Little Nightmares Review

 The third and final game in my #HorrorGameOct lineup is one that I played through with my wife rather than on Twitch. Little Nightmares is a horror puzzle platformer that was originally released on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in April 2017. The 2018 Switch version that my wife and I played featured the main campaign, "Six's Story", as well as the DLC campaign, "The Kid's Story".
 
Each of the two campaigns follows a different child's path through The Maw, a giant cruise ship full of grotesque semi-human cannibalistic creatures, as the kids attempt to escape before they wind up as entrees in the buffet. This unique premise and the twisted and unsettling imagery that come with it are the game's biggest strength. The creatures pursuing the young heroes are creatively designed and also deeply disturbing to look at. The Maw features dark industrial areas in the underbelly of the ship as well the passenger accommodations with banquet halls and giant furnishings. It all comes together in an appropriately nightmarish visual package that feels like a fusion of the darkest parts of Nightmare Before Christmas and Spirited Away.

While the premise and sense of style are very distinct, the story that Little Nightmares tells is minimalist. Outside of the game's conclusion, there are no cut scenes, dialog, or text within the game. I was initially disappointed by this since the game's trailer make it look like a narrative-driven game, but after a while I adjusted to the subtle and purely visual form of story telling the game was using. What's there is mysterious but very bare bones.

The gameplay of Little Nightmares is very simple. There's no combat; all enemy encounters are resolved by either speed or stealth. In the quiet moments, there are basic environmental puzzles to solve and light platforming. Most of this works out reasonably well, but there were a couple of persistent sources of frustration throughout. Despite the character's limited capabilities, the controls were cumbersome. The main issue was that the right trigger needs to be held any time the character is carrying an object, climbing ladders, or pulling themself up a ledge. After an hour or so of play, my right index finger would get sore since I had to be holding down the trigger most of the time. The other issue is that the camera has very limited movement, which meant that I had several occasions where I would miss a jump and fall to my death due to bad camera angles throwing off my depth perception.

Control and camera hangups aside, we encountered a couple of technical issues while playing Little Nightmares on Nintendo Switch. The most glaring of which is likely a Switch-specific problem: painfully long load times. The stealth and platforming sections of the game often involved some trial and error, with mistakes leading to instant death. These deaths were punished by having to wait up to a full minute for the game to reload the last checkpoint. This was very discouraging during the tougher parts of the campaign. The other technical issue was more general; glitches in the game's physics and collision would sometimes cause the player character or enemies to get snagged on corners or doorways. On a few occasions this would happen at an inopportune moment, and then we were staring at a loading screen once again.

For my wife and I, we had enough fun and spooky moments with Little Nightmares that we willing to tolerate the technical and design issues that occasionally got in the way. Little Nightmares is unique enough from an artistic standpoint to be worthwhile for fans of the weird and creepy but is probably not mechanically sound enough to please those who come to it purely for platforming or stealth gameplay.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: About 8 hours (both campaigns combined)

Note: This review is specific to the Nintendo Switch version of the game. It’s possible that the PC game addresses some of the issues I had with this game by having faster load times and reconfigurable controls.

If you're curious about the #HorrorGameOct event, be sure to check out this blog post on Chic Pixel.

Dishonored 2 Review

Even though I received Dishonored 2 as a Christmas gift last year, it took me until this month to finally play through it. This has been quite a year for gaming! Since Dishonored 2 is quite similar to its predecessor (see original review), I'll mostly just be giving a quick overview of points of contrast here:

• The new setting for Dishonored 2, Karnaca, is a little bit more vibrant than the previous game's Dunwall, but it still has a generally similar dark steampunk aesthetic. 
• Of the game's nine missions, there are two stand-outs: the clockwork mansion and the time-travel stage. Each of these introduces new mechanics that manipulate the level layout and allow the player to explore in new ways. I wish that these interesting new features were further explored rather than confined to their own maps. The remaining stages, while well-designed, are fairly similar to those in Dishonored 1.
• Playing as the new protagonist, Emily, doesn't feel significantly different than playing as Corvo (the first game's hero) since most of her abilities are analogs to his. The main exception is that compared to Dishonored 1, there are more options for non-lethally eliminating enemies head-on. In the first game, if Corvo was spotted, the non-lethal options were to use one of his precious few sleep darts or run and hide. Emily, on the other hand, has the option of blocking enemy sword attacks and the delivering a knock-out counterattack. This makes taking the non-lethal route much more forgiving in Dishonored 2.
• I found the story to be a little bit less engaging than in Dishonored 1, but that be due to the fact that the first game was an introduction to a whole new world and Dishonored 2 is just building upon that. 

In summary, Dishonored 2 is a very good first-person stealth game that doesn't deviate much from the formula established by its predecessor. I'm glad I played this game, but in my opinion, there doesn't need to be a Dishonored 3. If you loved the first game and are craving more, you'll be satisfied with what Dishonored 2 has to offer. Newcomers will definitely want to start with Dishonored 1 in order to get introduced to the characters and world and then decide from there if they want to proceed to part two.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: 17 hours, 25 minutes (non-lethal campaign path + most collectables)

Metal Gear Solid 3 (3DS) Review

Mission compromised

It turns out I was much closer to the end of MGS3 than I thought at the time I wrote my impressions! As result, most of what I said there is applicable to the game as a whole. Thus instead of writing a full review from scratch, here are some of my observations from the 3rd act of the game followed by some closing thoughts:

WARNING: There may be some spoilers ahead.

• As I had said in my impressions, the fact that they crammed a fairly demanding PS2 game into the tiny and underpowered original 3DS is a technical feat that I continued to marvel at for most of my play-through. However, a lot of the big action set pieces that may have been gripping on the PS2 in 2004 felt drawn-out and excessive on the 3DS in 2017. After getting a few minutes into one of these scenes, I found myself wishing that they would wrap up so that I could return to regular gameplay and have full control of Snake again.
• There are a couple of other artistic excesses that get in the way of the gameplay experience. Most glaring of these is the "boss battle" with The Sorrow. In this scene, all Snake can do is slowly walk by the ghosts of every enemy he's killed. Other than that, there's no other interaction involved with this scene, but it goes on for an extremely long time. While I realize that director Hideo Kojima may have been trying to make some kind of philosophical statement here, this section is not at all enjoyable to play. I ended up just tilting the analog pad forward while watching TV to keep myself entertained as I waited for this part to end.
• While it may have just been the way things were back in 2004, to the modern eye, the sexualization of the female characters comes off as pretty immature. Female characters in MGS3 are usually in various stages of undress, even in segments of the game where it seems completely tonally inappropriate.
• The last few boss fights (i.e. after trudging through The Sorrow) represented some of the best action sequences of the game. However, in some cases, these required the sort of speed and accuracy that the 3DS control scheme just cannot provide. As a result, I had to rely pretty heavily on auto-aim on some these which was a lot less exciting than lining up shots myself would have been. 
• Though most of the action cut scenes fell a little flat for me, there were definitely some dialog cutscenes (especially the ending) that were surprisingly compelling. Kojima is at his best when he's weaving political intrigue and betrayal, rather showing Ocelot spin his revolvers around for the twelfth time.

Ultimately, the experience of playing Metal Gear Solid 3 on 3DS was less than ideal, but I'm glad I finally got around to playing it. I think a linear story-based action game is exactly what I needed after a sprawling open-world RPG like Breath of the Wild. However, throughout my play-through, I couldn't shake the feeling that MGS3 just didn't make a ton of sense as a 3DS game. The combination of clunky controls and a form factor ill-suited to watching lengthy cutscenes detracted significantly from what this game was trying to accomplish and I suspect that I would have enjoyed it more if I had been playing it in longer sessions on the PS2. Thus my recommendation would be if you have the option of playing on the PS2, go with that, but if portability is a big selling point to you, the 3DS version still manages to preserve a decent amount of what originally made MGS so popular (perhaps more so if you have a New 3DS).

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Completion Time: 14 hours, 48 minutes (main story on easy difficulty)

Note: I suspect this game would have had a shot at a 4-star score if I had played it on PS2.

 No-kill play-throughs are for hippies!

Gaming Shame #2: Metal Gear Solid 3

 

Metal Gear Solid 3 is a gaming shame for me for two reasons:

1. I've been meaning to give the Metal Gear series a second chance after dropping it with MGS2.
2. My wife bought me a copy of this game on 3DS back in 2012, and I still haven't touched it.

With my shiny new Nintendo Switch rapidly making my 3DS and Wii U obsolete, I figured there was no time like now to finally dig into this portable Cold War mission. Here are my thoughts now that I'm about half-way through the game:

•  I'm kind of amazed that my original 3DS is capable of running a PS2 game so well. While the size and resolution of the 3DS screen do leave something to be desired, I can't help but be impressed with how good this game looks and sounds in spite of hardware limitations.
• It's immediately apparent that MGS3 was meant to be played with dual analog control, but unfortunately, since I don't have a Circle Pad Pro or a New 3DS, I'm stuck with having to use the ABXY buttons to aim. This set-up is definitely not as fast and accurate as I would like, but I'm managing to make it work.
• To compensate for the less-than-ideal controls, I decided to power through this game on easy mode. This way Snake can survive taking a few hits while I take a little more time to line up my shots.
•  I forgot how loaded with dialog and cutscenes Metal Gear games are. The beginning few hours of the game probably contains more cutscene time than actual gameplay time. On the PS2 this was probably fine, but on 3DS I'm keenly aware of how much time I'm spending just staring at these lengthy non-interactive scenes.
• The juxtaposition of serious political themes and wacky over-the-top characters is really bizarre. In one moment, the game is covering the effects of the Cuban Missle Crisis on US-Russian relations, in the next, I'm in a boss battle with a man that shoots "bullet bees" out of his mouth.
• The inclusion of the blatantly James Bond-inspired opening theme song "Snake Eater" is incredibly corny, but I kind of like it anyway.

While returning to the 3DS in a post-Switch world hasn't been easy, I've been mostly enjoying my time with MGS3. The convenience of playing this game on a device that I can easily toss into my lunchbox without a case means I can work gameplay sessions into small gaps in my schedule without much pre-planning. The only downside is due to the verbose nature of Kojima games, I've spent many of my lunch breaks just watching 30-minute long cutscenes. At my current rate of progress, I'll probably be finishing up Metal Gear Solid 3 and writing my review within the next 2 weeks.

Never thought I'd be taking a scenic forest stroll on my 3DS

Nothing interferes with the quest for nuclear disarmament quite like bullet bee wounds

Hotline Miami and Dishonored Mini Reviews

My gaming time and writing time have been very limited the past few weeks. Here's two mini reviews of games I've finished recently:

Hotline Miami

As ultra-difficult as it is ultra-violent

• High difficulty level can lead to some frustration, but it made for a satisfying hit of adrenaline once I got the hang of the game.
• There's some catchy tunes on the soundtrack (especially "Miami Disco").
• It feels kind of cheap that enemies can see and shoot you from way off screen. Also, due to the perspective, it can be hard to tell which objects can be used as cover. These factors mean that a significant amount of trial and error is required.

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Completion Time: 6 hours, 42 minutes (Campaign + bonus stages)


Dishonored

Orwell meets Lovecraft meets Hitman

• Interesting setting, but can look a little drab at times.
• The intricate level design with lots of verticality sets it apart from other stealth games.
• Combination of magic and stealth techniques were really fun to pull off once I got use to it.
• This game's notion of morality didn't sit right with me. The game is very quick to condemn you for killing anyone, and congratulates you for choosing non-lethal means of eliminating targets even though these can include horrific disfigurement, selling targets into slavery, or turning them over to a creepy mentally unstable stalker.

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Completion Time: 20 hours, 48 minutes (Non-lethal campaign path + most collectables)

Hitman Season 1 Review

Assassination by numbers

I've been a fan of the Hitman franchise since Hitman 2 (i.e. since 2002), and it's a series that I've always enjoyed but has generally seemed to fly under the radar of the gaming community in the US. That all seemed to change with the start of the episodic run of the newest entry in the series, Hitman Season 1, which dominated the conversation of many gaming podcasts, YouTube channels, and gaming awards in 2016. I received the complete first season from my wife as a birthday present after all the episodes had been released, and found myself very curious to find out what had changed with this new game to bring Hitman into the spotlight.

I quickly found that this Hitman game has all the traditional trappings of the series:

• intricate non-linear level design
• multiple paths to completing mission objectives
• the use of disguises, stealth, and rigging accidents to cover your tracks
• the sort of globe-spanning political conspiracy theory-based plot that every stealth game seems to have

It turns out that what sets Hitman Season 1 apart from its predecessors all boils down to one thing: accessibility. While the on-ramp for the Hitman series has generally gotten less steep with each entry, Hitman Season 1 offers an unprecedented level of guidance to the new player. In addition to a fairly thorough tutorial stage, every mission in Season 1 features a new hint system called "Opportunities". Once discovered within a stage, each opportunity provides step-by-step instructions through one possible route to assassinating a target. These opportunities come complete with explicit on-screen text instructions and map markers. Further hints are provided by the game's challenge list which calls out specific assassination methodologies (e.g. drown the target, kill him with the antique canon, etc).  Also, the level design language of Hitman has never been more codified: places to hide bodies are very obvious and objects that can be sabotaged are clearly marked. As a result of all these new player-friendly features, a completely inexperienced Hitman player will be up to speed and earning Silent Assassin ratings in no time. It should also be said that most of these hint systems can be tweaked or disabled in the options menu, but are fully activated if using the default settings.

As a result of all the accessibility upgrades, it was pretty clear that Season 1 is a great game for new players, but what about for Hitman veterans such as myself? In a nutshell, experienced Hitman players will find that Season 1 plays very much like Hitman Blood Money, but with the control scheme and UI of Hitman Absolution. Before I realized that the hint systems could be toggled, I found that the combination of opportunities and challenges had transformed the gameplay. Traditionally, a Hitman mission was a process of discovery and figuring things out, but this new guided experience started to feel like a matter of simply checking items off a to-do list. Once I disabled these features, however, I was  able to get back into the enjoyable classic Hitman groove. That being said, seasoned hitmen and hitwomen may find that Season 1 doesn't offer much new in terms of gameplay innovation, mission structure, etc, but that every facet of the core gameplay is very smooth and well-executed.

Overall, Hitman Season 1 is a fantastic game for new players, and reliable comfort food for series veterans. I did come to realize that I probably would have enjoyed my time with the game a little more if I would have disabled the hints sooner and played through the episodes as they were released rather than blasting through the whole game in succession, but that's my fault, not the game's. It is my hope that Season 1 is simply laying the foundation for more innovation and varied gameplay to be introduced in Season 2. Only time will tell where this new episodic format will go, but for me, I found enough to like in Season 1 to be more than willing to sign up for Season 2 once it's formally announced.

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Completion Time: 46 hours (Silent Assassin rank on all missions, plus completing most challenges)