Alan Wake 2: The Lake House DLC Review – Spooky and Creaky

It’s finally happened. Alan Wake and Control have combined to form the Remedy Video Game Universe. Okay, so both games have referenced each other before. But with the release of the Alan Wake 2: The Lake House DLC, the two properties come closer than ever. While it’s not Remedy’s most innovative or fun title, it’s a nice enough bit of DLC to hype players up for whatever Remedy Entertainment has planned for next.

Game Name: Alan Wake 2: The Lake House DLC
Platform(s): PlayStation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, PC
Developer(s): Remedy Entertainment
Publisher(s): Epic Games Publishing
Release Date: October 22, 2024
Price: $19.99 (deluxe edition upgrade), $79.99 (base game and expansion pass)

The Lake House marks Alan Wake 2’s second and final DLC, following up the fantastic Night Springs. This time around, the main Remedy protagonists give up the spotlight (and flashlight) to Agent Kiran Estevez, a minor yet key character from the game. Agent Estevez travels to Cauldron Lake, a major location of Alan Wake 2, to investigate the Lake House. The Federal Bureau of Control, a major institution from—you guessed it—Control, runs this secret facility. And as expected, it’s seemingly abandoned with a recent experiment having gone awry.

Corridors of Chaos

The Lake House DLC borrows more of the environmental designs from Control, with its sterile government facilities and long hallways. But overall it’s an Alan Wake game through and through—for better and for worse. Earlier this year, Night Springs notably improved upon the combat of the base game. However, The Lake House seems content to replicate Alan Wake 2’s so-so combat. Players still have to dispel shadows around enemies with a flashlight before shooting them, this time in cramped office quarters. Unfortunately, the location makes the combat even more cumbersome and repetitive. It also reminds players that they could be experiencing the inventive combat of Control in this setting.

Meanwhile, The Lake House combines the stories of the two properties pretty cleanly. Agent Estevez finds that the folks from the FBC took note of how Cauldron Lake contains an Altered World Event, responsible for making Alan Wake’s writings come to life. After the events of the first Alan Wake game, the FBC scientists attempt to replicate this occurrence with a new experiment. They run their findings by the FBC heads in New York—until the events of Control remove any oversight. 

Since Cauldron Lake allows artists to affect the world through their art, the game replaces Alan Wake’s supernatural writing with an artist who can alter the world through paint. Supposedly the Jackson Pollock-like paintings can shape the future. But we never see this come into play. It’s an interesting idea but too abstract—pun intended—to provide a sense of what’s at stake here.

The Lake House of Horror

That said, it does lead to the creation of some creepy enemies. I’d say that The Lake House is the most pure horror game of Remedy’s titles. While it doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen before, The Lake House does slot nicely into the survival horror formula of searching for keycards and info while evading unsettling enemies and attempting to solve a rote mystery.

And if the central mystery comes off as vague, the world-building is as fun as ever. The Lake House has some juicy morsels of information in its files and memos. This includes everything from humorous office gossip to hints at what went down at The Oldest House, the setting for Control. One interaction in particular seems to set up the stakes going into Control 2. Similarly, the narrative of how the two married scientists who led the Lake House fell out of love (in a catastrophic way) does drive the plot forward well.

Perhaps it’s slightly unfair to keep comparing The Lake House to its superior predecessors. It’s just hard to avoid since it seeks to blend them together so tightly. And if it can’t stand on its own, it does flesh out the details of those games in roughly two to three hours. As a simultaneous dessert for Alan Wake 2 and appetizer for the upcoming Control sequel, The Lake House does its duty well enough.

Review Disclosure Statement: Alan Wake 2 – The Lake House DLC was purchased by The Outerhaven for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.

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