So good it's scary
LITTLE NIGHTMARES 2
(PEGI 16) PS4, XBOX ONE,PC, Switch
★★★★ ★
YOU know that strange feeling you get sometimes at night?
You’ve just walked upstairs, or you’re strolling home alone, and for no reason, the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.
You can’t explain why, but you just have this nagging feeling that if you turn around, someone – or something – will silently be standing behind you, watching.
If you could bottle that feeling, you’d get Little Nightmares 2.
The sequel to 2017’s horror adventure hit, this puzzle-platformer introduces a new character to the game’s spooky, and twisted world –Mono – a young, barefooted boy, who hides his face behind a paper bag.
In the opening moments of the game, you help Mono to free Six – the rain-coated child-hero of the game’s predecessor.
Together they make their way through the Pale City, a dark place that’s been distorted by a mysterious signal coming from a distant tower.
A sense of peril grips you from the off – a constant sense of movement in the shadows, a stomach-clenching feeling that at any moment you’ll be spirited away.
Mono is most definitely the hero of the hour here, with Six an AI character who is just along for the ride. And unlike the first game, this time the kids are not completely helpless, with Mono able to grab certain items and swing them to break objects or to fight back against smaller foes. That being said, stealth and cunning remain your greatest allies.
There’s a whole host of new, twisted tormentors our young heroes must face, using the game’s wonderfully tactile environment to help them escape.
The inhabitants of Pale City are transfixed by their TVs, and you’ll find the landscapes you move through littered with broken goggleboxes. At one point Mono picks up a discarded remote control, and toggles the broken sets on and off, like squared-eyed beacons drawing in an enemy.
The game’s hauntingly beautiful graphic style fans the flames of fear, rain and lightning making you feel both vulnerable and in awe at the world around you.
Much like the original, the villains are nightmarishly brilliant.
There’s the Teacher who, like the ghoulish Japanese rokurokubi, is able to extend her neck and chase our terrified youngsters through ducts and drains. There’s the ceilingcrawling Doctor, who you often don’t hear creeping up on you until you look up, and see his bulbous face leering down at you.
Then there are his patients, strange amalgamations of corpses and mannequin parts that ambush and pursue intruders in the dark... and if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s the Living Hands – severed from the Patients, that crawl like spiders to attack.
Taking feedback from fans of the first game, developer Tarsier Studios has made sure checkpoints are frequently placed – although that still didn’t save me from having to repeat puzzles I’d just completed before I died.
Just like the first title though, the journey is brief, and you can fly through this game in just four hours – inevitably leaving you wanting much more.
And if that wasn’t heartbreaking enough, Tarsier announced over the weekend that it will not be making any more Little Nightmares games.
Publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment has said it will continue to make more in the future, but will it work without the original developer to carefully craft the macabre world and its inhabitants?
Only time will tell.
A sense of peril grips you from the off – a constant sense of movement in the shadows
■ Buy it: £24.95 from thegamecollection.net