GamesSurvival HorrorAlan WakeAlan Wake 2Alan Wake 2’s Lake House DLC sold me on Control 2 quicker than playing Control didWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesSurvival HorrorAlan WakeAlan Wake 2Alan Wake 2’s Lake House DLC sold me on Control 2 quicker than playing Control didWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Remedy)
OhAlan Wake 2, how I love and loathe you. Prior to last year, I’d never been able to reach the credits on a single survival horror game. But after reading our Editor-In-Chief Josh West’spreview from Gamescom 2023, I was hopelessly sold on developer Remedy Entertainment’s ambitious reality-bending narrative – jump scares or no. I tore through the first Alan Wake voraciously, then tip-toed through its much scarier sequel as soon as it launched; every fraught nerve and embarrassing yelp worth the hours spent devouring lore. I suspect my heart would prefer I grab a handful of crackling live wires before stepping foot in Valhalla Nursing Home again, but against better judgment, I’ve returned to Bright Falls for Alan Wake 2’s equally-terrifying DLC The Lake House.
The Lake House is just as petrifying as I feared – lanky paint monsters tend to have that effect – but I’ve found myself almost enjoying those moments of tension, chuckling after jump scares rather than sitting in stunned silence. Rather poignantly, Alan Wake 2’s final DLC is proof that Remedy has opened my heart to horror – besides coming back willingly, in the last year I’ve played through bothResident Evil 2 RemakeandDead Space, games once considered off-limits due to cowardice. But even more surprisingly, The Lake House has left me pining for Control 2 in a way thatControlitself never quite managed.
Reaching my threshold
(Image credit: Remedy)
Boo-oops(Image credit: Remedy)Alan Wake 2 “overdid it a little bit” with its jump scares, admits game director Kyle Rowley
Boo-oops
(Image credit: Remedy)Alan Wake 2 “overdid it a little bit” with its jump scares, admits game director Kyle Rowley
(Image credit: Remedy)
Alan Wake 2 “overdid it a little bit” with its jump scares, admits game director Kyle Rowley
Say what you will about the Federal Bureau of Control, but it’s got character. The clicky-clacky ’90s computers. Custom-made elevator dings. Little jingles that play before each of the Bureau’s charming home-made PSAs and video logs. Yes, there is an alarming lack of precautions around its meddling in powers unknown, but I’ll take style over safety any day of the week.
Through this, The Lake House feels like a bridge for Alan Wake fans to cross into Control territory ahead ofthe sci-fi shooter’s in-development sequel. That includes me. Following Alan Wake 2, I was keen to learn more of Remedy’s meta-bending universe, which meant playing Control several years too late. I predictably loved hoovering up the FBC’s every case file, but didn’t gel as much with its awkward soulslike checkpointing or slightly-floaty shooting mechanics. When it comes to combat, Lake House has its feet in both worlds: guns feel as weighty as they do in Alan Wake 2’s base game, but the DLC also draws from Control’s wave-based ambushes to create more challenging fights. It’s a slick pairing that’s left me excited to see how Control 2 evolves from here. I don’t expect it to drop everything and go full survival horror, but I do hope that it takes cues from Lake House’s more grounded texture.
(Image credit: Remedy)
From a narrative perspective, Lake House raises so many questions about the FBC that I hadn’t even thought to ask. When an experiment like this goes wrong, who’s watching the watchmen? How deep does the Bureau’s unethical streak run? What other dangers exist beyond the Oldest House and Cauldron Lake? With Alan Wake 2 and its DLC setting up events that reach far beyond Wake’s personal stake in matters, Control 2 seems best-placed to explore the Remedy Connected Universe at a much broader scale. If Alan Wake isRemedy’s spin on Stephen King’s small town America, Control is the studio’s answer to the author’s Dark Tower series: a meta-bending knot of strings that ties its entire universe together. We don’t know everything about the Oldest House – and we likely never will – but Lake House shows that there’s so much value in moving beyond the FBC’s original stomping ground.
But on a shallower level, it’s Lake House’s supernatural bureaucracy that makes me want more Control. Unleash the bloodthirsty horrors in office cubicles. Give me more puzzles that require combining dates on the break room calendar with reference numbers for cursed paintings to crack computer login passwords. Dull gray elevators that lead to impossible floors? Don’t mind if I do! Lake House is the best bits of Control combined with Remedy’s learnings over the last five years, and because of it, I’ll be counting down the days until I can enlist with the FBC once more.
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