Little Hope : What can I say?

Well I was trying to do three horror game reviews before Halloween and I missed the deadline by a day, but in my defense, this game was only released on the 29th.

Little Hope is the latest game from Supermassive Games which specializes in cinematic games like Until Dawn and Man of Medan.

Little Hope does seem to be a solid improvement over previous entries in the series. The actors do a fantastic job with their voice acting and the motion capture is top notch.

Little Hope is about a group of college students who get into a bus accident while traveling through the abandoned town of Little Hope, MA where they encounter ghosts, monsters, and a satanic conspiracy going back to the Salem Witch Trials. You can tell the developers are serious fans of Silent Hill.

The game is mostly a matter of following along and making choices however it does take a solid five hours to play through once so there is plenty of content.

One unique feature is the addition of an online coop mode where each player takes on the role of one of the students and plays in parallel with their team.

The game is an excellent facsimile of 'playing' a horror game. I wouldn't go so far as to call it terribly scary (not many horror movies are) as it depends heavily on jump scares but it does a great job at maintaining a state of tension. Your characters can actually die from badly handled encounters and that keeps you on your toes when you suspect something is about to happen.

The game has a few modes. There is a wandering mode where you are free to go about the area and find clues and lore items to help you make decisions. The world is covered with different points of interaction but the UI is a little wonky in this regard: it can be very hard to get the 'interact' prompt to show up on certain items, or even be aware that you can interact with certain items in the first place. You also sometimes need to manipulate items before the game considers that item 'seen' and this can also be a little finicky.

The other mode is when you are prompted to interact with the game either through making choices in dialog or quick time events. Quick Time Events are almost always a bad idea but in this game they work because the developers know how to use them effectively. In writing books the age old adage is: 'show, don't tell', and when you're writing for video games that adage is rephrased as 'do, don't show.' Quick Time Events are used effectively when they are placed in what would otherwise be cinema scenes where the user would have no input. It's a good way of keeping the user an active participant instead of a passive passenger in the game, always assuming that the QTEs do have real consequences to the game.

The game story is actually pretty decent. You're wandering around an abandoned town where you keep bumping into a scary little girl who's dressed up like a Puritan. You also keep having visions of doppelgangers of your team in pilgrim times. As the game progresses you watch your colonial doppelgangers be accused and executed for witchcraft and then become hideous monsters that are pursuing you. The monster designs are really quite inspired; some of the best monsters designs I've seen since 'the 13th Ghost.' I thoroughly enjoyed this game because I found the story engaging, the acting chemistry believable, and the scares consistently startling. This game certainly isn't a contender for game of the year but it's a fun way to spend a few hours with your friends because it does support coop. However the major thing that drags the game down is the ending. This is a 'Mass Effect 3' kind of ending where everyone is having a marvelous time playing, but you get to that ending and suddenly it's all you can talk about in regards to the game. I was so pissed off by the ending that I played through the whole game a second time. I was convinced that I had gotten the 'bad' ending (for some unknown reason since by sheer dumb luck I'd managed to keep everyone alive) and that was why the ending sucked. But no, I got the 'good' ending. There are three known endings (it's possible more will be found) and they're all really really bad. The ending you get is based off just a few decisions you make, it's unclear if how many people survive the night even factors into it. This ultimately makes a lot of your choices and how many items you found feel somewhat superflous unless there is a secret ending I am currently unaware of. This is also a limiting factor for the game. Final Score 6/10