Plus: how the console experience stacks up against PC at its best.
Earned across decades of development, Remedy Entertainment has a stellar reputation for pushing game technology to new heights.
It may not have all the bells and whistles, but the key fundamentals are all there.
Alan Wake 2 on consoles is a perfectly fine way to enjoy the game.
Let’s be clear.
A lot of its impact comes down to the game’s very high quality indirect lighting.
That holds true in heavily overcast conditions, filling out low-contrast scenes with subtle depth.
Materials are accurately differentiated too, with a wide range of lighting responses.
Alan Wake 2 is absolutely packed with geometric detail as well.
Assets in the game are universally high-poly, and look good even at extreme close range.
Pop-in is kept to a minimum, though environments do tend to be a bit on the smaller side.
The game has some very inventive environments in addition to areas that feel more familiar.
The high quality of the character models helps a lot too.
Facial detail is exquisite and skin shading looks accurate and correct across a wide range of lighting conditions.
30fps is the frame-rate here, which presents without frame-pacing issues.
High quality videos to match the higher quality rendering would have been preferable.
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Alan Wake 2’s visuals excel, but there are some limitations.
Shadows mostly look good on consoles, but they do stick out at times.
Flashlight shadows are mostly fine, but similarly suffer from low resolution at a distance.
Reflections are a mixed bag on consoles.
Plus, sometimes the SSR takes on a bit of a grainy appearance.
This brings us to the PC release and its path-traced glory.
The answer is quite a bit - but less than I expected.
Shadows now exhibit realistic fall-off and variable penumbra as they grow more distant from the casting object.
Shadows up close are pin-sharp, while shadows further from the source become light and faint.
Image quality is also superior of course, as you might expect with the DLSS-driven image on PC.
Next up, let’s talk quality modes.
However, towards the end of development, Remedy added a performance option targeting 60fps.
The key differentiator here is resolution, as you might expect.
The quality mode uses FSR 2 to hit a 2160p output, with an internal resolution of 1270p.
Unfortunately image quality can be a bit suspect in Alan Wake 2 on PS5.
There’s quite a bit of image breakup on fine details, which is noticeable in both visual modes.
In the quality mode, Alan Wake 2 targets 30fps, and generally hits that target.
The performance mode targets 60fps, and actually does a pretty decent job hitting that figure.
Most gameplay, especially indoors, runs just fine at 60fps.
This is firmly in survival horror territory, with limited combat and a high level of difficulty.
It’s almost like Remedy mashed up Resident Evil with Ace Attorney here, and it works surprisingly well.
I particularly enjoyed the references to Max Payne, Control, andQuantum Breaksprinkled throughout.
From a visual perspective though, Alan Wake 2 is an extraordinary effort.
