Little Hope Review

Is Little Hope better than Man of Medan?

Unfortunately, there isn’t much about Little Hope that is an improvement over Man of Medan. The setting of Little Hope might be the only area of improvement but everything else is either on the same level or even worse. The game just lacks a finality that even Man of Medan offered and the characters felt more memorable in the first entry.

Is Little Hope better than Until Dawn?

As Jay-Z once said “if you want my old shit buy my old album” which is what you should in this case. Until Dawn is a better game in every way to Little Hope. The story, the controls, voice acting, and setting are all superior in 2015’s Until Dawn. Even better, it could cost you less or even nothing if you recently purchased a PlayStation 5 because it is included in PS PLUS collection, which is free! Maybe Supermassive just set the bar too high with Until Dawn.

Is Little Hope scary?

There are very few jump scares peppered throughout the game but overall the game lacks tension. The enemies that you encounter are almost comical in their visual nature but also how they act. The actual QTE’s feel very inconsequential due to how many times you can fail during one event, yet your character will still survive.

Is the story in Little Hope good? 

Anticipation was high for a horror influenced setting this time around as opposed to an abandoned WW2 warship from Man of Medan. Stuck in a decrepit town, lost in the deep woods, and witch trials all are ingredients for a scary, survival horror game but the way the story is weaved together eliminates most of the tension as it becomes quite predictable when bad things will happen. The way the story wraps up feels cheap and unsatisfying which doesn’t make sense because the game is using the same lead writers as Until Dawn. I think Supermassive is trying to go for a home run, mind blowing ending every time in the vein of M Night Shyamalan rather than just going for a solid, straight forward hit every time. Just because something works well once, doesn’t mean it is going to work well every time.

Does Little Hope look good? 

It could be rose coloured glasses but I feel like overall Man of Medan looked better than Little Hope and Until Dawn looked better than that, which makes you wonder why a game from 2015 looks better than a game in the same genre from the same studio five years later. Supermassive is using a different engine than they did with Until Dawn, which was the impressive Guerilla Games, Decima engine but I feel by now improvements should be seen but the character models just seem off. During the whole game when either passing the controller to a friend on the couch or making a decision, your character just sits there with a dumb look on his face. One of the highlights of the visuals was the environments as they looked well detailed and had great lighting effects, which is key for a scary game.

Does Little Hope have technical issues? 

Little Hope hard crashed on me a few times during my completion, while playing on PS4 Pro. The silver lining is the auto save feature brought me back into the game fairly close to where it had crashed but its still a big immersion breaking issue.

Does Little Hope control well? 

Little Hope feels clunky for most of the game. There are plenty of exploration sections in the game where trying to rotate a useless postcard was a lot harder than it needed to be. Some of the QTE’s also felt a little cumbersome.

Does Little Hope have multiplayer? 

It can be played online or on the couch but for the couch the only option is passing the controller back and forth. You can either select the characters each player will control, which doesn’t make sense as you don’t know anything about them before playing and it doens’t even give you basic traits. The other option is to get randomized characters for each player during the “Movie Night” mode. Both of these options are massive failures as it usually ends up with one player controlling all the main characters and one person barely playing the game. If you are going to do this randomly then have some system in place that balances out the play time.

Is Little Hope co-op? 

One of the brightest spots of The Dark Pictures Anthology is the online co-op mode that allows each player to experience different parts of the game at the same time. It’s a great feature but it’s a shame that it’s still just exclusive for online and not couch co-op like 2018’s A Way Out and offer split screen that changes size depending on the weight of the situation.

Is Little Hope couples friendly? 

Interactive games are the perfect game to share with a loved one because they are the perfect blend of video game, movie and communicating. Passing the controller back and forth while trying to make decisions together on the fly is fun but the actual content of the game is slow and uninteresting. The true joy about playing Little Hope as a couple is communicating about the poor dialogue and character reactions.

Do I need to play previous games in The Dark Pictures Anthology? 

Each entry from The Dark Pictures Anthology is meant to stand on its own. There is no need to play the previous entry, but if you haven’t played either, I would recommend Man of Medan over this game, which is something that I didn’t think I would say.

Will there be a sequel to Little Hope?

The next game in The Dark Pictures Anthology titled House of Ashes is teased at the end of Little Hope. House of Ashes is set against the backdrop of war in the Middle East as a buried Sumerian temple is discovered which will likely lead to some mummy tropes. Unfortunately, after two very uneven entries in the series, expectations for this series is very low. If the scores and sales for this series don’t improve, I wonder if Bandai Namco even continue to finance all eight games in the anthology.

Does Little Hope have replay value? 

One of the best things about interactive games is the ability to replay and see what happens when different decisions get made but I wouldn’t encourage anyone to replay this game, let alone play it a first time. Even if you are dead set on playing this game or you love this genre, once is more than enough. There wouldn’t be enough changes in the story to make multiple play throughs worthy as the ending is just a variation of a reveal that wasn’t rewarding.

How long is Little Hope? 

Just like the first entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology, Man of Medan, the total time is fairly short. Your first playthrough should take about five or six hours depending on how much exploration you feel like doing. Unfortunately, even with the short time, Little Hope still felt like it overstayed it’s welcome.

Can you binge Little Hope? 

Little Hope is short enough to binge during one play session and it is broken up into three different acts but I would not recommend it as the game is very repetitive. Poor conversations, search abandoned area, scary encounter, quick time event, flashback, rinse and repeat. It feels like 80 percent of this game is just looking around for items on the ground that don’t affect the story or characters at all.

Is Little Hope full price? 

One of the few bright spots about the games in The Dark Pictures Anthology is how the games are priced on a lower scale but at the end of the series, the total value based on time and quality just wont add up with 8 games at around 5 hours each costing around 30 dollars that adds up to around 240 dollars for a 40 hour game, which seems out of line when compared to other 100 plus hour games that have much higher quality across the board such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassins Creed or even the upcoming CyberPunk 2077 with the speculated 175 hour play time.

What is surprising about Little Hope? 

Little Hope actually feels like a step backwards from Man of Medan, which felt like a step backwards from Until Dawn. After Man of Medan showed a glimpse of a return to form for SuperMassive, Little Hope has actually taken away my anticipation for the rest of the series. Sadly, now I have little hope for the rest of The Dark Pictures Anthology.

What could Little Hope do without? 

Little Hope, as well the first entry Man of Medan could do without the uneven tone. I understand SuperMassvive saw some great success with Until Dawn and its campy tone but it’s ok to branch away from that and deliver a consistently serious game. Some of the best horror films of the recent years are edging into psychological horror and away from the traditional mold with traditional archetypes. The characters don’t need to be the same clichés every time they make a game, we don’t need a jock, a bimbo, and all the other horror tropes you can think of.

What is the best part about Little Hope? 

The curator, who narrates the story in between the different acts of the game, just like in Man of Medan. The animations and the voice acting here are top notch and show what the team is capable of when giving a certain area extra attention.

What is the worst part about Little Hope?

All of the characters are extremely one note and not believable. The dialogue is terrible and breaks immersion often where instead of becoming more engrossed in the story, you laugh at some of the conversations these people have. With most games in the genre, I am trying to keep certain people alive but in Little Hope, I had no investment in any character and didn’t care what happened to any of them.

Do you recommend it?

Little Hope is a massive disappointment as one of my most anticipated games of the year. Man of Medan was very uneven and rough around the edges first entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology, there was hope that each subsequent game would see improvements. Little Hope feels like a step backwards in almost every department except for setting, but even the setting seems squandered.

Final Score

12/21