Alan Wake II reviews are coming, and they're quite high so far, holding an 89 at Metacritic, and a 90 at OpenCritic. It looks like critics are praising the story and the atmosphere, two of the strongest elements back in the first game.

Looks like Remedy did it again. Are you going to try it?

Alan Wake II Metacritic

Alan Wake II Opencritic

Didnt think it would get that high of a score. Good for them.

I will check it out whenever I get a PS5 and they release this physically.

I won't be trying it. After getting burned by BG3 I'm not buying digital only AAA games anymore. Physical release at least has some recourse.

Anyway, not a big fan of the visuals either
https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2023-alan-wake-2-on-playstation-5-remedy-raises-the-bar-for-visual-accomplishment-once-again
DF seems to like it, but I'm not seeing it. Must be better in motion (like the first game was) Quality mode screenshots all look rather blurry.

The quality mode uses FSR 2 to hit a 2160p output, with an internal resolution of 1270p. Performance mode again uses FSR 2, but this time with an output of 1440p and an internal resolution of 847p. Both modes look a touch softer than most other games with similar output resolutions though, perhaps owing to the lower-contrast artwork and heavy post-processing. Beyond resolution, the most obvious cutback in the performance mode is foliage density, which is considerably lower than the quality mode.

It's all moot to me until a physical release appears.

Looking forward to it.

So many 90 plus games this year.

Welp, it got down a bit to 88 MC/89 Opencritic and there's only 34 reviews out so far. Gotta see if the score maintains, gains, slopes itself in a little while.

But yeah, the year continues to be bountiful of good releases left n right ! Truly a striking year !
Also, sharing the concern of AAA only digital release. Just sounds like they want to maximize their profit margins by not operating with logistics of a physical release. Kinda makes a bit angry knowing we have plenty of smaller AA or Indies games able to sell physical copies of theirs ...

Good for it, but I'm not biting until a physical version comes out. I've never paid for a digital copy of a AAA game, and I'm not about to start, not now, not ever. Hell, the last time I paid for a download was when I got Blaster Master Zero when the Switch launched.

From an objective standpoint, this is gaming's best year since at least 2001.

There's nothing objective about one's own experience of gaming. 

Especially because I could say that OBJECTIVELY the state of AAA games on release are knowadays far worse than they were back then, meaning you don't get to play in ideal conditions as we once were. Which discredits a bloat of big games people would come up on their list. 

Anywoo, I agree to say this year can be considered amongst some of the previous stellar years we had in gaming. 

Objective metrics = Aggregated reviews, consensus, sales, and significance. You can still have a different opinion on which year is more significant overall than which, but you can't base this on which game you personally prefer.

Objective is basically an outlook on what others think. The number of high scored and big sellers this year is too high, without COVID bloat.