wake (2). After 13 years the sort of Twin Peaksy, sort of Stephen Kingy action adventure game is getting a much-requested sequel this October 17th, although this time it's a survival horror, and Alan is sharing screen time equally with an FBI agent co-protagonist. Lake told us a little bit more about said agent Saga Anderson, leading into a first glimpse of "raw gameplay" (as opposed to cooked?) that showed her in action. I have to say, my first impression is that Saga is a terrible FBI agent who is going to ruin the chain of evidence if this ever goes to court because this woman will not put on gloves to handle a goddamn thing.
Alan Wake 2 would arrive in October, said a voice actor earlier this week. They were not wrong. Developers Remedy confirmed the news via a lengthy new trailer shown during tonight's PlayStation Showcase, and embedded below.
]]>Alan Wake 2 has yet to receive an official release date from developers Remedy Entertainment, but according to the voice actor playing its titular, torch-bearing thriller writer, we can apparently expect it to arrive sometime this October. So far, Remedy have only committed to a general 2023 release for Alan Wake 2, but voice actor Matthew Porretta told the Monsters, Madness And Magic podcast that it's "supposed to come out in October". That means it should be well clear of ye olde Starfield, but that "supposed to" also suggests the date isn't set in stone yet. Here's hoping we get a more formal date at this year's Summer Games Fest, perhaps.
]]>Alan Wake 2 was announced at the death of last year with promise of a larger reveal to come in summer 2022. This week marks the 12th anniversary since the release of the first game, and to mark the occasion Remedy offered an update on the sequel. The update is: there won't be an update on the sequel this summer after all.
]]>After teasing the return of horror novelist Alan Wake in Control, at The Game Awards tonight, developers Remedy finally announced a full sequel. Alan Wake 2 is coming in 2023, and this time Remedy say it will be a survival horror game, not an action game. Also, Alan looks a bit like Jake Gyllenhaal now? Check out the trailer below.
]]>Yes, another Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla DLC has been released. And, again, it’s a tad like the base game. But, not totally, because Ubisoft have remembered to put some sneaking in this one. It still has a pebble-stacking minigame, though. You can’t have it all, I guess.
]]>This is a slightly different episode of The Weekspot. We had to record a little earlier because of the Easter weekend in the UK, and Matthew wasn’t able to come on because of prior commitments.
So, instead of talking to myself for an hour and a half, I drafted in two lovely guests: Josh Wise of VideoGamer and Rich Walker of Xbox Achievements.
]]>Working with publishers led the the novelist Alan Wake to flip his lid and get chased by ghosts or summat, so Big Al must be thrilled to escape his previous publisher contract. Alan Wake developers Remedy Entertainment have announced they've gained the publishing rights to the third-person spooker-shooters, which were previously held by Microsoft. This self-publishing seems more a happy consequence of old contract conditions rather than a sign that they're planning to make a new one, but it should give them more power to do whatever they dang well please with Al.
]]>Remedy followed up their spooky-ooky shooter Alan Wake with the shorter, shootier semi-sequel Alan Wake's American Nightmare in 2012. Might a proper sequel, we wondered, follow next?
Well, no. However, Remedy had started prototyping an Alan Wake 2 soon after finishing the first game, and whipped up a fancy gameplay video to pitch to publishers. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet (and a Polygon interview), you can now watch thirteen minutes of the Wake that never was. Some of its ideas, you may notice, were later reused in American Nightmare. But is Alan Wake dead and gone? Oh, you never know, Remedy say.
]]>Remedy man Sam Lake has tweeted: "It's all true. "It will happen again, in another town, a town called Ordinary." It's happening now." This seems to be a tease for a new Alan Wake game, judging by the link he provided with it, which is packed with Wake references.
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