HIGH The last monster is a doozy.

LOW Having to do a boss fight six times because of an AI glitch.

WTF Is that a wading pool full of dentures?

Despite what feelings they might have about a Little Nightmares they didn’t make, the developers at Tarsier should be proud that they created a franchise with vibes so iconic that it’s possible for another studio to make something that is so instantly recognizable as Little Nightmares.

For all of its flaws, no one can make the argument that Little Nightmares 3 doesn’t feel like Little Nightmares. It hits all of the important franchise beats – there are creepily adorable main characters, an oppressive, oversized world, and monstrous entities wholly focused on the heroes’ demise.

What it lacks, by comparison, is a sense that these elements meld together to form a whole — because right now, Little Nightmares 3 feels more like a series of levels than a coherent experience.

Set in a horrible dreamworld recognizable to anyone who’s played any of the others in the franchise, LN3 follows children on a journey through four distinct worlds — a necropolis, a dusty wasteland where birds are slaughtered, a disgusting candy factory and a Dark Carnival where the displays are as upsetting as the attendees. Finally things move to a final level that I won’t reveal, save to say that it is seemingly tied closely to the series’ oblique mythology.

Hopefully one of my major issues is clear based on the list of levels I just outlined – namely that LN3 has no coherent flow to its progression.

While individual levels might have a sense of rising action – players invariably meet that level’s threat about a quarter of the way through and then have to deal with three further encounters before vanquishing it or making good their escape – there’s never a sense that an overall tale is being told. Low, the lead character, has a map that he consults before using his powers to teleport to new areas, but what these areas have to do with one another, or the goal he’s attempting to eventually reach never become clear. At the end of the adventure, I was left with more questions than answers.

To its credit, on a moment-to-moment basis LN3 works well. The puzzles are cleverly designed and clearly laid out, and the AI is good enough so that if a player doesn’t have a live co-op partner, they should have no trouble completing the many two-person objectives. I played most of the campaign in single-player mode, and almost never found myself getting stuck because the computer partner was too slow or confused about what to do.

That said, LN3 really does play better when two live players are involved, and it’s delightful being able to speed things along by having two people working on puzzle elements simultaneously. As such, it makes the lack of single-screen co-op feel like an oversight. There are a few locations when two characters have to separate, but they’re few and far between, and the success of things like It Takes Two and Split Fiction have proven that split-screens work just fine. At least they aren’t forcing players to buy two copies – as long as the host has a copy of LN3, their co-op partner can simply download the demo and play with a Friend’s Pass.

In a large sense, I don’t have many complaints about Little Nightmares 3. Each new area is beautifully realized, the monsters are scary, and the skin-of-the-teeth escapes are as thrilling as one would hope. However, as I closed in on the end, I couldn’t help but feel that it all felt vaguely hollow. It’s definitely a Little Nightmares title, but it never feels like it has anything to say, or that it’s building to something profound. Even the ending was underwhelming, although given that it has to be compared to the sadistic gut punch in Little Nightmares 2, that was probably always going to be the case.

Little Nightmares 3 might be the least of the trilogy so far, but anyone who wants to have a new experience in its horribly bleak and oppressive world will still find this a great opportunity to do so — it just doesn’t come together as darkly perfect as it should.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco. It currently available on PC/PS5/XBS-X/SW. Copies of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 10 hours of play was devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. 2 hours were spent in Multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated T by the ESRB, and it features Violence and Blood & Gore. This is a disturbing world full of violent imagery, but it’s presented in such a cartoony and grotesque way that I suspect even younger teens won’t find it excessive. Be prepared to be haunted by some of these creatures, though. That will happen.

Colorblind Modes: The game does contain colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All information is provided via text, which can be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Little Nightmares 3 Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Now that we’ve reached the end of one godawful administration, I’m looking at my role as a game reviewer. More importantly, I’m trying to see things as a minority with a platform.

After being constantly bombarded with microaggressions, outright racism and the pervading sense that I might not belong, I can honestly say that videogames are an escape — but that escape also comes loaded with political leanings and certain views on minorities. In an effort to be the change I wish to see in the world, I have decided to use my newfound powers for good.

I pitched a story to my editor — a collaborative piece that would involve writers at GameCritics to come together with the common goal of documenting the last four years using the medium we all love so much.

Of course, there were questions about why I wanted to do something like this, and I came to two conclusions.

1. This would be the perfect way to cope with the national tragedy that was the Trump era while voicing my anxieties about the next four years.

2. Games should be looked at in a way similar to film, music and books. We need to start examining these works within the context of major events, much like the way the media changed post-9/11.

We asked GameCritics writers to select games that best represent the era to them — these could be titles that condemn the actions of the administration, don’t condemn them at all, that are complacent with everything that was going on, or in some way offer commentary on the time they were released. We’ve listed their selections here, in chronological order.

Hatred (2015)

Although this game predates Trump’s presidency, Hatred feels like a precursor and embodiment of Trump’s campaign and era.

Hatred’s reveal trailer came at the start of the Gamergate harassment movement and was pitched specifically as a reaction to “political correctness” in video games. It was clearly meant as a gritty, colorless spike in the heart of the “are games art?” debate and it offered an emphatic “no”.

The trailer itself is deeply poignant to me. The monologue, which ends with “My genocide crusade begins here”, gave me flashbacks to being a metal-obsessed teenager who spent ages drawing pictures based on Alien comics. I considered myself an outsider who favored edgy, challenging humor, and the trailer reminded of every terrible, gauche, edgelord thought that had gone through my head as a kid. The grimdark voiceover was so earnest and the imagery so over-the-top violent that the only way I could watch it was to convince myself it was a parody — there was no way that someone could seriously be an adult and think the same, painfully embarrassing thoughts I’d had at fourteen.

Certain groups of old friends and coworkers shared the trailer widely on social media, and to my horror, it seemed to be cause for celebration.

Then a few things started popping up — some of the developers had ties with Neo-Nazi factions, for one. The writer of the game, Herr Warcrimer, was part of a band called Infernal War (AKA Infernal SS) that were blocked from playing gigs in England for their unhealthy obsession with Nazi atrocities, and the unnamed “antagonist” spends a lot of time killing POC in the trailer.

At launch, Hatred was delisted on Steam, but then was brought back and an official apology was issued by Gabe Newell himself. A ridiculous amount of attention was paid to it and despite the game’s poor quality, it was a top seller and many considered it a victory against “Games Journalism” and “Social Justice Warriors”.

So with all that in mind, what could be more Trumpian than a game that built itself on childish pomp, attached itself to a popular hate movement, had ties to fascism and racism, and then turned out to be a shallow bore that still made a bunch of money by duping their fans into a ‘moral obligation’ to support it? The only thing missing from this noxious tale are conspiracy theories. AJ Small

Bioshock Remastered (2016)

Whilst Bioshock was not originally released during the Trump administration, the remaster was. When I replayed it last year, I found that it had some powerful comparisons to the contemporary context.

In a tale drawing on the work of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of objectivism, Rapture is a city torn apart by rampant individualism and driven by the inevitable inequalities that characterize capitalist societies — the chasm between the haves and have-nots. A businessman (in reality, a conman) named Frank Fontaine takes advantage of the situation. He gains power through the guise of being a man of the people when he is anything but, and only interested in his own advancement.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We live in an age where neoliberal capitalism is the dominant ideology that’s driven inequality and divisions in our societies. Men like Trump thrive in this environment while furthering division — con men only out for their oen gain at the expense of everyone else. Gareth Payne

Mafia III (2016)  

Mafia III was released a month before the 2016 election, but somehow it predicted the attitudes of the administration and the dangerous policies that were put in place to oppress minorities. It also serves as a grim reminder of certain dark chapters in America’s past, with some of the country’s most heinous acts of violence towards people of color happening much more recently than some may think.

To put things into the perspective, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April of 1968. That’s a little less than 53 years ago and it seems like things haven’t changed as much as we hoped. Mafia III ‘s virtual recreation of the divided country from that period is one of the best in any game, and main character Lincoln Clay is one of the best-written. Playing as a black Vietnam Veteran and seeing this world through his eyes is the kind of creative risk that I wish more triple-A action games would take, but I fear none will be this brave again.

I think what the game does exceptionally well over others (aside from its wonderful cinematic presentation, echoing the likes of Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and countless Martin Scorsese films) is that it really does point a finger at how shitty the US can be at times. We live in an era where people tend to forget that the current administration didn’t invent these issues, it’s a consequence of them. CJ Salcedo

Little Nightmares (2017)

Little Nightmares was certainly influenced by PlayDead’s Limbo, but what made it special for me was the period when it was released in conjunction with its themes. Players control a little girl in a yellow raincoat who is trying to survive in a dark world dominated by cruel adults.

Little Nightmares was released almost a year after Trump’s election into the White House, and some of the very first executive orders he signed off on were the infamous travel and immigration bans. The whole world was shocked when the news came out about hundreds of children separated from their parents at the U.S-Mexico border, being held in inhumane conditions. .

For me, Little Nightmares had parallels to this painful story of children who were alone, afraid, and trying their best to survive in a world governed by monstrous adults. In my opinion, the images of the poor migrant children had some influence on how well Little Nightmares was received by critics and gamers at the time. It may not have been inspired by it, but it effectively represented some of the horrific changes in American society during Donald Trump’s administration. Ali Arkani

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (2017)

If anyone thought that the real-world events taking place during Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus’s development — the election of Donald Trump, Nazis marching in the streets, open displays of bigotry, and the resurgence of the swastika — were going to change how the game handled things, they were wrong.

The New Colossus isn’t playing. Within the first few minutes we see a flashback detailing BJ Blazkowicz’s traumatic childhood. We meet his Jewish mother and deeply racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic father who uses the N-word, insults Jewish people to his wife’s face, and then hits her. In a later flashback, he learns that BJ has befriended a black girl and forces BJ to shoot the family dog as punishment.

We also watch Frau Engel, one of the returning villains from The New Order, berate her daughter for being fat and queer as she brutally executes a member of The New Order’s cast. After Engel carries out her execution, she rubs the deceased character’s decapitated head into her daughter’s crotch, in case how she felt wasn’t already clear.

The game doesn’t just comment on the overtly evil, though – Wolfenstein knows white supremacy had roots in American long before any fictional Nazi occupation. In one mission in Roswell, New Mexico, scatted documents and overheard conversations make it clear just how many Americans are happy to see that the Nazis have stamped out “degenerate” black, Jewish, and LGBTQ culture.

The game’s marketing is equally blunt, invoking Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” with taglines like “Make America Nazi-Free Again,” “Not My America,” and perhaps most tellingly, “No More Nazis.” The game — and its marketing — quickly drew the ire of Trump supporters who claimed it was unfair to compare them to Nazis. Bethesda, when asked about the marketing and the game’s content, stood by it. As one of Bethesda’s tweets marketing the game states, “there’s only one side.”

Comparisons between Trump’s America and Hitler’s Germany are not unwarranted. Trump repeatedly talked about serving more than two terms, supported blatantly unconstitutional, racist, and bigoted legislation, joked that his vice president wanted to hang gay people, refused to disavow white supremacists, tried to overturn an election, and incited a mob to storm the capital and murder sitting members of Congress – as well as his own vice president! – to stay in power. It’s fitting, then, that when you meet Hitler in The New Colossus, he’s a pathetic, ignorant invalid who wears an adult diaper and lacks control of anything — including his bodily functions. Demagogues and dictators like to pretend they’re strong, but Wolfenstein knows how small and weak they are.

And then there’s the BJ’s resistance itself – a diverse, ragtag group of socialists, ex-Nazis, back radicals, Jewish men and women, disabled and queer folks. It’s no surprise that this motley crew is the resistance here, because they are the resistance in the real world, too. Nor is it surprising that the game openly depicts interracial couples. MachineGames knows it’s not enough to say Nazis are bad. You have to show that the people they hate are good.

So yes, maybe it’s all over-the-top and on the nose, but given what we’ve seen during the last four years, maybe it had to be. MachineGames doesn’t allow these characters to make excuses about economic anxiety or say they were just lonely, misguided folks looking for community. It doesn’t matter how or why they became Nazis. What matters is they are. This is a choice they made. We overuse the word evil, but that’s what white supremacy is. If Wolfenstein depicts these people as cartoons, it’s because their ideology is cartoonishly evil.

The New Colossus never lets us write them off as monsters even though it’s easy to do — to make them the other, to excuse ourselves, and our complicity. If they’re monsters, they’re not human beings – and if they’re fundamentally unlike us, we can’t become like them. It can’t happen here. However, if the Trump presidency has taught us one thing, it’s that this isn’t true.

In one of the game’s most memorable exchanges, BJ and Grace Walker, the leader of the Black Revolutionary Front and one of the game’s foremost characters, look out over a ruined America. “Monsters did this,” BJ says.

“No,” Grace reminds us. “Men.” Will Borger

Far Cry 5 (2018)  

Imagine a person as a religious symbol that establishes a cult following based on practices of militarism, capitalism, and religious fanaticism. In video games, one might think of Joseph Seed, the main antagonist of Far Cry 5. In real life, we recognize Donald Trump.

Far Cry 5, which was mostly developed after Trump was elected president, brought the usually-exotic Far Cry series to the US. For a franchise that is known to portray civil wars metaphorically and usually does so quite well (I’m fond of Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 4) my expectations were high for a Far Cry on US soil as it inherited a fascinating situation in the most divided US political climate in years. However, it was an opportunity wasted.

Far Cry 5 is a very weak attempt to depoliticize a country that is otherwise involved in a civil crisis, limiting metaphors for Trump to comical relief and instead focusing on strictly superficial politics. The worst thing? The Trump figure is right in this game. Joseph Seed is considered correct in all of his political views and can’t ever be beaten, making Trump’s ideology the greatest victor. David Bakker

Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) 

Remember the capitol riots? A bunch of fucking bored white people stormed the capital because their reality show host of a president lost an election. While it wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen on US soil, or even the worst things Americans have ever done, it was certainly one of those moments in US history that made us all stop and wonder what the hell went wrong. Even worse, it reminded us that in our time of need, law enforcement is only there to protect oppressors as cops were taking selfies with the rioters like it was all a game. Sickening stuff. 

Anyway, 2018’s Spider-Man from Insomniac is a solid superhero title that nailed the feeling of web-swinging as everyone’s favorite wall-crawler. Unfortunately, it also leaned way too heavily into copaganda territory, as Spider-Man acts in conjunction with the New York Police Department. Sure, I get that most superheroes work with law enforcement and it’s been that way forever. My issue with this specific game is that it celebrates that partnership too much. In an era where police brutality has dominated real-world headlines, Spider-Man’s love of the police feels wrong and ill-timed. 

Then again, it fits perfectly with the narrative that many in the country want to push. Instead of confronting the issues and doing the work necessary to change the system, too many prefer to “come together” and “unify” with oppressors. It sucks, but it represents this era almost too perfectly. That sort of coddling of fascists in the name of comfort is what gave us Trump, and as I see tweets from white people saying that they’re happy they can rest because Trump is no longer President, I fear that the worst is yet to come.  CJ Salcedo

Life Is Strange 2 (2018) 

I grew up like most Gen-Z, Latinx kids in the United States (specifically in Miami, where most people my age can relate) as the child of a working-class immigrant parent. I know how to speak Spanish and I watched my dad work multiple jobs to try and build a life in a country he’s lived in longer than the one he came from.

Growing up listening to awful jokes in Spanish, eating Colombian food, and being exposed to old salsa music has shaped a lot of who I am, and while multiculturalism may be a common experience to those who grew up in big cities like I did, it’s still hard to articulate what life is like for people like me sometimes.

I started Life Is Strange 2 for the first time this year after reviewing Twin Mirror at the recommendation of fellow writer AJ Small, who wanted to know my thoughts on a game that features a Latinx main character.As of this writing I have not finished LIS 2, but I can say that its opening moments have affected me more than any other game has in a long time.

Main character Sean Diaz felt real and relatable to me because I finally saw someone who grew up in an environment similar to mine. He was the oldest sibling and the son of a working-class, immigrant parent.

I finally saw the relationship I have with my dad in a videogame — one where a parent is willing to do anything and everything for their child in a country that doesn’t seem to want them. Taking place right before the 2016 election, there is a foreboding sense of dread that hangs over the main narrative, but I like to think the early moments do a great job to show how much love there is in the Diaz family.

While the future doesn’t necessarily look bright as far as relations with immigrants and people of color goes, I’m glad a large part of my life (and the lives of many others) is given the respect and emotional weight it deserves in Life is Strange 2. CJ Salcedo

We Happy Few (2018)

“Truth is the enemy of happiness.” This quote stuck with me long after having played We Happy Few. To be frank, the game has its fair share of issues (see my review here for example) but speaking from a narratological point of view, We Happy Few is a masterpiece that accurately projects the precondition to Trump’s fascism.

The story revolves around a dystopian town full of massively-drugged, bourgeois people who attempt to forget their cooperation with the Germans in WWII — cooperation in which they surrendered all their children to them. This setup bears a striking resemblance to Holocaust denial, something which has amassed support under the Trump administration.

The drug taken by the citizens is labeled Joy and appears to metaphorically indicate why people have started believing in fake news — the fact that we often choose to believe only in the news and facts we want, while ignoring that we not want to hear. People who do not subscribe to the idea of pleasant news via Joy are social outcasts who live in poverty, forced to scrape by. The resemblance to America is striking — on one side Trump-enabling liars, and on the other are assaulted, oppressed, and honest people.

We Happy Few effectively tells the story of white supremacists and right-wing truth deniers that do everything to legitimize their hierarchical position versus those that believe in truth and are forced to deal with the consequences. It is a true dystopia that has too many similarities to the US people live in today, and it does a beautiful job in outlining the preconditions of fake news and the betrayal of truth. David Bakker

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 (2019)

The Division 2 may be a popular quasi-MMO, but it’s also an absolutely disgraceful, scandalous defense of the already-too-militaristic state of video games.

The Division 2 is set in Washington D.C. as a warzone of terrorist paramilitaries struggles for power. We’re shown the aftermath of a capital city that does not have the means to defend its institutions legally, terrorist paramilitary groups struggle for power during a pandemic — does this sound familiar?

Well, not to the developers, as they have claimed the game ‘does not make any political statements’. In reality, this title predated the domestic terrorist attack on US democratic institutions by less than two years, and in light of this, The Division 2 has aged poorly. However, this isn’t the greatest issue.

No, the very fact that explicit militarism and the simulation of gun violence around the center of US democracy can be called apolitical is the wildest, most unbelievable statement that could be made here.  David Bakker

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)

One of the defining traits of the Trump administration was the fast and loose way it has presented facts and truths — it also coined the term “fake news”. Consuming media reinforces the truths of society and can reshape how we view things and how we perceive reality, but through social media, Trump weaponized information for his own gain, sewing doubt about journalism which painted him in a poor light and spreading lies purported to be facts, leading his base to violently support false perceptions. 

Modern Warfare may seem to be an odd title to bring up here, but it’s a game that openly uses real-world events as inspiration, and one such example is seen in the level “Highway of Death.”

This level is a clear, deliberate reference to a real-world atrocity of the same name committed by American forces in the Gulf War when retreating Iraqi forces were bombed. In Modern Warfare it’s the same, except in this case it’s the Russians who have committed this atrocity. The purpose seems seems to be emphasizing the villainy of the Russians, but it reduces a real event to being a cheap plot device. Also, in doing so, it misrepresents the American force’s role and in doing so, contributes to reshaping the reality of the event while reinforcing a pro-Western bias of the kind of bias that feeds into the “America First” toxicity of the Trump era. 

It is important that events like these are retold with accuracy and handled with the respect they are due, as it feels deeply disingenuous to take an act that America committed and recast it as something to be despised when done by someone else. Gareth Payne

Death Stranding (2019)

Hideo Kojima is always poking at politics. Metal Gear is full of political comments and criticism, and this history is why no one was surprised with the themes and narrative choices in his latest game, Death Stranding.

Although it came out in a cloud of mixed reviews and controversial Kojima fan reactions, there was one subject it dealt with perfectly — America needed to reconnect! The “reform” that fictional president Strand was talking about was done through connecting forsaken cities of this new Un-united States of America. Sam literally connected these states by bringing them back online, but the meaning behind Kojima’s work was much deeper.

After withdrawing from many international treaties and organizations, the image of the U.S. as the leader of the free world was heavily damaged. Even faithful allies such as Canada and the U.K. opposed these withdrawls. In a general sense, the United States was separated from the rest of the world and needed a “reform”. Further, violence and disinformation from pro-Trump activists tore the country apart and caused great civil unrest, including the suppression of protestors such as the Black Lives Matter movement.

While set in a post-apocalyptic fiction, Death Stranding still managed to capture and feature the core of these events and their devastating consequences, and in a way, this one game might single-handedly represent the struggles of the country and of the globe during 2019. Ali Arkani

Umurangi Generation (2020)

The Trump era was an affront to human rights, objective truth, and basic decency. Kind, rational people do not need to be sold on this point. But his presidency also presented an existential threat to anyone who will live through the next few decades.

For ages, scientists have been warning us that climate change will deal dramatic damage to our planet if we don’t swiftly take steps to reduce our carbon footprint. In recent years, the call has grown more urgent. We’re rapidly approaching the point of no return, and we’ve already begun to experience the effects. The lethally cold conditions in famously-hot Texas are the most recent example, but all across the globe the winters have grown shorter, summers have grown hotter, tropical storms are stronger than ever, and wildfires ravage dry environments.

And these are the mildest effects. By the time we see the worst of it — when the oceans rise, displacing coastal populations and upheaving society on a grand scale — it’ll be too late to do anything about it.

Naturally, Trump’s response was to pull out of the Paris Agreement, setting us back further. But perhaps the most defining moment of our battle against climate change during the Trump administration came at the end, when the “good guys” won — when the candidate who “believed in science” picked Cedric Richmond, one of the Democratic Party’s leading recipients of fossil fuel donations, to serve as a senior advisor.

Anyone who’s feeling as hopeless as I am about our future will likely be deeply moved by last year’s criminally overlooked cyberpunk photography game, Umurangi Generation. Although its setting is considerably more fanciful than what’s happening in the real world, the game is an unmistakable ode to the people who’ll take the brunt of their parents’ mistakes because they grew up too late to do anything about it.

The game has no formal dialogue, but its “characters” are a pack of rebellious youths blasting music and creating art while a horrific backdrop unfolds behind them, and I have to wonder if the coming generations will find themselves in a similar situation — deprived of a voice by the idiots who came before, left with no option but to laugh in the face of an unsolvable problem.

I’d love to be proven wrong on this, but perhaps the hardest truth of the Trump era is that even after we’ve “won,” we’ve probably still lost. Mike Suskie

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020) 

Fun fact — I reviewed this game.

Not-so-fun fact? writing the CoD BO CW review was one of the most strenuous experiences I had in 2020. Tackling a major, triple-A game with awful politics really took its toll on me, and I genuinely feared for my life over the reaction the piece would get.

So now it’s time for me to cap this article with the same game that gave me so much grief, because I either have a death wish or I just like repeating myself. 

Black Ops Cold War is an ugly game, one that revels in the death of people of color, communist sympathizers and anyone who stands in the way of the United States. It was sickening to play though and has me debating whether or not I can support the series moving forward.

What really shocked me, though, is the game’s reverence for Ronald Reagan. While I expected a right-wing title to love one of the most influential conservative leaders of the last century, it reminded me of how much rehabilitation of past, Republican presidents I’ve been seeing on Twitter. 

In a few years, white liberals will start longing for the days of “funny” Trump tweets, or claim he wasn’t “as bad” as whatever future leader we’ll have. Games like Cold War that celebrate these men as heroes feels like the same sort of revisionist history. All the death and destruction is the same as it was in every other CoD, just with the added bonus of an obvious, right-leaning slant.  CJ Salcedo

*

The post Staff Picks: Games That Defined The Trump Era appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The wrenching final battle.

LOW A puzzle built entirely around sound.

WTF The game’s cover reveals a huge mid-game twist.

Little Nightmares II opens, as its predecessor did, with no explanation for its world or rules. A little boy with a box on his head escapes a trap in a dark forest, then moves onscreen right because that’s the only option available. There’s no context provided, nor any opening monologue to explain the situation — just the understanding that if the boy doesn’t keep moving forward, something terrible will catch up to him.

An apparent prequel, Little Nightmares II takes place in a big city where the boy and his sometimes-sidekick Six make their way through one horrid ordeal after another. The content is equally divided between clever environmental puzzles and harrowing chase scenes, and once again the player controls a tiny person in a giant world where a piece of everyday furniture becomes an obstructing monolith, and average doors are impassable barriers with knobs far out of reach.

LNII‘s art design is captivating. It’s as if the player is moving dolls around a miniature playhouse, and the warped scale gives a chance to consider each texture and gnarl in the wooden floors and furniture. The smallest rathole becomes a secret pathway, and the diminutive heroes’ stature establishes tone perfectly — the world contains nothing but threats.

Also successful are the villains. From the bag-headed hunter to the teacher who can find her students no matter how well they hide, these monstrous pursuers are genuinely disturbing, especially when the penalty for failing to escape is to see the boy be devoured. These tense chases are well-balanced, and each escape route is clearly flagged. They’re not easy by any means, but they’re fairly built and almost never force the player to memorize a long sequence of surprise instant-kills.

The puzzles are just as good as the chases, with a refreshing lack of contrivance to the obstacles that stymie the player.

Since most of Little Nightmares 2 is built around the idea that the world itself becomes a puzzle for anyone it wasn’t designed for, the player will have to create routes suitable for a tiny person. From pushing luggage around to use as stepping-stones to throwing cans of soda to hit activator buttons, there are hours of sneaky ways to transform basic navigation into challenging brain-teasers.

Both puzzles and chases are supported by a gorgeous physics simulation. Everything in LNII has believable weight to it, and it makes every interaction a joy to behold. There’s one sequence in particular where the boy must set off a field of bear traps before he can cross a depression, and watching the chain reaction of traps triggering each other off was delightful.

Sadly, this near-perfect run is marred by one incredibly ill-conceived puzzle at the end of the campaign. It’s a classic ‘teleporting doorways’ puzzle in which the player has to go through a series of doors in a specific order to unlock the next area. The problem is that the way to tell which door to go through is by listening for the sound of distant music. There is a visual cue, but it’s incredibly easy to miss unless the player is sitting a foot away from a large monitor. Anyone with hearing issues or playing on mute will find themselves completely stumped by the last puzzle in the game.

Also, while I don’t mind a mysterious opening, I do take some issue with the fact that LNII‘s story remains completely opaque. All of the narrative comes via environmental design — players get clues from the way homes are decorated and from what’s been left behind. The world obviously had something terrible happen very recently — everything is in utter disrepair, and it’s all bleak and decaying, but just a bit more information as to who, why or how would have been appreciated.

Little Nightmares 2 lives up to its name. The journey is challenging and frightening, but haunting is what it does best thanks to powerful imagery that will ensure players will keep thinking about this short journey long after they’ve finished. It’s an emotionally wrenching tale, but it’s absolutely one worth taking.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco. It is currently available on Switch/XB1/X/S, PS4/5, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 7 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Violence and Blood. I’m not sure how this thing ducked under an M rating. While there’s not a ton of brutal violence, there’s plenty of evidence of its aftermath of it. There’s a large number of references to suicide as well, so take that into account before handing it over to a teen.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played most of the game without audio and encountered no difficulties other than the puzzle mentioned above in the review. There is no text in the game other than menus and onscreen button prompts. Text cannot be resized or altered.

Also, here is a guide I created to help players get past the music-based puzzle:

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Little Nightmares II Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The furnace room is a hub, and it was satisfying to repeatedly return to it.

LOW This time around, the “Inside-lite” label is earned.

WTF Interacting with the Nomes is the core mechanic — the AI should work better than it does.

When Little Nightmares debuted back in April, the ‘little kid in a big, scary world’ plot, haunted toybox art direction and 2.5D puzzle-platforming saddled it with constant (and usually unfavorable) comparisons to Inside. However, Playdead’s 2016 horror masterpiece was my favorite game last year, so I was eager for another hit of the same sort of dopamine, even if Little Nightmares was said to be a step down.

However, I found myself pleasantly surprised when I downloaded Little Nightmares and found that Tarsier Studios’ work isn’t just an Inside clone, but a uniquely captivating experience all its own. The grotesque monsters, near-Claymation visuals, clever puzzles (here’s looking at you, sausage swing!) and surprising conclusion helped define its identity. In light of how good the core content is, it’s then disappointing to find that the DLC levels come off as exactly what Little Nightmares‘ critics imagined it always was.

The base game found players taking on the role of Six, a tiny girl in a yellow rain slicker whose sharp hood jutted above her head like a shark’s dorsal fin. Six was busy exploring the Maw — a hostile, metal behemoth of an ocean liner. In the trilogy of DLC add-ons collectively called Secrets of the Maw, players are The Runaway Kid, a shaggy-haired boy with a flashlight, whose journey through the ship intersects Six’s at various points.

The first episode of the three, The Depths, found the Kid traversing the bottom of the Maw’s flooded hull, hopping from platform to platform and attempting to avoid a decaying aquatic menace called the Granny.

I was disappointed as I played through The Depths in preparation for this review, because nearly everything about it felt cribbed from Inside. I threw objects into the water to distract the Granny and then swam in the opposite direction like a madman to make it to the next platform in time. I also hopped over the water to avoid the Granny’s groping arms. I did both of these things in Inside, and PlayDead did it better. Unfortunately, the same is true of the second DLC add-on, The Hideaway.

In this installment, the Runaway Kid makes his way into the portion of the ship where Nomes (the friendly hooded creatures from the base game) reside, and he guides the little guys back to a gorgeously-lit furnace room which serves as a hub. The Nomes’ home provides the setting, and they themselves provide the main mechanics. But in execution? Working with the Nomes was more frustrating than anything.

These little guys would help me push boxes and pull minecarts, and I chucked them upwards to open doors, but their AI just isn’t very good. This is all the more noticeable because Inside did the same ‘work with others’ thing flawlessly; PlayDead’s protagonist effortlessly commanded ducks and zombies alike. While sometimes the Nomes followed along like they were supposed to, often I had to go to a Nome, pick it up and then bring it over to the object I needed it to interact with. Additionally, the content’s conclusion is only triggered once a certain number of Nomes have returned to the furnace room — while I had no issues on my first playthrough, on my second run the ending was halted by a stubborn Nome stuck around a corner.

When the Kid isn’t playing Pikmin with the Nomes, he’s stealthily sneaking past this level’s antagonist, the long-armed, blind Janitor from the main game. There are some high points here including a neat bit with a distraction involving loud machinery, but The Hideaway doesn’t give good indicators of when the Kid is hidden in stealth or when he’s visible. The Janitor notices loud footfalls, but it’s hard to tell how fast it’s possible to move without drawing his attention.

My hope is that the final expansion will right the ship and highlight what makes Little Nightmares unique. However, for the time being, the Maw’s dirtiest secret is that it’s not actually hiding anything interesting. Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was developed by Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. Little Nightmares: The Hideaway (like the base game) is available on the PS4, Xbox One and Windows. This code was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PS4. Roughly four hours were devoted to the story mode, and it was completed twice. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: Little Nightmares is rated T for Blood and Violence. While the foes in the base game are varied and have similarly varied ways to kill the player, there’s only one enemy type in The Hideaway and its sole attack is grabbing the player, so the violence is somewhat toned down.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There’s no dialogue in the game, and so, no subtitles available. But, there is an audio cue that plays when the player mind melds with each Nome, and it doesn’t have an accompanying visual cue.

Remappable Controls: The controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

The post Little Nightmares: The Hideaway Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Finally giving that old lady what’s coming to her.

LOW A certain loose plank that could have been much more visible.

WTF Why is it this hard to accurately throw a key?

If nothing else, the developers of Little Nightmares have the secret of developing chilling imagery down to an art. The dripping walls, the squirming black worms, the bandaged ogres with their inhumanly long limbs and fingers… I’d say that the only problem with the game’s title is that it vastly underestimates the scope of the horrors contained within.

This is especially true in The Depths, an hourlong excursion into the bowels of the prison ship where the main game is set. The player takes on the role of a little boy waking up in the dormitory area and goes on a journey that inverts the main campaign’s structure by following a little girl backwards through a few familiar areas before reaching the main setting of The Depths: a series of mostly submerged rooms where a twisted old lady lurks just below the water’s surface, waiting to drag the little boy to his doom.

The Depths is full of simple physics puzzles, asking the player to change water levels and use suitcases as platforms to reach new areas. The really impressive sequences, though, are a series of swimming races, where the player must zip from platform to platform as they’re chased by an ominous ripple in the water signifying that the old lady is on her way. Masterfully evoking the core campaign’s grimy aesthetic, these sequences are loaded with rotting barrels, broken cabinets, and weathered pieces of wood, transformed by context from disgusting set dressing to islands of respite where the player can take a moment, catch their breath, and plan their next move… At least until the old lady starts pulling the debris under water.

The oblique, environmentally-based storytelling of Little Nightmares is as impressive as ever. Everything is slightly off-kilter, from the oversized furnishings to the way that no door or drawer ever seems to close all the way. There’s a fundamentally alien quality to the setting that puts the player on edge just by virtue of its appearance. These are locations that all look and feel unsafe on their most basic level, as if something terrible could happen at any moment. So, it’s never a complete surprise when something does.

It took me an hour to make my way through The Depths, but I’d imagine more clever players could manage it in a little more than half that. While this isn’t an especially robust or full-featured expansion, it fits perfectly within the world of the main game. Anyone charmed or chilled by Little Nightmares will find more to love here, as well as some images sure to keep them up at night. Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco. It is currently available on PC, XB1, PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 1 hour of play was devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated Teen and contains Blood, Violence. There’s plenty of shocking imagery here. Children being dragged to their deaths underwater or turned to stone, horrible monstrosities striding around in the background, imagery suggesting slavery and abuse… it’s all very bleak, and you should absolutely take the rating seriously.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the entire game on mute and encountered no problems whatsoever.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

The post Little Nightmares: The Depths DLC appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Heads up!

Episode 51 features heavy front-loaded banter. If you’re not a fan please check the timestamps below to skip it.

Brad and Corey discuss Steamworld Dig 2, Culdcept Revolt, Little Nightmares and Ruiner. They also give input on the Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer and discuss Rockstar Games as a whole and answer some listener questions.

Beyond that, Brad tells a story about a close call with brawling in a Trader Joe’s bathroom and Corey almost witnessing a fight while on a skateboarding shoot. What an intense week!

Timestamps:
Extended Banter: 0:00
Steamworld Dig 2: 51:25
Culdcept Revolt: 54:52
Little Nightmares: 1:05:37
Ruiner: 1:25:25
Red Dead Redemption 2 Trailer: 1:45:17
Q&A: 1:57:00
Closing: 2:26:05

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogames (at) gmail (dot) com.

The post GameCritics Radio: So… Videogames! Ep. 51 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The game’s final sequence is appropriately epic.

LOW Wonky physics and difficulty perceiving depth.

WTF Six’s appetite goes beyond stale pieces of bread.

Little Nightmares drips with atmosphere, intrigue, and a foreboding visual design that combine to create a fascinating and disturbing world to explore. The game is imaginative and ghoulish in all the right ways, and recalls other recent atmospheric indie sidescrollers like Limbo and Inside, although unlike those games, it adds a bit of the third dimension to allow for deeper and richer environments. Yet underneath the exquisite beauty of its fleshy, dilapidated world is a game that sometimes feels undercooked.

Players control the diminutive Six, a sprite-like child hidden underneath a large yellow raincoat. The game begins with players escaping a suitcase in the bowels of a large ocean facility called The Maw, and Six’s goals are to find out who she is, what purpose The Maw serves, and whether or not escape is possible. To do so, Six will have to venture through a prison area, a kitchen, a feast hall, and the facility’s living quarters where she confronts the source of The Maw’s power and mystery.

At its core, Little Nightmares explores the corruption of children by the adult world. Six is sheltered physically by her raincoat and metaphorically by her innocence, but throughout the game she encounters sins of the adult world – suicide, greed, avarice, madness, and power — and gradually succumbs to them. Through its imagery and narrative, the game argues that the adult world corrupts everything it touches, and therefore children, as future adults, can be nothing more than victims of this corruption or little nightmares who are inheritors of the same legacy of malfeasance.

Each twisted area in Little Nightmares tells a story through its use, disuse, and detritus. The dynamic, low-key lighting keeps most rooms smothered in shadows and gives players an excuse to use a small lighter that Six carries, contributing to the unnerving and ill-lit exploration. Players scramble through ventilation shafts, up dumbwaiters, across dust-laden floorboards, and over tabletops cluttered with moldy dishes and bloodied cleavers. These environments alone are majestic and disturbing to explore. They work with the game’s themes to create a very specific and special experience. However, the dangers that lurk within the Maw’s decaying halls are what really shape the experience, for better or worse.

Although Six only contends with leeches in the game’s early areas, she soon encounters large, grotesque, humanoid monsters. A blind, hulking brute called The Janitor initially hunts for Six, listening for her footsteps and using his elongated arms to reach for her through walls and floorboards. This section initiates the game’s central gameplay loop, which is a series of cat-and-mouse scenarios where Six must sneak past or run away from monstrous characters that attempt to eat her.

Surviving these areas involves players hiding under tables or inside boxes and trying not to be seen as they sneak to the other end of the room or clamber up shelves to reach the next vent. To complicate this hide-and-seek, Little Nightmares usually tasks players with finding a key or solving a simple puzzle. For instance, in one area Six must grind meat in order to make a sausage link long enough to swing from a table to a vent in the wall.

Although novel at first, getting through The Janitor’s haunt only gives way to an equally tense series of rooms where players must deal with other, similar ghouls. For the most part these are fine encounters that add tension to the game and a goal to reach, but this formula doesn’t vary much over time, and some mechanical hiccups soon got in the way of its ability to keep me engaged.

For instance, the physics feel a little loose. Whether it’s trying to throw items at elevator buttons or swinging on a chain to cross a gap, the physical rules of the world feel floaty and ill-defined. These physics also make Six’s movements feel clumsy and imprecise. While this helps characterize her as young and physically immature, it does not make the countless chase sequences and platforming sections player-friendly.

The fixed camera angle combined with the three-dimensional world also makes perspective incredibly difficult to discern. As a result, it’s hard to judge the distance or direction of important jumps. In one particular moment, players have to leap off The Maw’s hull onto a hanging chain. However, because of the position of Six and the camera, players essentially have to make a leap of faith and hope they’re close enough to grab onto the chain. I died at least four times attempting this otherwise simple jump.

Death is the last major drawback of Little Nightmares. Every danger in the world has the ability to kill Six instantly — every time she’s discovered and grabbed, every pit she falls into, and almost every mistake players make results in instant death. While the game is generous with checkpoints, areas where Six dies again and again bring the momentum of play to a screeching halt. Without giving anything away, this problem was particularly pronounced in a room where I had to avoid the long arms of The Janitor while also trying to figure out a way to kill the monster. Every time I merely touched the side of his arm, the game would wrest control away from me and trigger an animation where he ended my escape. The experience would be so much better if it allowed for players to fight back rather than simply ending play, especially when the slightest brush against an enemy results in a death.

Despite these flaws, however, the game is a joy to behold. The world of the Maw is fully realized and disturbing in all the right ways. From its lower bowels to its most decadent rooms, each area feels inspired and hand-crafted. It is the sense of place and the excellently-implemented foreboding atmosphere that saved this game for me.

I really wanted to love Little Nightmares, and in some ways, I do. It tells an intriguing, ambiguous story through a gorgeous, gothic-inspired art style. However, the moment-to-moment interaction suffers from loose controls, questionable physics, and cat-and-mouse sequences that quickly grow tedious. To its credit, the story begins and ends on strong high notes, making both a good first impression and a final lasting one. More art exhibit than enjoyable game, Little Nightmares nevertheless deserves to be in the same conversations as Limbo and Inside, if not because it tops them, then because it shares the same artistic and narrative ambitions. Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It is currently available on Steam, PS4, and Xbox One. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T for Teen and contains Blood and Violence. The monsters in the game strangle, boil, and eat the main character, although the graphic violence is kept at a minimum. There is an image of a hanged man early in the game that may be disturbing for some players.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game works fine without sound, and there are subtitles. It’s fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game’s controls are remappable.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

The post Little Nightmares Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In this episode, Corey & Brad discuss…

– Listener Q& A

– Prey

– What Remains Of Edith Finch

– Little Nightmares

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogames (at) gmail (dot) com.

The post GameCritics.com Radio: So… Videogames! Episode 31 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.