Little Nightmares was a very stylish, even aesthetic horror game that was appreciated by both players and critics. The game gathered good press, won at Gamescom 2016 as the best indie project and received a bunch of nominations for other equally prestigious awards. The sequel was not hard to predict. And nowLittle Nightmares 2 seems to be confidently aiming for the Major League ... but a little misses. As a matter of fact, that was the impression I got after seeing the exclusive press demo.
Have a good night, kids!
The first part of the now dilogy looked and played almost like a pure arthouse, and this was its trick. The game was so different from its colleagues in the genre that there was simply no point in revolutionary changes. Therefore, Little Nightmares 2 follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, but I do not want to scold her for this at all. Moreover, the universe has become wider, and the mechanics have become more diverse. Although those who played the first part are provided with an instant recognition effect.
Having barely started, Little Nightmares 2 instantly confronts the player with the fact: you are in a hostile environment, it's time to get out of here. Two people appear in the frame at once: the boy Mono and the girl Sixth, our old friend. Here, inevitably, you are waiting for a cooperative - but it was not there. No race for fashion, we have an author's project. Therefore, the Sixth flickers around from time to time, it can help quite a bit, but in most cases, Mono paves the way to freedom alone. And together with him we are subjected to constant bouts of uncomfortable, sharp and ringing loneliness.
The atmosphere is the main value of this game. Already in the start menu, a very strong musical theme sounds quietly and unobtrusively, as it should be, similar to a mixture of the classic Another Brick in the Wall and a lullaby from the depths of Hell. Little Nightmares 2's music is somewhat reminiscent of Akira Yamaoka's work for Silent Hill, only it's not Yamaoka at all.
At the celebration of style in Little Nightmares 2, there was a place for a picture. The fourth revision of the Unreal graphics engine draws by no means children's cartoons. Yes, it really looks like a cartoon. Only for an adult - in the spirit of "The Nightmare Before Christmas", where Santa at any moment can get a severed head out of a bag. The picture in Little Nightmares 2 is very stylish, and the developers should be praised separately for the play of light and shadow. Well clean Tim Burton in his best years! Especially grotesque characters and gigantic decorations.
More precisely, these are not giant decorations, but tiny heroes. Mono, like his girlfriend Six, are just midgets in the world of sadistic gullivers. The height of our wards is no more than thirty centimeters. Mono simply cannot reach the usual door handle, and even the electric fuse pulls with obvious effort.
And everywhere, whether it is an abandoned hospital or the possession of a maniac hunter, dangers await kids. The deceptively slow process sometimes explodes with aggressive dynamics ... so that in a couple of seconds we, without having time to orient ourselves, are surprised to find ourselves at the last checkpoint. No health scale is provided, every mistake means a loss of progress, any careless step leads to a sad ending.
Overcome and courage
The phantasmagoric world of Little Nightmares 2 is inhabited by the corresponding inhabitants, like creepy and aggressive mannequins that have an unpleasant property to come to life. Imagine that the hero has to make his way through a spacious room full of these ragged, motionless stuffed animals. And it is completely incomprehensible which of them will suddenly wake up and, with the grace of an infernal dancer, will chase Mono.
Or take a direct reference to the classic horror: Mono runs down a narrow corridor, and through the doors skinny arms of mannequins reach out to him. Such scenes completely knocked out the spirit even in the first parts of Resident Evil, where zombies tried to grab the heroes through a thin wall or a broken window.
In general, the Swedish developers have achieved a very correct feel from the game, which is created by the minimalistic voice acting, animation details, working with color and light. In Little Nightmares 2, the protagonist is scared - and this fear is transmitted to the player.
Well, the boy himself proves in every possible way that he is not at all a prince of Persia. The boy moves awkwardly, runs slowly, jumps low and close. This is especially noticeable in rare scenes of direct encounters with evil spirits. Of course, Mono can arm himself with a hammer and beat down the annoying hand that chases after him, just like in "Evil Dead". But the hammer for our hero is clearly too big and heavy, the swing lasts infinitely long, so when the creature finally gets a savory blow on the fingers, I really want to bang a champagne cork at the ceiling.
Mono is also trained to roll, crouch and scare off some monsters with a flashing flashlight beam - they are shy to attack in the light. But with all this, the hero of Little Nightmares 2 is emphatically vulnerable. And almost all the disadvantages of the game follow from here.
Enemies are swift, while Mono is not drawn to the sprinter. Sometimes, when you need to climb up the rack and dive into the ventilation shaft, and some abomination is jumping on your heels, the account goes literally for a split second. Sometimes there are even too many enemies in the frame, and individual fragments have to be replayed ten times. Tutorials and tips - forget, they're for the wimps. The choice of the difficulty level is scrapped, it's just high, and you have to put up with it. The PC version simply refuses to notice the good old USB gamepads, and playing the keyboard is physically painful. Finally, checkpoints are sometimes scattered generously, and sometimes there are several large and dangerous locations separating one savepoint from another. There is generally a problem with saving here: you can play a couple of busy hours, exit the game, and find out when you restart, that progress has simply not been preserved. I hope that this is all the costs of the early build, and the technical oversights will be fixed by the release.
In one episode of Little Nightmares 2, I was just surprised, and surprised unpleasantly. Mono tried to jump to the window near the doorknob, but to no avail. I searched the entire location, spending a whole hour, but it turned out that there really was only one way out - that very window. It's just that Mono still caught on the edge, I needed to do fifty jumps. Hopefully the script didn't work only in the press version.
As a result, a sad understanding comes that Little Nightmares 2 is not only scary to play, but also damn inconvenient. Sometimes it is more pleasant not to play at all, but to watch someone else's passage from over the shoulder. And such a game clearly deserves more. Let's see what will be on release.
The game will be released on February 21, 2021 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC. Later - on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X / S.
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