Review for The Dark Pictures: Little Hope. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 30/10/2020
On the eve of Halloween, Bandai Namco and Supermassive Games propose the second chapter of their anthology, The Dark Pictures: Little Hope, completely changing the central theme compared to the previous Man of Medan, but maintaining, overall, the same game structure. Will the guys from Supermassive be able to give us an adventure worthy of the most terrifying night of the year?
Abandon Hope
The story of The Dark Pictures: Little Hope starts from simple basics: a group of students and their professor find themselves, after an accident, in a city that seems to have something evil about it. While it might seem like a heartfelt and resentful horror story, there is something that immediately catches the player's attention; in fact, after the accident we will be transported back over the years, to the home of a family that has many things in common with our protagonists. Throughout the adventure of characters to The Dark Pictures: Little Hope (About 5 hours), these will find themselves having to deal with the mysterious past of the citytrying to figure out what's happening to him. All this then leads to a surprising, but also quite confusing ending, which leaves many unanswered questions in the player's mind. As The Dark Pictures: Little Hope is a highly narrative title, we prefer to say nothing more about the story, as we would risk running into spoilers that would ruin the gaming experience.
Contrary to what happened with Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures: Little Hope fails to make the protagonists memorable, thus making the player almost indifferent when one of them is in danger or faces death. This is one of the biggest problems of the production, which almost never manages to fully involve the user, which for a horror should be fundamental, especially if you want to scare those who play. Just to remedy this defect, the title resorts to a strong, perhaps exaggerated use of classic jumpscare. These, however, already after a couple of hours, will begin to no longer have an effect, becoming somewhat predictable: in fact we are talking about the usual dark figure that passes in front of the room, objects that suddenly fall, and all these things we are used to. .
Another element that often breaks the atmosphere is the transition from one scene to another: in fact, many times it seems that you are only witnessing a montage of video clips put in sequence. Fortunately however the plot intrigues until the end, allowing you to gloss over this quite annoying problem.
Movie night?
If you have already tried one of Supermassive's horror titles, you will surely know what kind of gameplay you are going for. It is in fact the usual interactive film in which the player must limit himself to making choices, overcoming QTEs and completing short exploration sessions. We are therefore talking about a genre that is not for everyone, which many may find boring because it is fundamentally "not played", but which many others consider very immersive. If on the one hand the choices, both in the dialogues and in the actions to be taken, are always quite successful, the exaggerated presence of QTE (especially in some phases) make the action boring and monotonous: to give you an example, there is a moment towards the middle of the game where we will be forced to "press keys in time" for more than a minute without interruption.
Among other things, an icon has been added that warns the player of an imminent QTE, just before the button to press on the screen appears, making the action nearly impossible to go wrong, especially for the more experienced. The exploration phases are, on the other hand, relatively few, and quite successful, with the direction that often manages, thanks to excellent shots, to convey that feeling of anxiety which, however, is diminishing with the progress of history.
As in Men of Medan and Until Dawn, predictions about the future are back in The Dark Pictures: Little Hope; exploring we will be able to find photos that will show us small fragments of future events that may or may not happen, based on our choices. This mechanic adds some spice to exploration but, for many it might be annoying to see these little “spoilers”. However, you can work around this problem by not collecting photos.
Also noteworthy is the multiplayer mode, with the ability to play with friends from the same living room, or online with other people. Everyone can choose which characters to play, and you will have to try to work together to keep all the protagonists alive until the end of the game. This is a great solution for playing together, having fun and maybe trying to dampen the fear, even during the night of Halloween.
“It is said that the slightest flapping of one's wings butterfly…"
The fundamental mechanic, and perhaps the most successful, of The Dark Pictures: Little Hope is that of the different choices, moral and otherwise, that we will be forced to make during the game. From the beginning we are explained by the Curator, who as in Man of Medan has the role of narrating and writing our story, and only sometimes giving us cryptic advice, how the choices we make from the beginning to the end of the game can change the fate of the characters and their s.
Even the creatures we meet will change based on some choices made, adapting perfectly to our game. The replayability of the title is therefore excellent, also given the quantity of possible endings and the possibility, at each game, to see completely new scenes depending on how the characters interact with each other. The game will then lead us to make hypotheses to try to solve the mystery of The Dark Pictures: Little Hope, and based on our theories we could choose how to act, significantly changing the events and above all the ending.
Terrifying but not too much
Graphically we note the usual care for the faces of the characters and for the settings always very dark and disturbing. A little less flawless animations of the protagonists during the films, which often do not seem at all suitable for the context, and the same thing goes for the dubbing. Together with the fantastic settings, the audio sector thinks to make the atmosphere terrifying, which often manages to give chills, especially if you use headphones.
Small note for the creatures that will hunt down our protagonists, who are by no means as memorable and dangerous as the terrifying Wendigos of Until Dawn, but still manage to do their job.
If you are looking for a way to spend your Halloween night with friends or, why not, with your family, The Dark Pictures: Little Hope is certainly for you. The title is presented with less conviction than its brother Man of Medan, failing to fully involve the player on the horror level, despite the excellent settings and the fantastic sound sector. Fortunately, the story is interesting and intriguing enough to be able to take you to an ending that will surprise you. A second chapter that certainly could have allowed the qualitative leap of the Supermassive Games and Bandai Namco anthology, but which instead does the bare minimum without ever reaching the peaks reached by Until Dawn. We can only hope, at this point, that the guys from Supermassive fine-tune the flaws of The Dark Pictures: Little Hope and maintain, at the same time, the merits seen in the two chapters, to bring us a more convincing third chapter in six months.
► The Dark Pictures: Little Hope is an Adventure-type game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 30/10/2020
