Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Hello
everyone, it’s time to jump back into the land of dreams, where danger lurks
around every bend, where grotesque creatures try to maim you… okay, not the
land of dreams, but the land of nightmares. Or to be more exact, Little
Nightmares III.
If you’ve
played either of the previous two installments, good news is that it’s more of
what you’ve hopefully come to love! For those newer to the franchise, no
worries, no prior knowledge is needed. In Little Nightmares III, you go on an
adventure with Low and Alone, looking for an escape from Nowhere. With both Low
and Alone having their own unique item to help them traverse the Nowhere, you
need to run, sneak, climb, and fight your way through the treacherous expanse
of bad dreams. Can you help these two friends make it out?
Little Nightmares at its core is a 3D adventure puzzle title where you will be exploring a themed location, progressing through “rooms” to get to an exit. Sometimes you will need to solve a puzzle, like hitting a switch or pushing crates to make a ledge you can climb on, or figuring out what the heck you’re supposed to do with a jukebox (I got this purely by accident by the way). Other times you will need to sneak your way by the Residents of Nowhere. Sometimes they’re pretty lazy, but other times they will give chase, and you need to hurry and get away!
For the
most part Low and Alone can do the same things, although they each have a
unique item. You can run, jump, sneak, pick up, and throw. Yeah, that’s about
it for basic moves, expecting more? Well Low has a bow and Alone has a wrench.
The bow can be used to hit switches, sever frayed rope, or distract or stun
enemies. The wrench can be used to break stuff, whether that’s a wall, an
object, or a stunned enemy.
You can
play either by yourself or with a partner online. No need for two copies
either, a friend can download the guest pass and play along with you, although
they won’t be earning any achievements for themselves. If you choose to play by
yourself, the character you did not pick will be controlled by an AI, although
there are a few changes. For instance, if you play as Alone, instead of making
you shoot the bow to hit a switch as Low, they give you an item to throw. I
played through the entire game with my fellow reviewer, and can honestly say
that I enjoyed it a lot more as a team effort than when I went back to try it
solo.
I do have
to say I thoroughly enjoyed the cooperative aspect of Little Nightmares III.
There was a good blend of things each of you can do on your own, things you
need to do together, and being able to go explore in one direction while your
friend goes somewhere else. Playing with a friend in coop feels a lot better than playing by yourself. It feels like it really clicks with the theme they’re going for with the partners controlled by you and your coop friend as Low and Alone.
Unfortunately
it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, literally or figuratively. In this dark and
dreadful world, what’s equally dreadful are: CONNECTIVITY ISSUES. Seriously
though, there were a few times where we were making our way through an area
when BAM, suddenly disconnected. And it doesn’t try to reconnect or anything,
you just get booted to the main menu. Good news is that there are frequent
checkpoint autosaves. Bad news is we had it happen a lot. There is also a bit
of an issue we had where we got disconnected, and the checkpoint autosave put
us in a position where we crashed every time we tried to continue the game.
Luckily we could rollback to an earlier save, but it was certainly frustrating.
Add into this the occasional lag spike and things can be a little dicey. As the
partner and not the host, I had the brunt of it, and while it normally only
happened between going from one room to the next, it also happened
during a chase sequence. You do not want to lag out during a chase sequence. Or
mid jump. Or both.
Ultimately
what I’m trying to get at here is that there are a few stability issues and
glitches here and there that can get rather frustrating. For example, I got
stuck behind some objects once and we had to reload a checkpoint, or I tried to
throw an object through a hole (like intended), but it just hit the wall in
front of me. Low’s bow is also super finicky, as sometimes it would shoot at a
weird angle, or not aim where I wanted it to. For the most part, you can’t
really be aiming while moving or else your accuracy shoots way too far down.
There were also the occasional moments where the character models would go
invisible during scenes, or the locations wouldn’t be synced up right, and it
resulted in some really weird moments.
In a point
in favour for Little Nightmares III, I felt they did well on the atmosphere. It
was mostly dark and gritty like the last two titles, and I felt it was
aesthetically similar enough to enjoy the setting. On the other hand, the story
made me feel a little ripped off. During the course of playing, the two of us
were trying to piece things together from a seemingly eclectic mix of stages.
In the first two games there was a somewhat reasonable, if not explained
directly, storyline that you could follow. Here it was a complete wild guess.
Maybe if I had read the comics or listened to the podcasts I’d have a better
idea what was going on, but it feels like the only real story you get is in the
last five minutes and then it gets cut off.
Ultimately
I feel like Little Nightmares III was a bit of a letdown with a lacking story,
some control and connectivity issues, and some glitches that could really
frustrate. I did really enjoy the coop feature and it felt like it added
something fun, especially when you’re actually talking to your partner while
playing. Looking past the connection issues, there was a lot of enjoyment here
to be had, it just needs a little touching up first.
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Heya! Nyx,
here!
Solaris and
I ended up tag teaming together for Little Nightmares 3. It's always better
with 2! This series has a way of really making you feeling small and feeble,
even with a partner to help you escape the trauma. I got a lot of Split Fiction
coop vibes when I played through and I definitely noticed an improvement with
the multiplayer addition to the game. It truly requires you to trust in your
partner and survive this grotesque world. However, this game also came with
some issues. We had many connection errors and crashes throughout our play
session and from time to time the environment would have pockets or corners
where we would end up stuck. With a bit of polishing and some updates this game
will become a more memorable experience for future players.
Always with
gaming love, JaydaNyx!
Score: 7 / 10
