The Dark Pictures: Little Hope | Recensione (PC)

There are at least three categories of gamers: the pros, the casual gamers… and those like me.

I don't have much patience when it comes to complex gameplay and complicated dynamics, with impossible learning curves and increasing difficulties; I prefer a game that wants to tell me a story without making me want to throw computers and peripherals out the window ... a game like Little hope, for example, where even nobs like me can feel at home (a house lost in the void and haunted by ghosts, but still a house)!

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The Dark Pictures: Little Hope is the second installment of the Dark Pictures Anthology series, which also includes Man of Medan and saw the light on October 30, 2020, developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment.

Little Hope is a dark horror adventure that immediately brings to mind the settings of Silent Hill, with its impenetrable fog, and partly also Outlast with its inexplicable events and surprise jump scare. If you like creepy atmospheres and are willing to jump in your chair more than once, then Little Hope is a title you definitely shouldn't miss.

Little Hope, the ghost town immersed in fog

Midnight on May 28, today: a bus carrying four university students and a professor swerves due to a little girl who appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the road. No one seems to have been injured, but there is no trace of the driver, the child or the roadside assistance. The professor thus suggests leaving the scene of the accident, determined to go for help in the ghost town of Little Hope (which may remind you of Raccoon City, but without the zombies).

Before following the group's adventure, the game will catapult you back in time of several years, to witness the tragic story of the Clarke family and their adopted children (so as to become familiar with the controls of the game). It will be only at the end of this sequence that you will get acquainted with the "Curator", the ambiguous character who will explain the dynamics of the gameplay (with a rather subtle break in the fourth wall): Your choices will greatly affect the unfolding of the plot, as well as your actions. The Curator will not help you understand which are the best choices to make, but will simply evaluate your work in silence without uttering judgment, and will invite you to look around for clues, suggestions and premonitions about the future to come (or that was avoided).

Your goal to continue the story is to delve into the misty meanders of Little Hope, a decayed and dilapidated city where a strange thick fog seems to want to prevent people from leaving. As you pass through abandoned streets and buildings, you can find postcards, objects and posters with the aim of silently telling you the history of the town, which three centuries earlier was the macabre scene of a witch hunt in which many innocent women had lost their lives.

Gameplay and graphics (foggy!)

During the various chapters of the game you can interpret the professor, John, or the four students in rotation: Daniel, Taylor, Angela and Andrew. Depending on your choices, the relationships between characters and their character traits can vary significantly.

The gameplay alternates moments in which you can freely explore the environments, scripted cutscenes and quick time events, during which you have to move the mouse or the controller as required.

During the cutscenes you will be able to influence the character and the relationships of the characters, while the QTEs will mostly be used to make some movements; sometimes, however, the QTEs will prove fundamental to the plot: a click made at the wrong time could even cost the life of one of your protagonists, forcing you to continue the story with one less character (heavily affecting the ending). In case you are wondering, the answer is yes: I managed to kill one of the characters at the earliest opportunity. Attention, the game constantly saves: if you want to bring someone back to life, you will have to replay the chapter in question from the beginning.

During the various scenes, the protagonists live immersed in a fog that seems to appear only when she wants: between a bank of fog and the other you can enjoy the rusty and dusty textures that permeate every nook and cranny of Little Hope, characterized by dark colors and desaturated. The faces of the characters, in their realism, can be a little disturbing (especially when the dubbing and the lip are not perfectly synchronized); overall, however, the graphics are pleasant and consistent with the spirit of the title, which knows how to be credible even in the face of the most incredible events. The animations are fluid and realistic, but you may experience some lag if your computer begins to feel the weight of the years.

Conclusion: a perfect game for horror lovers (even if you are not pro)

Little Hope is a perfect game for lovers of dark, oppressive, anxious and full of twists atmospheres. A game where the most insignificant details can prove extremely important so that even if you may not notice it initially, in the following runs the game will take on an additional level of depth. The plot of the game is dense, confusing and makes you want to continue and the different choices that the player can make greatly increase the replayability. The game is fully voiced and subtitled in español, thus making the experience optimal even for those who are not very familiar with English. The only flaw, especially disadvantageous for casual gamers (and nabbi like myself), concerns the use of the mouse, which may not be easy during QTEs or in moments dedicated to exploration. However, a secondary problem that can be easily solved with the help of the controller.