Alan Wake 2 review: Laptop and desktop benchmarks

In the past, the Finnish developer studio Remedy Entertainment has always been able to guarantee good quality (with a few exceptions), which could stand out from the crowd with clever time and/or physics features (Max Payne, Quantum Break, Control, ...). Alan Wake, which got a remastered version in 2021, is primarily known for its light effects and light mechanics. The sequel also follows in the same footsteps, but it also sets new accents in terms of gameplay and narrative — in total, it has received (very) high ratings from both the press and users. Rightly so, in our opinion, because even the first few hours of gameplay are absolutely first-class when it comes to content and staging and they really make you want more.

Graphically, the game also has quite a lot to offer. The American landscape and cityscapes shine with long visibility, dense vegetation (forests) and an enormous level of detail (interiors), among other things. The textures, light and shadow rendering, reflections and colors are also very pleasing.

In addition, there are a variety of settings and modern features, as far as the graphics menu is concerned. However, there are only explanations and no comparison pictures, and the amount of options sometimes requires some scrolling. The visuals can be tuned quickly and comfortably with the help of three available presets. In turn, there are a few inconsistencies or points that we can't quite understand. For example, not all settings of the medium preset are set to the medium value, but partly to low or high. Moreover, an ultra preset is missing, since not all options are at their maximum when using the high preset.

Remedy's decision to activate DLSS or FSR by default is also a little questionable. Although the native pixel amount can still be selected via the render resolution (including DLAA in the case of DLSS), this approach seems strange to us. If required, 4000 gen Nvidia GPU users can also activate Frame Generation. Like various other games of the past years, Alan Wake 2 also supports ray tracing. In this case, with cutting-edge features like DLSS Ray Reconstruction. Especially nice is the fact that all changes are applied without having to restart the game.

Technically seen, Alan Wake 2 is also in good (but not perfect) condition. The fact that the loading times can sometimes be quite high (even on SSDs) is only a minor problem compared to the game's steep system hunger. With activated ray tracing, the game becomes an absolute performance guzzler — a bit extreme compared to the graphics the game actually offers. The developer should really do some work here and optimize the engine, especially since ray tracing sometimes leads to graphics errors. Systems with little VRAM (less than 12 GB) often struggle with incorrectly loaded textures at higher resolutions or settings.