Recenze Little Nightmares II » Vortex
If I have to name one thing that comes to mind when I remember the less than four-year-old horror adventure Little Nightmares, then it’s definitely the atmosphere. A dark surreal world with a little girl in a yellow cloak, lots of contrasts, crowding sounds, terribly picturesque enemies and sharp moments where the heart pounded in the throat. Yeah, yeah, I remember how much the developers at Tarsier Studios were able to pinch my nerves, but I have to add fairly that it wasn’t always just the atmosphere I was describing. The first episode of Little Nightmares had a lot of shortcomings, especially in terms of control and overly straightforward processing of puzzles, so I was extremely curious how the developers would do in the long-announced sequel.
Back to the same river
The game Little Nightmares II follows the first part, specifically the end of the last DLC The Residence. Beyond the sketched premise, however, the connections are not very tight, and if you no longer remember any of the previous events, it is not explicitly detrimental. In addition, the original heroine Six plays only a minor role when a mysterious boy named Mono comes to the fore. The fact that you are starting with a new character simplifies entering the story, but on the other hand, it does not mean that you will not constantly ask yourself some questions. At the same time, you have no idea what is happening around you even after watching the final captions, so you can only discuss with the others about the completion of the whole plot. But even in that lies a certain charm and the degree of abstraction, metaphors and the need to engage the imagination I quite liked in the finale. However, I could imagine at least a few more specific divisions, a few sentences that would push you into your thoughts and you could enjoy the purely psychedelic end a little more.
However, you don’t have to worry about revealing important parts of the story in our review, but it’s a bit worse with situational moments and the solution of individual levels. Just like in the first part, Little Nightmares II offers no freedom in decision-making or progress. Everything is strictly linked, and if you do not fulfill the developers’ intention to the letter, you will have to reload the last checkpoint. The problem is not in too difficult puzzles, but in passages where you have to time something, or be accurate in another respect, which of course is not entirely trivial. On the one hand, the camera enters the strangeness of the whole experience, because of which you do not always have a 100% overview of the depth of the scene, so you can jump completely differently than you think. And on the one hand, the controls, which are rigid, give you almost no response as a player, and in combination with the occasional collisions of physics, they can get really angry. The sequences that you have to repeat for these reasons are often quite long, the game is not saved during them, so just tick at the very end and repeat the past few minutes. You also often die on purpose to understand how your opponent will behave in a given place, and even that is not automatically apparent at first glance. Therefore, prepare for an unpleasant number of loading and, unfortunately, breaking the overall atmosphere, from which the fear disappears when repeated.
Trial and error
The fact that the boy Mono is not completely helpless in the world of many strange adults also suggests the possibility of taking an ax, a hammer or just an ordinary stick in his hands here and there. Although the stretch lasts a while, Mono can hit someone in the head or other parts of the body and get out of a seemingly hopeless situation. The developers called these moments a duel, but it is still only a part of logical puzzles and forms only a fraction of the total content. Much more imaginative is working with a flashlight, which works not only as a light source, but in the case of some individuals also as a immobilizing shield. Tense moments await you, in which a little of Doctor Who and Silent Hill: Downpour come together, and it is definitely one of the best that Little Nightmares II has to offer. However, there are also strong escape sequences, which, however, pay for the need described by the trial-and-error method, and it is also a work of luck and dexterity, whether you will remember them as continuous nerve-wracking moments or as fragmented passages. In this respect, the very end of the game suffers the most, but for obvious reasons I will not reveal any details to you.
Building tension in the dividers between chapters is sufficient for a 5-hour game and offers several satisfactory twists.
What Little Nightmares II excels at is its visual processing and overall design. What gripped me in the case of the first part works almost unchanged for the second time. Almost every screen, if the fragmentation of locations in five levels can be described in this way, looks unique and moves to the irritating limit of your imagination. Almost everything you come across in the game creates a disturbing impression, and even if you are not explicitly afraid, you will feel an unpleasant chill on your hands and cheeks almost certainly. What’s more, we talk not only about the moments when the main character is in imminent danger, but also about the moments when you just walk through the streets of the twisted city and watch the silhouettes of empty boxes of people throw themselves from the roofs of houses without hesitation. Why, you ask? Everything has to do with the ominous TV tower and the TVs themselves, but even here we will not go beyond spoilers, even if it is undoubtedly interesting information. It must be enough for me that building tension in the divides between the chapters is sufficient for a 5-hour game and offers several satisfactory twists. It’s a pity that in the last hour or so, the developers have combed the design to a minimum platform level, and after the great previous moments, you are still almost thoughtlessly still on your nose.
Maybe that’s why I wasn’t as excited about Little Nightmares II as I expected from the continuation of a successful game. Especially given that the developers spoke openly about the significant progress and debugging of the bugs that accompanied the first part. However, the result is almost identical gameplay, albeit with a few masterful ideas, which were not exempt from the aforementioned shortcomings. Also, due to the zero motivation to play the game, the price also doesn’t seem very happily set to me repeatedly, when you have to pay around CZK 800 on a PC and two hundred more on consoles. Overall, while Little Nightmares II remains an above-average affair and in many ways a successful game, only the story of Mona and Six deserves to be cleaned up and adjusted in suitable places so that it does not bite the atmosphere.
