Now Playing: The Lake House (DLC)

The Lake House is the second DLC expansion for Alan Wake 2 following Night Springs. When I reviewed Night Springs I concluded by saying that I hoped The Lake House would offer a more substantial and original piece of content. So did I get what I hoped for? Well . . .

I’m pleased to say that The Lake House does offer far more original content than Night Springs. You play as Agent Estevez of the Federal Bureau of Control sent to investigate a possible containment issue at their Cauldron Lake research facility.

Aside from the initial opening in the familiar woods of Alan Wake 2, The Lake House DLC is set within a new, entirely original location. You get a new enemy type to fight, and a new weapon. If you’re a fan of Control then you’re in for a treat because The Lake House feels more like a Control DLC episode than it does for Alan Wake 2.

As someone who loved the lore and setting of Control more so than the story, it was fun to explore a Control-like environment again, discovering the secrets of the facility and its reality bending experiments. There’s a lot of documents and audio recordings to sift through that tell the story of The Lake House and how things went so wrong.

As Estevez, your goal isn’t just to discover what happened, but to stop it from spreading. And as a self-contained little tale, I’d say The Lake House is pretty good. But if you’re looking for something that connects more directly or advances the Alan Wake 2 narrative in some way, that’s not what this DLC is and you might be disappointed.

And whilst The Lake House does offer a more original piece of content than the largely recycled content of Night Springs, it doesn’t quite offer the more substantial piece content that I was hoping for. I completed The Lake House in about 90 minutes, and if I hadn’t stopped to read every document or listen to every recording I’d probably have cleared it in under an hour.

The facility has 5 small levels to explore with only a handful of combat encounters. I certainly enjoyed playing through it, and there’s some genuinely tense moments, but I can’t help but be disappointed by how short it is. The DLC ends quite suddenly with a rather bad ‘boss’ fight and then the credits roll.

I can’t say I came away from The Lake House feeling entirely satisfied, but I can say I did like it more than Night Springs. It’s a solid, but very short piece of content that’s a perfectly fine addition to Alan Wake 2 and certainly worth playing if you already own the expansion pass or if you see it on sale.

7/10