THE DARK PICTURES - LITTLE HOPE [2020] STEAM PC REVIEW

🎮   GOOD   🎮

The positive:

💗 The use of fog and the overall visual art creates a tense atmosphere

💗 The graphics look amazing at 4K with RT really helps to get you invested

💗 Some choices have unforgiving consequences

💗 Interesting alternate paths exploration

💗 Silly but effective ghost town story

💗 The story explores some interesting concepts this time around

The negative:

👎 Supermassive thinks black bars are cool, thank the gods for the mod that solves this

👎 The massive plot holes from Man of Medan have been solved with an ending that disregards even the most critical clues since everything the player experiences does not actually happen.

👎 Safe during the restrained linear exploration, the only danger is during QTE.

👎 The characters are less interesting than in previous installments

Little Hope takes the Supermassive Games formula and improves upon 2019 Man of Medan, in a lot of ways. With a more captivating story with fewer plot holes and the masterful building of a tense atmosphere, The Dark Pictures series evolves from cheap horror into a well-executed thriller that uses jump scares but does not over-rely on them like before. 

The excellent branching narrative increases the gameplay value exponentially, encouraging players to seek different outcomes by making different decisions on new runs. But despite all that, does not reach the AAA overall quality of 2016 Until Dawn. Both dark Pictures titles still look like baby brothers.

INFAMOUS BLACK BARS

Why? 💔 Why black bars on a videogame? Wasn't it enough to see a behemoth like The order 1886 have a colossal failure mainly because of those infamous black bars, why keep trying? I'm about to become an activist against those damned black bars. So, to be able to experience Little Hope on Full Screen I used an app called "border remover" which is simple to use and really works! But I hate supermassive games for putting me on a search for the tool and endangering my computer with software that usually works in mysterious ways. 

FIVE SOULS

The 2nd installment of the Dark Pictures Anthology features several different interconnected themes centered around tragedies that occurred across time. The vehicles for this adventure are a group of four college students and their professor as they find themselves stranded in the town of Little Hope, trapped by a mysterious fog after their bus crashes and the driver disappears.

Each of the main characters has a distinct personality that they add to the group. They are each capable of leading a conversation or becoming compliant. These multiple layers give the impression that you are truly in control of how they behave and their fate.

The story has good pacing and keeps momentum as you discover the dark events in this town, such as the XVIIth century Witch Trials. It turns out this setting alone is scary enough as you witness people casting blame on witchcraft and others suffering the outcome. It becomes more interesting when you realize that some of these apparitions look familiar.

Good narrative and proper dialogue get you to cast doubt on characters or question the reality of things. It’s an engaging way to tell this particular story and requires exploration and commitment to fully piece it together.

Exploration has been improved upon its predecessor as the walking animation and camera work has seen substantial upgrades. It keeps the cinematic feel, but the camera shifts don't drive you crazy this time around. Still, the exploration is still limited by a couple of invisible walls.

Supermassive seems to have eased off the quick-time events in this release to focus more on atmosphere and narrative. This was brilliant! I was completely immersed in the entire mystery. No scene had me feeling bored or frustrated to move it along, and every scene came off like it was important to the plot.

There is still the same layout as before, failing early QTEs would not result in the death of your characters, but leading to the end of the story almost every QTE is lethal and will result in death. This is used to raise the stakes but also makes for a "walk in the park" feeling during the 1st hours when you know you are safe no matter what.

CONCLUSION

Little Hope is more of a thriller than a horror game. It never got me scared but it kept me invested in the events and the characters all the way, I felt eager to know what was truly going on. 

The visual art and the tense atmosphere are the highlights of the package. The team did a great job of creating environments based on a few different eras. With that said, through multiple jump-scares and panic-induced moments of terror, they managed to get players invested in this world.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope is an exciting thriller and an adventure game that utilizes the atmosphere and setting to deliver a unique storyline. As the player shapes the adventure, the game reacts in unique ways to the choices made. The improvements made upon the previous entry show just how far this developer has come in terms of game-making and storytelling. Some endings can feel a bit anticlimactic or rushed, but that’s just all the more reason to play again.

I'm used to games that feature high-level interaction with the world through robust and complex gameplay mechanics, the opposite of what Little Hope has. But every sandbox, despite having thousands of possible outcomes -with tons of freedom as to how to approach encounters- always ends the same way, showing you the same cinematic and having the story take the same turns every time I experience them. The Dark Pictures games have almost no gameplay or interaction with the world but every choice you make matters and every run is different as you shape the characters and the story events with your actions. It's a weird feeling, a game that gives no agency to players during gameplay is the game that gives me more agency over the story and the characters. 

LAUNCH TRAILER