Last year, I reviewed Man of Medan, the first of Supermassive Game’s Dark Pictures Anthology series of games. This time around, the next installment in the anthology is Little Hope. After the disappointment of Man of Medan, I had little hope for Little Hope. After playing it multiple times for different endings and trophies, I can definitely say that Little Hope did not meet my expectations, and those expectations were already very low.
For starters, Little Hope involves a group of college students with their professor traversing through the abandoned town of Little Hope. While trying to find help, the team runs into spirits and demons that are involved in another storyline, separate from theirs, where that cast of characters have to deal with witch accusations and witch trials. With the simplified plot explanation out of the way, I actually really liked the split storylines the game had to offer. I found it to be a refreshing way to tell a story around the Salem witch trials, a topic that has been used to death. I’d say it’s even better than the Manchurian Gold used in Man of Medan, and I praised it heavily in my Man of Medan review. Furthermore, there are some parts of the game that legitimately scared me, so props to Little Hope for utilizing this unique witch trial story into one that can scare the player immensely.
Along with the solid story concept, I have to give credit where credit is due, that being the visuals. I personally feel like it’s a big step forward, as the art style has that spooky, but old feeling, and it works in Little Hope. In addition, the game runs at a semi-constant 60FPS. I say “semi-constant” because for whatever reason, cutscenes not running in real time are rugged as rocks. Luckily, those scenes aren’t frequent, but it is jarring. Other than that, that’s all the positives I can say for Little Hope.
Now time to note everything Little Hope does wrong. Probably the most pressing issue with the game are how little the dialogue options actually impact the game. Of course, some options do impact the game, but you wouldn’t notice it on a first playthrough. What Little Hope especially fails at is needing to select one specific dialogue option to make that character survive in the end. Without spoilers, each character needs to select their own specific dialogue option, and choose another option later on in the game for everyone to survive. It is way too easy to kill off the entire cast, and on top of the whole game’s dialogue options feeling pointless in the end, Little Hope doesn’t succeed in what it’s trying to be: a choose your own adventure game.
Speaking of dialogue, just like Man of Medan, the player can select dialogue retorts with their head, their heart, or with nothing. Unlike Man of Medan, where the options really did feel like they would be said with the player’s head or heart, Little Hope only uses head and heart responses for nice and mean responses respectively, which in return offers little variety in these gameplay sections. And with answers formatted like that, no one in their right mind would pick the heart options, unless it was for a joke. And unfortunately, since the characters you play as are the ones saying the responses you pick, this leads them to just flat, dull, and unmotivated. Even outside of player decisions, these characters just do not feel like they’re even trying to survive. They only feel like they’re only around to get killed.
Unfortunately, Little Hope was not the right step in the right direction. Sure, the game looks better, runs better, and is scarier than Man of Medan. However, the issues present here are major issues, and really drive the game down to the ground. I’m really hoping that the next instalment of the Dark Pictures Anthology is a much better experience, since the teaser trailer at the end of Little Hope looked to be very promising. But here’s hoping the next generation of consoles can improve what both Man of Medan and Little Hope underperformed in.