You Won’t Be Alone, But Your Friends Can’t Save You

HIGH Sweet tank vs (REDACTED) action!

LOW Secret-hunting into an absolute chore.

WTF How is a pelican this terrifying?

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Would a rose, by any other name, still smell as sweet? From the opening moments of REANIMAL, it’s absolutely clear that the answer is yes as Tarsier, the developers behind Little Nightmares 1 and 2, have done it again.

On offer we have children struggling to explore a hostile world that’s too large for their tiny forms. Foreboding environments convince players that a threat is always just a few feet away. Grotesque body horror enemies challenge the player to keep looking at the screen, even in the middle of hectic chase sequences.

Four months ago I wrote that Little Nightmares does not require Tarsier to develop it. I still believe that’s true, but REANIMAL proves that Tarsier doesn’t need access to the IP in order to make Little Nightmares.

A truly harrowing experience, REANIMAL opens, appropriately enough, with the player controlling a little boy in a small boat, lost in a pitch-black ocean. From developers that seem to pride themselves on their ability to baffle fans, this is a perfect metaphor. Everything is obscured, nothing is safe, and the only thing to do is find something that plausibly looks like a clue and move in that direction. Soon enough the player’s task is clear – a boy and a girl are missing three friends. They’re scattered across a dead world, hiding amongst the wreckage left by a horrible war. Who won the war and who it was against are unimportant – all that matters is that somewhere in the rubble there are children who need help, and that’s motivation enough to drive the action.

One of REANIMAL’s most impactful elements is a tone of overhanging dread. Just as in its spiritual predecessors, the story here is oblique to the point of causing frustration. Why is this orphanage full of petrified children? Why has this flooded town been mined? Are those sloughed-off human skins moving? Yes, they are, and no explanations are offered for any of it. I think I have some idea of what’s going on and the ending certainly has a solid punch to it – but anyone hoping that Tarsier would make a move towards coherence will be disappointed. There is a story being told, but the aesthetics are doing the heavy lifting.

And what aesthetics they are! Every corner of the world is grey and decrepit, as if a layer of dust has settled atop the whole of it. This is a world that covers the player in filth just by interacting with it, making it impossible to come away clean.

As the action moves from the ocean, to a forest, through a city, and finally into an active war zone, the player is constantly faced with new threats, each more horrifying than the last. Nothing good or pure can exist, and it’s no accident that the main characters and their three friends wear tattered clothes and disturbing masks – they may be children, but they’re as corrupted as the world they inhabit.

From a gameplay standpoint, REANIMAL goes out of its way to differentiate itself from Little Nightmares, primarily in the relative paucity of environmental puzzles and chase scenes. They still pop up occasionally of course – including one with a large bird that can be considered an all-time classic – but fewer than I’d expected based on the developers’ previous work. I never found myself searching for fuses or pushing boxes. There are a few doors to unlock and one code to put in a computer, but by and large the action here is about slowly and methodically experiencing the world, one unpleasant step after another.

This means that the experience of REANIMAL ultimately leans on platforming and combat. The leaping is floaty, but fundamentally functional, and combat is mostly random flailing. I won’t say these elements feel good, but in a sense they work towards what the developers are trying to achieve by making the player feel like they’re intruding in a world that has no place for them, controlling characters who are so overmatched that it’s almost pitiable. I honestly don’t know that super-tight controls would have improved the experience they were trying to craft.

REANIMAL is a nightmare that won’t end. After beating the campaign I immediately started it up again, hoping that by finding all of the secrets I’d get some answers to the questions the ending raised. Sadly, it wasn’t to be, and I found myself with too many loose ends while also being unable to get the haunting aesthetic out of my head. This is a grim, nasty experience from the masters of the genre. It’s a singularly nasty journey, and while I can’t recommend it to everyone, anyone looking to take a trip through the dark side won’t find one much better.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

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Disclosures: This game is developed by Tarsier and published by THQ Nordic and Amplifier Studios. It currently available on PC, PS5, XBS/X and SW2. A copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed multiple times. 2 hours were spent in Multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was rated M by the ESRB, and it features Violence, Blood and Gore, and Partial Nudity. It’s a testament to this game’s bleak subject matter that the ‘partial nudity’ referred to in the ESRB warning is discarded human skins left hanging from shelves and rafters all over one area. Beyond oppressive tone and endless brutality, this game requires a severe trigger warning for self-harm, as one of the levels is made up almost entirely of people blowing themselves up with grenades.

Colorblind Modes: The game contains no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All dialogue is subtitled, and there are no audio-only cues for tasks that need to be completed. Subtitles cannot be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable while using controllers, but keyboard inputs can be rebound on PC.

The post REANIMAL Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

It’s a Big, Scary World Out There

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?

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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

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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.

2003’s Manhunt is a brutal, gritty title that occupies a strange place in Rockstar’s catalog as something that should be considered the company’s best work, yet it remains overshadowed by their own mega-hit franchises. This bleak, uncompromising meditation on the nature of voyeurism questioned the player’s participation in horrific bloodshed, and has since become something of a cult title — and PIGFACE is certainly one of its descendants.

Set in a post-industrial wasteland, PIGFACE places players in the role of a woman with a bomb in her head. Faceless handlers have assigned her to murder members of a drug-dealing gang across a handful of locations, and what little characterization the game offers has those same handlers shocked by how little pushback they receive from their living weapon – almost as if she’s as much down for all the murder as the people playing the game. The gameplay is as basic as the graphics – this looks like a Quake-era experience and feels like gritty, vicious shooters of that time, back when most titles were developed by a handful of people and when it was easier to smuggle bizarre and extreme content into even major titles.

After choosing a mission, the player picks their loadout from a decent arsenal – but in a twist that feels strange for an FPS (and may have been inherited from Manhunt) the player can only bring a single ranged weapon. This creates a bit of awkwardness, as the player is asked to decide on a playstyle before they have a sense of what the level is like, and pre-mission the briefings are not particularly voluminous. So, there’s often nothing to do but guess whether a sniper rifle or a shotgun is better for any given area, and if that doesn’t pan out, they can hope to snag a more appropriate weapon off of a dead body somewhere along the way.

The strange part is that for a game seemingly built around experimentation and taking chances, the developers punish players harshly for mistakes. Any time they fail a mission, a steep financial penalty is incurred. While guns only have to be bought once and ammo is free, healing syringes cost money, ensuring that if a player fails a particularly difficult level more than a couple of times, they’ll be forced to try again with even fewer resources, and consequently, less chance of success.

Enemy AI is also a little on the spare side at this point. I’m sure it’s a difficult to balance and all of the enemies can be best described as drug-addled wastrels, but they were remarkably unobservant and unresponsive whenever violence kicked off — enemies will watch a guard’s head get blown off with a sniper rifle, shrug, and then get right back to their patrol seconds later. Setting off explosives or blasting away with a machine gun might attract reinforcements, or it might not – enemies were largely unpredictable in an ‘is the AI broken and not responding to triggers?‘ kind of way.

Still, there’s plenty to be optimistic about here. The violence is every bit as brutal and upsetting as one would hope given PIGFACE’s obvious inspiration. There are huge blood spatters with every shot, and enemies scramble around and scream as they’re injured, making the whole thing feel doubly unpleasant.

This unpleasantness also permeates every bit of the world. Every room is full of trash and dirty needles. The player is asked to shut down drug factories, and all they find are a few drums and jars crudely linked together with hoses and tape. This game is about the absolute lowest-tier of criminal being executed by an assassin who lives in a dingy one-room apartment next to a set of elevated train tracks. It’s a celebration of the grindhouse aesthetic and seemingly pointless violence – although as the story gets developed in later updates, that might well change.

PIGFACE is in a rough Early Access state at the moment, with inconsistent enemies and no real narrative to speak of. I don’t expect the graphics to get any better – the low-end look is the point — and it’s a clear throwback to a rougher, more brutal past. Anyone lamenting that we never got a Manhunt 3 will find a lot to love here.

Assuming gameplay is rebalanced and more levels are added – I beat all five in just under an hour – this is extremely promising. Hopefully the devs manage to turn it into a more complete experience, as games this heartlessly brutal are few and far between.

Or maybe this kind of game being rare is a good thing? I’ll let history be the judge.

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