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Little Nightmares 2 reviewThe monsters come out from under the bed once more
The monsters come out from under the bed once more
I really loved the firstLittle Nightmaresand it remains one of my favourite games of all time to this very day. The attention to detail, the twisted version of adulthood as seen through the night terrors of a child, the stand-out imagery of horrible hulking monsters that stayed with you long after you’d turned it off. Ah! Perfection! And whileLittle Nightmares IIdoesn’t feelquiteas perfect as its predecessor, you know what? It’s still really good.
Little Nightmares 2 Bosses are the Creepiest | My Favourite Thing In… (Little Nightmares 2 Review)Watch on YouTube
Little Nightmares 2 Bosses are the Creepiest | My Favourite Thing In… (Little Nightmares 2 Review)
Mono and Six form a paradoxically sweet little team. They’re so small in comparison to the rest of the world that they can walk under the average dining room table, and it’s nice to approach this world of giant terrors with a pal. Though the controls are limited to running, jumping, crouching, and grabbing hold of stuff, the latter has now expanded to include Six. She can give Mono a leg up to reach a high ledge, or catch him when he makes a running jump over a chasm. But you can also use it to just hold her hand as you’re running along somewhere.
Fans of the first game will enjoy a few references to it, as well as hints at Six’s own hidden strangeness. There’s a nice growth of Six’s character, too. She gradually becomes more confident as the game progresses over its five-or-so hours, eventually leading the way where before she followed Mono more cautiously.
Little Nightmares II is a little longer than the first instalment, and the environments feel larger and less claustrophobic than the cramped depths of grim horror boatThe Maw(a transparently terrible name for a ship, as if your gran would ever say “oh yeah, let’s go for a cruise onThe Maw, it sounds super wholesome”). The first level, where a masked hunter chases you through a forest full of traps, actually feels closer to the 1v1 monster-of-the-week setups of the first game; a kind of amuse-bouche to settle you back into the Little Nightmares mindset before the real business of the game begins and you’re pitted against the thematically larger forces of institutions.
The city you run through is grey and depressive, with water from the perpetual rain leaking in through a myriad of holes in the walls and ceilings. Scattered throughout you’ll find subtle bits of context and environmental storytelling to clue you in to what might be going on, so mostly I was content to look around at the world Tarsier Studios have made along with its horrible citizens.
It’s gruesome stuff, and it’s thrilling to see these childhood authority figures stretched and pulled to grotesque extremes like chewing gum - probably the same gum you had to chip off the bottom of desks during detention. But there’s another through line involving television sets and the grey, slack-faced adults obsessively watching them, even running off rooftops to get to them, which dovetails nicely with the watching eye motif that ran through the first game. That said, while the bad guy associated with these TVs is one of the scariest in the game, as a theme it feels a bit less “effective, sinister take on childhood fears” and more “Banksy’s done it again!”
Mono also occasionally gets to wield a weapon - maybe a hammer or an axe - which is a new feature, but it doesn’t level the playing field. It takes so long for tiny little Mono to heft and swing that sometimes you’ll probably prefer to just run away. It’s surprisingly effective at making you feel triumphant and vulnerable at the same time.
Less welcome are those chase scenes, which are fun when you can dust them off first time, but less so when you keep missing one crucial button press half-way through and keep getting plonked back at the beginning (especially when you know you’ve not got enough distance on the baddy right from the very beginning, which makes the whole thing feel rather futile). I know The Olympics don’t let their high jumpers off with a “Well, youalmostdidn’t knock the bar down, so we’ll let you have it”, but I was hoping for a small bit more leeway from a video game.
Still, these flaws are small enough that I’m happy to place Little Nightmares II up on my shelf of excellence right next to the first one. Childhood fears are such a rich vein to slice open, and Tarsier Studios do it in a very thoughtful way. Little Nightmares II is such a splendid mix of cute and creepy, beautiful and awful, that it sort of defies categorisation. A childhood terror gothic, perhaps?
