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