The beauty of the saga of Little Nightmares I think it lies above all in her being so vague, deliberately pending. Difficult to define and understand, blurred in time and space, in a riot of symbolisms and archetypes to sublime degenerate fairy tale. Of course, it is still possible to try to make assumptions, to put the events in order, but – just like when you wake up after a surreal nightmare – there is always something elusive, a detail not sufficiently focused that prevents you from grasping really the big picture.
What you really cannot fail to grasp in the work of the talented Swedes of Tarsier Studio (to learn more, here you will find our Statik review, brilliant exclusive for PlayStation VR) are the sensations that Little Nightmares manages to promptly evoke. A grandiose riot of anxiety, of fear, of threat hidden in the shadows barely thinned out by lights, perhaps fortunately too weak. Because, in the universe of Six and Mono, monsters not only exist, but they often try to grab you and kill you in a cruel way. All while you are dominated by the gigantic and deformed proportions of scenarios that always seem ready to crush the unfortunate children protagonists like insects.
Little nightmares are scary again
Little Nightmares II starts exactly from the success formula of the original (by the way, here’s ours Little Nightmares review): the idea is that of a Narrative platform to Limbo, in which the gameplay becomes also and above all a means through which to evoke emotions and tell a story completely devoid of text or dialogue. In this direct sequel – but are we really sure it’s true? – we will take on the role of Mono, a little boy imprisoned in a dimension corrupted by the incessant signal transmitted by a titanic tower. An addictive call that, through the TV screens, hypnotizes people and spreads in the air a malaise impossible to understand, yet concretely embodied by a slender and unstoppable black man in the Slenderman style.
Along your way, with aadventure that is around six hours, you will soon meet Six, the protagonist of the first episode. The interactions with the girl in the yellow raincoat will be one of the key elements of Little Nightmares II. A game that, despite the presence of a second character, it is and remains a strictly single player experience: it will in fact be the artificial intelligence to deal (moreover in a big way) with Six, with credible behaviors and an indispensable hand both in the exploration and in the resolution of the small puzzles that also characterize the experience in this round.
A way to break the rhythm a little, adding a pinch of thoughtfulness to a video game otherwise centered on platform sections, anxious stealth passages and daring heart-pounding escapes, destined to really push you to the edge of the chair.
Without a doubt, once again the most refined and fascinating aspect of Little Nightmares proves to be his in any case eerie and wonderful atmosphere, between surreal encounters with disturbing beings and delightfully settings creepy that cannot fail to leave their mark. The credit goes to the extraordinary care given to the whole by the talented Tarsier Studios: Little Nightmares II fully hits the target by virtue of a ‘commendable artistic direction and special attention to more or less surrounding details, confirming itself as a valuable video game to see and hear.
From character design to polygonal modeling, passing through lighting and direction – with a very conscious use of depth of field – Six and Mono’s journey will leave you speechless on more than one occasion, accompanying you by the hand in the meanders of a sweet and tormented nightmare destined to range between woods, classrooms and ghostly metropolises. In this regard, it is impossible not to mention the soundtrack and, more generally, the excellent audio design: between melodies reminiscent of disturbing music boxes and the patter of the protagonists’ feet as the only remedy to interrupt otherwise suffocating silences, Little Nightmares II proves to master the mechanisms of fear, without necessarily having to resort to trivial jump scare.
Horrors and mistakes
It should be noted that, as already anticipated in the previews of the past months, this second installment of the series turns rather smugly on pure horror: without ever transcending the gore, but putting aside the peculiar taste for the grotesque of the original in favor of a more explicit and direct terror. Suggestions perfectly embodied by the ranks of deformed mannequins that will haunt the abandoned hospital: obscene puppets ready to move with twisted animations in the dark, and then stop on the spot as soon as they are illuminated by the light of a torch.
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In a broadly positive global context, all production is recorded a single, annoying flaw: the balance of difficulty. With a change of direction frankly quite difficult to comprehend, Little Nightmares II has indeed become a game much more demanding and more rigorous compared to the first episode. An approach that goes badly both with the genre – traditionally more focused on experience than on performance – and above all with the purely playful component of the title, certainly not transcendental for the reactivity of the controls and precision.
Requiring simply excessive accuracy and meticulousness in reaction times, in jumps and in the unprecedented phases of combat (appreciable as an idea but not so successful in practice, if only for the way in which sometimes you will miss the target literally by very few centimeters), so get ready for a trial & error at least insisted, which in some circumstances and for a certain type of user could even lead to frustration. A shame because, wanting to throw it with such an emphasis on the rigor and accuracy of interactions, Tarsier Studios would have had to review certain gameplay dynamics from the ground up that have instead remained unchanged.
As it is, Little Nightmares II proves to be an intriguing and highly recommended title, which albeit with some stumbling (which is easily avoidable) once again denotes the crystalline talent of the Malmo team, as well as the value of a franchise with character to sell.
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