REANIMAL Review
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?
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
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.
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