HORRIBLE DOWN TO THE CORE
Also for: Playstation 4, Stadia, Windows, Xbox One
Welcome back to the microscopic world of your worst dreamscapes.
Little Nightmares II is a sequel that's also a prequel to the first
game, a sidescrolling horror adventure viewed through a distanced camera. You
control a miniature boy, called Mono, through environments reminiscent of the twisted reality of the first entry. It takes place in another part of the same world - the Pale City - where the citizens are controlled by a signal tower in the center.
The playing field has depth which brings a creepy dimension to the stealth sections, where you must cross a room inhabited by a giant (at
least in your point of view) enemy. You sneak across the room, hiding beneath
wooden furniture, or behind pottery and books, as you try to find a way to the
next room. If you're detected, you must run to safety immediately.
Sometimes you have to solve a simple, often physics-based puzzle,
and the stress can be overwhelming when trying to yank some boards off a wall, covering the escape route, before an enemy reaches you. The level designs are somewhat better in this sequel, with smaller areas, less backtracking and pretty obvious ways to make progress. The visual indicators are better, with cones of light illuminating points of interest in the surrounding darkness.
Soon enough, you find a girl companion, whose true identity is built-up to be
a mystery, until it's revealed about halfway through the game. But fans of the first game need just take a peek at the cover art to figure out who she is. Your
companion is an invaluable part of solving many of the game's obstacles, and
together you unravel the mystery of the weird situation. Like
Ico (2001) and Yorda, you grow close through the game's ordeals. And you can hold her hand.
The game is divided into a handful chapters taking place in different locales,
like wilderness, a school, a hospital and so on. A lot of grotesque symbolism
tells a wordless story about the world and your place in it.
Like the first
game, an Illuminati eye holds special meaning. Repeated items scattered around
the locales hold significance, like broken TV sets, broken mirrors, prosthetics, teddybears and a
music box. Empty suits resting comfortably on wooden chairs imply the wearers might've been
raptured out of their dreadful existence - or maybe something horrific happened?
New nightmares haunt your explorations; a stern teacher with her head stuck on an endlessly expandable, wormy neck; a rotund doctor hanging from the ceiling; loose prosthetics chasing you down the corridors of
a darkened hospital. It all reminds me of a game like Silent Hill 2,
the PS2 masterpiece that radiated a similar dread every step of the way.
That's the Little Nightmares-experience I love. The first game was full of
stressful encounters like that. This one? Not so much, I'm afraid. The encounters are there, but I feel neither scared or stressed out. The stealth
segments are few, and instead the developer (Tarsier Studios) attempts
to insert more action sequences, an element they handle poorly. Little
Nightmare II adds many chase sequences and loads of combat encounters
against same-sized opponents. One grueling part forces you to shine
a flashlight to escape some monsters, who can only move in darkness.
The problem is not the ideas, it's the execution. It might just be a Switch
issue, but the controls are a shitshow. An input delay of about half a second
undermines all possible goodwill the amazing atmosphere and visual
storytelling should generate. As a player, it's hard to succeed with an input
delay, when but a fraction of a second is the difference between life and
death.
Add to that an overall unrealiability to Mono's actions. His animations are
sluggish, as if he's constantly wading in water, and the action buttons are
context-based. He'll occasionally stand still instead of jumping up to grab a
ledge. When close to a small object, he'll usually pick it up, except in
pressing situations where he might just run by. The common denominator is that
the controls completely ruin the mood by being obnoxious when they matter the most.
The low-angle sideways perspective might suit the hide-and-seek sections, but it also further ruins the action. It's impossible to get a
good sense of depth from that viewpoint, and it leads to a thousand
frustrating deaths. You get stuck on the geometry while being chased. You fall
to your death because you jump and miss a narrow plank. You strike your giant
axe just short of the enemy, who then takes the opportunity to one-shot you.
I've played and reviewed the first game (on PS4) and while it had some of
these issues, it never had them to the same extent. Mono's sluggish,
nightmarish movement might convey the sensation of being caught in a bad
dream, but a bad dream is scary and stressful. Here, those feelings give way
to anger and frustration. Upon trying different methods and failing 20 times,
you might retry your first approach - and suddenly it works.
The melee combat is the killing blow. With the problems of perspective, input
delay, sluggish animation, one-hit deaths and unforgiving checkpoints, I was
forced to replay the same combat sections far too many times. From there, the
game never completely recovered.
The flashlight controls followed, and they were even worse. They seemed
to change on a whim. Pushing the stick up/forwards sometimes aimed the light
at the back of the room, but other times pointed it to the ceiling, a
completely useless feature. The enemies kept on moving far too long after I
illuminated them. They got too close and as soon as I moved they grabbed me.
From there on out it was almost constant derailment.
Listen, I GET IT. I know it's supposed to be sluggish. Like Silent Hill 2,
it's a game trapped inside a nightmare, and in your worst nightmares you often
feel sluggish - heck, even paralyzed - out of fear. But one sequence like that
might be enough to get the point across, instead of, let's say, well over half
of your fucking game.
I love the atmospheric storytelling, creature design and story twists. It
leaves all the fine details to interpretation, and I love the audacity of the
dark and gory visual design. The silence and weirdenss of the audio cements
the creepiness. All-in-all the game is conceptually brilliant. But the merits
completely fail to quench my flames of rage, and that fact ruins the dread and
sorrow the story attempts to convey.
It has a great, shocking ending that might make you see the first game in a different light. But after a billion needless deaths, I just witnessed
that cutscene in a defeatist manner, with no emotional investment in
what happened to any of the fucking characters. I'd advice you to watch a
playthrough - or why not try a different version - rather than playing the darn Switch thing. That way you'd probably care
more.
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