Alan Wake has to escape from The Dark Place in Alan Wake 2.
Alan Wake has to escape from The Dark Place in Alan Wake 2.
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Alan Wake 2 — A tardy review reminding you not to skip this gaming masterpiece

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 8 min

Alan Wake 2 is a masterpiece of video game design, full of so many memorable scenes. Everybody knows this thanks to plenitude of Game of the Year awards and the oddball dance routine at The Game Awards.

It’s my favorite game of 2023, easily beating out other contenders like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. It’s the kind of experience you might get if you took a film like Inception and stretched it out for 33 hours — in an articulation of horror, comedy and weirdness. In a good way.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.