Oh boy...okay, definitely the weakest of the Dark Anthology releases thus far imo (upon first play). The performances are...not great, tbh - I wasn’t convinced by any of them, but I think the actors did what they could with whatever that DIALOGUE was 😬.

It feels like there are too many stories happening at once, as well. Especially based on the ending I got... Granted this is my first playthrough, and I’ve only hit 20% complete - I’m leaving room for my rating to change upon the second play. Supermassive games make for supermassive replayability, after all.

Supermassive Games hält auch mit »Little Hope« starr am Prinzip ihres Hits »Until Dawn« fest. Ich steuere eine Gruppe bestehend aus fünf unterschiedlichen Charakteren durch ein üppiges Horrorszenario und muss dabei immer wieder Entscheidungen treffen, die im Verlauf der Story über deren Ableben oder Weiterbestehen bestimmen. Soweit, so bekannt. Aber auch gut.

»Little Hope« macht im direkten Vergleich zu »Man of Medan« (dem ersten Teil der "Dark Pictures Anthology") nochmal einen deutlichen Sprung nach vorne. Die Umgebung ist sichtlich abwechslungsreicher und auch die Geschichte reißt ein gutes Stück mehr mit. Natürlich auch, weil das Hexen-Szenario in Neuengland einfach mehr hermacht, als die Irrfahrt auf dem verlorenen Militärkreuzer im Pazifik. Während ich dort eine Metall-Kulisse nach der anderen erkunden musste, die einfach alle gleich aussahen, wartet »Little Hope« mit einsamen Landstraßen, dichten Wäldern, Kleinstadt-Häusern in verschiedenen Epochen und Baustilen, einem Friedhof und einem Spielplatz auf.

Ich steuere eine Stundenten-Gang inklusive Professor, die nach einem Busunglück im verlassenen Städtchen "Little Hope" gestrandet sind und auf ihrer verzweifelten Suche nach einem funktionierenden Telefon immer wieder auf die Schatten der Vergangenheit treffen. In Little Hope fanden früher nämlich Hexenverbrennungen statt, was auch der Dreh- und Angelpunkt der Handlung ist.

Wirklich originell ist das Gruselsetting natürlich nicht, Stories wie diese gehören zu jedem Halloween-Filmmarathon. Dazu kommt eine sehr deutliche Anlehnung an den ersten "Silent Hill"-Teil, die immer wieder ins Auge sticht. Auch in der Umsetzung des "Grusels" bleibt Supermassive Games seinem bewährten Prinzip treu: Jumpscares, verlassene Häuser, kurze Spukeinlagen am Wegesrand und vor allem (ab dem Ende des zweiten von drei Akten) reichlich Terror mit Quick-Time-Events.

Letztere spielen sich allerdings deutlich entspannter als noch im Vorgänger. Ich muss zwar schnell reagieren, aber es bliebt fair genug, um im ersten Anlauf schaffbar zu sein. Ebenfalls erfreulich sind die neuen Markierungen, die nochmal deutlich zeigen, wenn ein Objekt dazu bestimmt ist, die Szene zu beenden. Plötzlich das Ende eines Schauplatzes einzuleiten, obwohl ich mich eigentlich noch umschauen wollte, ist damit vorbei.

»Little Hope« richtet sich deutlich an Casual-Zocker und bietet eine ganz gut gelungene Atmosphäre, die echte Horror-Profis zwar nicht gänzlich abholt, oder irgendein Rad neu erfindet, dafür aber eben für den gediegenen Wochenend-Zock passt. Das Gameplay ist bis auf die wenigen Quick-Time-Events nicht wirklich herausfordernd und auch die Story habe ich in der Form schon einige Mal erlebt. Zwar gibt es am Ende einen ganz netten Spin, aber alles in allem ist »Little Hope« eher Popcorn-Kino als packender Nervenkitzel.

Da auch hier wieder alle Charaktere sterben können und es im ersten Durchlauf eher unwahrscheinlich ist, alle Figuren zu retten, es hier und da sowieso Entscheidungen gibt, bei denen es im Nachhinein reizt, sich die Alternative anzuschauen, ist ein zweites Durchspielen fast schon Pflicht.

Für den ersten Durchlauf habe ich ca. 5 Stunden benötigt. Für 30€ Kaufpreis völlig in Ordnung.

Mit dem Kinomodus (quasi das Couch-Coop), bei dem jeder Charakter einem Spieler zugeordnet werden kann, und dem Online-Coop für zwei Spieler, gibt es wie schon bei »Men of Medan« einen zusätzlichen Anreiz.

Kurzum bietet »Little Hope« ausstreichend Unterhaltung fürs Geld, zumindest wenn man nicht "das nächste große Ding" erwartet. Vor allem im Mehrspieler-Modus (ob Lokal oder Online) gewinnt das Spiel deutlich an Spaß dazu. Das Timing zu Halloween passt perfekt zur Klischeebeladenen Story und diesmal steuere ich nicht nur Teenies, sondern auch zwei Erwachsene. Wenn das mal nichts ist!

Admittedly, I am a sucker for all of SuperMassive's type of games. I love interactive movies. The Dark Pictures Anthology is so promising and the Curator is a fascinating host/character to act as the throughline.

While I still really enjoyed Man of Medan, I know a lot of people didn't particularly like it. I can undoubtedly say that Little Hope is a huge improvement and a big step in the right direction. While some people might be annoyed with the ending, I still think that the way the game misleads you and plays with the way you think the story is going is brilliant. Will Poulter was awesome to see in the game as well and I really enjoyed the performances. I definitely recommend if you're into cinematic interactive games and enjoy horror.

Little Hope has issues (an arduously slow opening, poor/forgettable characterizations, not really feeling... scary, at all) but this was still much more engaging than the baffling, boring mess that was Man of Medan. The biggest problem is still the sloppy writing, especially since it aims to do something it thinks is sophisticated here... The reveals in the final act are SO obnoxious and literal and do that thing I hate in modern horror where EVERY element needs to directly correspond to the cast's past trauma or the story's guiding metaphor in a way I blame awful "ending explained" youtube analyses for. Not that you'd need an explainer here; most of where the game goes feels pretty obvious from the onset. The result feels less satisfying than a straight genre story OR drama would, especially when the characters arent fleshed out as fun archetypes OR nuanced, emotional beings. Silent Hill 2 this is NOT: everything you see is a sloppy, immediately obvious symbol (rather than a vague, mysterious, sensorial reflection of often unplaceable human darkness) and that directness takes away a lot of the potential for fear. Still, the journey is pretty fun after getting through the slow opening--the creature designs are nice and the action-heavy setpiece moments feel good, especially with the mid-QTE character swapping motif they added. I think the game's moody lighting and locales look fantastic, and there's much more visual variety than there was on the dull metal tanker in MoM. it's impressive (and maybe masochistic? are you guys okay?) that something this polished looking came out in a year. I appreciated that they tried to make the whole "evolving character trait keywords" thing into an actual mechanic that effects some endgame bits, rather than a mostly superficial (but still entertaining) minor element in their past games. Little Hope still doesn't hold a candle to Until Dawn, but I'm happy SuperMassive seems to have regained their footing, and I'm actually enthusiastic to play the next installment! I almost skipped out on Little Hope after hating Man of Medan sooo much and I'm glad I didn't.

also Angela is a bitter hag icon and i love her... I dont think i've EVER seen a piece media about a group of college students include an older adult, despite it being super common and normal to see 35+ year olds in classes all the time! so props for that it was fun to see

'Until Dawn' is one of my favorite interactive movies, but its spiritual successor, 'Man of Medan' was a step back in all respects compared to it. I had little hope (pun not intended...) that the second installment of 'The Dark Pictures Anthology' would be much better.

And indeed, this is still not the game that will revolutionize the genre, however, the developers managed to fix many of the issues 'Man of Medan' was plagued with. 'Little Hope' plays and looks better than its predecessor, and I even found the story creepier and the cast more interesting this time around. The tense and foreboding atmosphere reminded me of an absolute classic, 'Silent Hill 2', and the rich, detailed history of the town was really well crafted. I just wish the characters wouldn't move around like sloths...

There are some cheap jumpscares and some QTEs can be a bit annoying, but all in all, I can still recommend this to horror and/or interactive movie / adventure fans, especially if you played 'Man of Medan'.

While this may be an improvement over Man of Medan, it still suffers most when striving for as close to a cinematic experience that survival horror games are currently capable of. An over-reliance on quick-time events and walking down trodden paths can hardly be called immersive gameplay, but even the choices made are undermined in favor of a mystery plot that crumbles at its conclusion. The writing is also nothing to ride home about, littered with a cliched cast all falling prey to the tropes of B-movie horror flicks. The twist ending is audacious, yet ends up compromising the vast amount of content already played of its value, leaving as many narrative threads dangling as it does tie up.

Much better than Man of Medan, let's start with that. The atmosphere is felt since the characters get to Little Hope, and the mystery keeps you going for the entire game (which is not that long, 4 to 5 hours in a single run. Obviously more if you want 100%).
The characters, while not all likeable, do change during your game, and are well acted enough.
Without spoilers, people seem to have a problem with the ending. The game has multiple endings, as all Supermassive games have, but the difference is, when you get to 100% you unlock more information, which in turns gives a new take on the endings. It's really interesting and I think it might help people that apparently hate the ending. I didn't hate any of the endings though.
A much needed return to form for Supermassive, but I think it's time they start to innovate with the gameplay mechanics, so far we've seen very little innovation between Until Dawn / Man of Medan / Little Hope. Changing the story is good, but we need a different combination of gameplay and some changes. Still onboard for the Dark Pictures Anthology and I hope they'll continue getting better.

While the visually muted aesthetic and catchy character ensembles of these games remain as enticingly interesting as ever, this is unfortunately more of the same in basically every regard. Offering increased accessibility in its gameplay than Man of Medan with alerts for button prompts, I had hoped for more diversity and building of its usual formula however outside of slight adjustments such as that there was nothing much else of note. What's left is a rushed, self-important narrative containing jumbled timelines and a complete lack of genuine tension; the jump scares here are a complete joke and it is hard to tell if it's deliberately that way anymore. Any sense of ambition is swiftly choked out by the rigid and predictable structure of the story and for something that takes 4-5 hours to complete it nonetheless feels twice that long. It's everything we have seen before. Front to back like Man of Medan this exudes mediocrity in most aspects. It is a shame they won't just take the extra time to craft a truly fleshed out, imaginative sequel to Until Dawn. What we have now are these third-party seeming, churned out, hack rip offs of their own IP. Over time I do not imagine the novelty turnout for these games will last. Hopefully horror games will have moved on to greener pastures by then.

The Dark Pictures series has been weak so far and I don't hold high hopes for House of Ashes. They honestly feel like throwaway Netflix mini series... Little hope's multiplayer was broken for a good while too, but when it was fixed and a friend and I finally finished it we were both so disappointed with how weak the ending was, just felt cheated out of 4 hours of our time.

Super disappointing because I really did enjoy Until Dawn, enough to 100% it. But everything else they've pumped out has been weak.

Supermassive Games has yet to live up to Until Dawn, but Little Hope feels like a step in the right direction. The story is a lot more interesting and it has more likeable characters than Man of Medan. The game takes place a bit too much on foggy roads in my opinion and felt like it was going at a snails pace for most of the game but I think the B movie level writing and acting helped make it enjoyable. Angela and John alone made the game worth playing until the end I think. The ending itself is .... not the best but its not awful either, and I have yet to get the others so maybe the 'true ending' is better. Also I feel like some scenes are kinda poorly spliced together which I'm guessing is due to the way they did the choices but overall despite an honestly lot of problems with it, I still really enjoyed the experience and am much looking forward to where the series goes next and plan on picking up House of Ashes soon. It has a lot of potential and im excited for the future of the series