Many of us occasionally experience recurrent nightmares, such as the one in which we go to school in our undies, the one in which all of our teeth fall out, or even the one in which we go to school in our undies and all of our teeth fall out. But Little Nightmares 3 isn’t the kind of nightmare that keeps coming back to haunt you at night. The only notable change to this puzzle-platforming sequel is a co-op mode, but it doesn’t really alter the structure and instead seems like a disappointingly uninspired retread of the two shadow-soaked adventures that came before it.
Little Nightmares 3 left me feeling relaxed enough to roll over and press the snooze button, despite my expectations of a horrible twilight trip that would have made me sit bolt upright in bed. Two completely new and appropriately titled child characters, Low and Alone, are at the center of Little Nightmares 3’s journey across a series of dimly illuminated territories. At the beginning of the adventure, you choose which tiny hero you want to play as. The second hero can be controlled by a second player in online cooperative games or by the AI, just like Six was in Little Nightmares 2. The two leads have similar fundamental skills, such as crouching, jumping, and object-grabbing.
While Alone carries a huge wrench that she can use to break through weak barriers or operate the controls of some simple pieces of equipment discovered in Little Nightmare 3’s twisted terrain, Low has a bow that she can use to shoot ropes to drop containers or switches to shift platforms.
However, since both characters’ special actions are primarily context sensitive (Low, for example, will usually only raise his bow to fire if there is a nearby target that he needs to strike) and puzzle solutions always appear rather obvious, there isn’t much space for exploration.Few of them call for a lot of coordinated coordination between the two characters’ abilities, and I never spent nearly as much time on a brainteaser in Little Nightmares 3 as I did when confronted with some of the more difficult puzzles in its predecessor, which made me feel like I was merely following along mindlessly for the majority of the five-hour journey.
Nightmare Run
The story of Low and Alone is divided into just four chapters, as opposed to the five chapters of the first two Little Nightmares: the sand-swept expanse of Necropolis; the eerie Candy Factory floors lined with lollipops; the twisted, Tim Burton-esque big tops of Carnavale; and the somewhat generic hospital hallway horrors of The Institute.
(It looks like there will be two more chapters in the future, but they will be available as part of a premium expansion pass.) Although I won’t reveal why Low and Alone are stuck in these nightmare realms or the precise location they’re attempting to reach, I will say that I found the unspoken bond that slowly forms between them to be surprisingly sweet, even though the story itself is ultimately fairly light and not nearly as spooky as the previous two. Low and Alone use mirrors as portals to travel to each standalone setting.
I found Carnavale to be the most interesting of the four available chapters. In its dank depths, illuminated by string lights and sporadic lightning strikes, one can sneak past a variety of repulsive sights, including grotesquely crammed patrons using sticks to strike human pinatas and gorging themselves face down in straining slop buckets, as well as a particularly unsettling twist on the traditional magician’s trick of sawing a man in half. Additionally, it contains the most intense battle scenes in the entire adventure, where the small pair must cooperate against waves of wooden dolls dressed like sideshow alley barkers. Low uses a well-timed arrow to knock off their heads, then frantically tries to avoid being caught in their headless bodies, while Alone dashes in to use her wrench to club their discarded skulls, permanently ending their lives.
Little Nightmares 3 is more of a recognizable Frankenstein’s monster put together from bits from the first two games than it is a terrifying new beast.
But aside from these few standout scenes, Little Nightmares 3 is more of a recognizable Frankenstein’s monster put together from bits from the first two games than a terrifying new beast. Although it is a frightening sight to see, defeating the towering baby doll that looms large in the background of the Necropolis chapter like some kind of slack-eyed Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is incredibly easy: you just have to time your movements to slink past it when its vision cone shifts, just like so many other stalkers in the series’ past.
Do you recall Little Nightmares 2‘s sequence of coordinated jumps on top of a trap door that allowed you to crash your way through to the basement levels? Little Nightmares 3 will have you doing it repeatedly, along with frequent pauses to gradually tear the wooden beams off boarded shut doorways and push and pull containers to climb up onto shelves. Long before the credits roll, everything starts to feel a little too repetitive, which isn’t ideal for a story that can be finished in a single late-night session.
Along the way, Low and Alone are given access to a few more tools that make things a little different. The story’s otherwise strictly linear exploration is given a welcome twist in the first two chapters when the brave young couple is outfitted with umbrellas that can be unfolded to either cushion the fall from equally great heights or take advantage of updrafts and float up to platforms that are out of reach. However, any intriguing movement techniques these parasols offer are totally negated at the halfway point of the game when the umbrella is replaced with a lantern, which has a much smaller effect on the action.
Although lighting does brighten your progressively depressing surroundings, it is never employed as a tool to add intrigue to the stress. Unfortunately, there is nothing nearly as horrific as the scene in Little Nightmares 2, which still gives me the chills when I think about it. It involved frantically flashing a spotlight to stop the march of prosthetic-limbed patients in the ominous hospital atmosphere.
In actuality, Little Nightmares 3 rapidly establishes a fairly predictable pattern of switching between tense chase scenes and sluggish, steady stealth sections, both of which are hampered by instant fail outcomes that are at least partially lessened by the generally generous checkpointing. Although zero-tolerance terminations are not new to the series, these quick deaths drew attention to the partner AI’s sometimes foolish behavior this time around. For example, in the Necropolis, a CPU-controlled Low would repeatedly shoot arrows, but the same giant fly would fall and crush him, forcing us to return to the closest checkpoint. It was a literal game-breaking problem for a number of annoying recurring deaths.
Naturally, playing Little Nightmares 3 in cooperative mode helps minimize AI problems, but despite being hailed as one of its most unique features, this new two-player mode has been implemented in a rather restricted way. First of all, co-op is only available online, so you can’t play the story with a friend on the couch next to you. This is unfortunate if, like me, you adore playing games with your spouse or kids. Additionally, it isn’t drop-in, drop-out, so if you begin a game in cooperative mode and your companion adventurer decides they’re too frightened to continue, you’ll have to restart the plot to play solo, which seems like a completely needless restriction.
The comparisons to Hazelight Studios’ co-op epic stop there, though, since Little Nightmares 3 does have a generous friend pass system that is similar to Split Fiction’s, allowing a second player to join you without having to buy their own copy of the game. With its two playable characters having such drastically different experiences, Split Fiction offers replay value that Little Nightmares 3 cannot match, nor can it match its continually inventive genius in cooperative game design. I was dissatisfied to discover that, other from one character’s ability to strike objects and the other’s ability to shoot them, there was no discernible difference between the two characters when I started over as Alone after completing the adventure as Low.
Verdict
Even while Little Nightmares 3 has two new protagonists and two-player support for the first time in the series, it falls short of setting itself apart from the first two adventures, making every step through its eerie architecture feel less terrifying and more like a retread. The Carnavale chapter is particularly noteworthy, and there are a few memorable dark moments scattered throughout, but the recurring crate-pushing and instant-fail chase scenes are already all too typical. Unless you’re desperate to experience the series’ distinctive style of stop-start stealth with a pal, Nightmares 3 offers nothing in the way of novelty, few scares, and limited appeal if you’ve previously played the first two games.
