Little Nightmares II (2021)

LOVING this game so far. Satisfying puzzles and great environments. Creepy areas to explore. The game begins like Limbo except it has (some) color and 3D objects as opposed to 2D black and white. It's identical besides that. But then it goes back to standard Little Nightmares environments and objectives.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK the area with the mannequins that come to life in the dark is so creepy!!

LOVE this game thus far.

I've hit a wall and I'm about to give up on this otherwise neat game. I'm trying to run from a bunch of creepy mannequins that you can freeze by shining a flashlight at them. Except the controls for the flashlight are fucking impossible to nail down. I'm about to chuck my gamepad through a window.

This isn't that first time I've had to fight the sloppy, janky semi-ragdoll controls in this game. But until now, I've managed to brute force my way past them.

It's impossible to talk about this game without mentioning Limbo/Inside, which are so similar as to almost make this a "spiritual successor" or "ripoff". But Little Nightmares II is goregous. It feels like someone mined Tim Burton's brain for its essential kernel and embossed it onto the Unreal Engine, and the particular use of puppet body horror is more effective than anything in hyper-realistic games like The Last of Us. It's also my favorite length – something that can be played in one sitting (like Poe short story).

But while we're comparing it to Limbo/Inside, the gameplay here is not as tight. This wouldn't be so bad except that when you're forced to repeat the same stressful section over and over, the sense of "oh shit, how did I survive that?!" becomes "ugh, this again."

I think I'd give this game a 3 on my own, and my wife would give it a 5, so splitting the difference.

The art style is phenomenal, and the monster design is just unbeatable. The puzzles are generally pretty good, but oh boy the combat, action-sequences, and platforming are all troublesome. I'm pretty sure we spent a lot more than 5 hours in this game, but that's because we spent SO MUCH TIME just repeating the same sequences again and again. So much of the difficulty feels artificial. Like you have to get something juuuuust right to make it work. It doesn't matter that you figured out the puzzle, you also need to execute it perfectly. Most of the stealth sequences are less about stealth and more about following patterns.

The story it tells is good, though, and the general mood they've created is engrossing (and, at times, gross).