Further into the Final Draft

 One of the challenges in comparing the Final Draft New Game Plus version of Alan Wake II with the original playthrough is that when I played the game the first time, I was not being much of a completionist. So there might be things I'm discovering this go-around that were actually there in the first version of the game.

I've finished The Heart chapter, which concludes with the boss fight against Nightingale. I can definitely tell you this: going into that fight with something like 16 shotgun shells and the pump-action shotgun from that you normally don't get until late in the game makes that fight way, way easier.

My first playthrough I was very low on ammo and battery charges (though I'm finding that not everything requires the flashlight) and so I'd basically get two shots into the undead ex-FBI psycho before having to run and scrounge for more ammo. This time, I did get grabbed a couple times, but it didn't seem to drain my health as much and I was mostly able to stagger him and fend him off, shooting him enough that he'd vanish and I'd have time to reload and heal up before my next confrontation.

At this point, I'm planning to do a thorough exploration of the Cauldron Lake area before heading back to Bright Falls, which has led to a couple encounters with the Taken Wolves, who take three full shotgun blasts to the face before they go down, but I have a better sense of how to deal with them - carefully track them as they circle around you and don't shoot until they're facing you, prowling forward.

It's actually kind of surprising how few enemies there are to fight before the first boss fight - really it's just the single Taken Cult of the Tree member in the convenience store and the two guys who come out of the water right before you get to the place where you need to put the heart into the hole in the witch sign.

While this game certainly doesn't have the insane endless waves of enemies that the first did, later parts of the game, as I recall, definitely had enough foes to really drain your resources. Maybe I've gotten better at pulling off headshots (I have the perk that staggers them if you land two headshots with the pistol in short succession) but this go around has felt a lot smoother so far. Still, we're very early in the game.

I've been keeping an eye out for differences - I'm finding, I think, more manuscript pages, but I don't know if that's because these are new or just that I didn't catch them the first time I played.

Oh, and I also noticed in my exploration of Cauldron Lake that there's a gate leading to the Lake House, which we know will be one of the two DLCs for the game, the Lake House being an FBC laboratory set up to study the lake.

I haven't decided if I want to change the order in which I play the game. Last time I basically alternated Saga and Alan chapters, so I did the Heart, then Casey, then Lost Girl, then Room 665, then... the one that takes place at the Nursing Home, and then Zane's Film. I've been toying with the idea of just playing through Saga's story in its entirety and then doing Alan's stuff, but we'll see how the mood takes me. My general recollection is that Saga's "levels" are easier but she has the bosses that are hard, and then Alan's levels are a little harder but of course don't have bosses.

Presuming that's still the case, of course.

Anyway, the game's gorgeous and I'm happy to jump into it, and happy to be doing so at a more relaxed pace (not sure if I'll finish it before I fly off for the holidays, so we might not roll credits on New Game Plus until next year.)