Topic: 🍁 PUSH SQUARE GAME CLUB 🍁 | November | The Plucky Squire ⚔️

Spooktober has now begun so I made a start on Little Nightmares 2 AKA The Amazing Adventures of Billy Boxhead (technically a paper bag but I prefer the sound of Boxhead to Baghead and I already found some new hats to wear but refuse to on the basis that he would no longer be Billy Boxhead).

Anyways. Nice first impressions. The visuals are good being similar to a Burtonesque Stop Motion thingy and the sound and music nicely contribute to a feeling of unease and tension. Gameplay seems pretty much as I'd expected having played the first game - get to the right side of the screen to move to the next screen. If you can't then find something to use, grab or manipulate so that you can.

I've enjoyed randomly throwing discarded boots and bottles for no real reason. Have made a new friend and held hands for no discernable purpose and have probably died 20 or more times so far. 3 times I got crushed by a rolling log, 1 time from jump falling from a high ledge and the rest of the deaths can be attributed to a character I have named as overzealous shotgun prick.

Played for about an hour and made it to the end of the first chapter, will probably continue tomorrow.

@Yousef- Thank you and already have both Little Nightmares 2 and Little Hope downloaded! Hope everyone has fun!

Downloading Little Hope now. It's a busy month for me in gaming but I hope I'll enjoy Little Hope in between

Another hour or so of LN2...
Found a new hat I was prepared to wear. I am become Bobby Buckethead!
Lost my friend along the way. Still throwing all the shoes I see along the way just because.
Died a bunch more times...
Fell down a big pit. Got brained by some booby traps which made me chuckle and some more frustrating ones I won't mention here for spoilery reasons.
Suffice it to say the teacher lady should wind her neck in!

Still enjoying the atmosphere and aesthetics of this creepy world.

So I just finished Little Hope. Fantastic game! I definitely enjoyed it way more than Man of Medan. It throws you right into the main event without hours of build-up and the pacing was just great overall. I found the story interesting and the mixing of time periods was really cool. It was fun trying to unravel the mystery and I actually managed to reach the truth, which felt satisfying.

There are a couple of things about the game that I didn't like. For starters, and this is also something that I noticed in Until Dawn, is that sometimes there will be choices where you have no idea what the outcome will be. For example, I remember in Until Dawn one moment where you had to choose to either run or hide. This is fine until you realise that you have no idea which option is better and if you choose incorrectly, the character will die. I saw so many choices like that in Little Hope. For example, one situation had you choosing whether to go left or right. How the hell should I know? It's so dumb.

Another thing is that there are a tad bit too many jump scares. Like every ten minutes there's one. After a while, you get used to them and their effect wears off. I feel like Until Dawn had more evenly placed jump scares that were way more effective.

Finally, I didn't like the underlying mechanic of character traits. Apparently, if you don't choose certain options for a character and unlock all their locked traits, then that character will die at the end. I had no idea about this. At the end, all but one of the characters had left the area and the remaining one just stood still for no reason. Afterwards, they were killed and it showed which traits I didn't unlock. That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Firstly, there was no reason at all for the character to just remain while everyone else left. That felt incredibly forced by the developer. Secondly, shouldn't this be explained to the player beforehand? I mean, I get that the developer is trying its hardest to make you replay their game, but it's still an annoying aspect of the game. I chose the easiest difficulty setting for a reason, it even said that survival is assured. I nailed all the QTEs and still one character died because of an underlying mechanic that I had no idea would affect the ending. It just sucks.

But all in all, I enjoyed the game a lot despite a few annoyances. Really glad that I played this and I'm looking forward to playing House of Ashes in the future.

I think I'll start up Little Nightmares 2 later on as October's game for Pure Xbox Game Club is The Evil Within 2 and I'm in the mood for some more action as well as a lengthy title.

@LtSarge wow already? That’s pretty fast!
I suppose I’ll check out a playthrough of it. It’s surprisingly hard to understand some commentary here without playing the game though technically shouldn’t surprise me since that’s normal.

Yes I really dislike that feature!! It’s why I was never really onboard with Until Dawn or most telltale-inspired games. Doesn’t it feel like a bait??? It’s such an unnatural gameplay mechanic in my honest opinion.
I should add how contradictory UD’s game design is. It asks you play perfectly, which is fine, but it’s such a chore to replay because you can’t skip cutscenes so you feel obligated to use a guide not cuz you need help, but because you don’t wanna run the risk of rewatching the same stuff. Too punishing!

The example you highlighted in LH is the bane of my existence! Go right… go left… no I’ll just go to the bathroom cuz this is already taking the piss!

Yup, jumpscares, can’t handle em :c

That final feature seems bizarre xD.
Awesome you had fun though!

You should go left. ALWAYS go left.

Didn't have much time of LN2 today so only managed half hour or so. Completed chapter 2 and, after getting a new costume for my tag-along friend, realised she was the cat from the first game. At least I think she is. Can't remember how the first game ended but assuming she somehow escaped to freedom or safety, I'm wondering why she's now following me as i attempt to do the same. Maybe that's just how she rolls. Escapes to a safe place, gets bored of the humdrum so gets to a new scary place to escape from. Who knows.

Made it to the end of Chapter 3 - Hospital today. It was easily the most unsettling and the most frustrating one so far.

Onwards and rightwards. More tomorrow.

@sorteddan seems like it’s been fun!

@Yousef-
Yeah as I've said previously if you played the first then you kinda know what to expect but it's a nice game to play in small bursts - do an hour a day and you'll probably be done in a week. Also doesn't go much for jump scares so you maybe alright with it. It's more about creating an unsettling and eirie world. And the autosave is relatively generous so even when you fail a bit you never have to go too far back.

Damn sounds pretty accommodating then, especially to my now well known weak points 😂
Yeah the length is a bonus. I’ll give it a when I found the chance! @sorteddan

@Yousef- Yeah I don't really understand why the developers think it's a good idea to have arbitrary choices like that in their games. What I did like about the choices however is that I felt I could make more informed ones in this game. If I for example gave a character a weapon and then two characters are being attacked, then I know I should help the character who doesn't have a weapon and the other one will use its weapon so that both will survive. That is if you remember giving that character a weapon, lol.

@LtSarge devs are surprisingly incapable of finding a satisfactory middle ground. Either it insults your intelligence by being OBVIOUSLY inconsequential or deliberately acts too vague to create forced replay value. Or it’s just an ending selector lol. I’m just personally content with flavor dialogue or dialogue that gives optional rewards (that are negligible or aren’t crucial for progression). The last option I suggested makes dialogue way more engaging and feel like, Y’know, a game xD. gameplay mechanics feeling like a game? What a concept!

Well I made it to the end of Little Nightmares 2 and just watched the credits roll..
Chapter 4 (yesterday) was pretty good. I liked how even at that stage in the game it introduced a new mechanic with travelling through TVs to reach different areas and solve puzzles.
Chapter 5 (this morning) I didn't enjoy at all. The type of puzzle I was not prepared for, possibly as I was mildly distracted by the radio. Make sure you can hear the game when you get to this stage.
When you figure it out it's a really short chapter. I think I need some time to ponder the ending.

Inevitably I'll end up going back to do a trophy clean-up using a guide and chapter select.
Overall creepy and enjoyable. Mostly quite simple to figure out. But some of the chase sequences are a bit annoying due to the imprecise platforming controls. Took around 6 hours.
Thanks for having me gameclub.

@sorteddan gratz on beating it. Nice you had fun! Might get to it if I need a break from the usual stuff.

Started up Little Hope yesterday and according to the PS5 Home Screen I’m 60% through. So far I really like it, although it is rough around the edges at some points. The character animations are a little wonky and the scene transitions don’t always flow well — I assume on account of the splicing of different scenes which may vary depending on your choices. The writing comes across awkward at times and the voice acting does its best but doesn’t always sound convincing or compelling.

Having recently finished Life is Strange: True Colors, I can’t help but compare the quality of acting, motion capture, dialogue, and overall graphics and performance and LiS comes across as a superior product overall. But Supermassive isn’t far behind with Little Hope and at times it looks great, especially the environments. Ironic in the wake of the SH2 hoopla, it has a very ‘Silent Hill vibe’ to it with the heavy fog and the mysterious abandoned town as a centerpiece. The setting is really where the game shines, imo. I think the Salem Witch Trials and old Puritan Colonial culture is a really interesting gaming backdrop, especially for a thriller/horror game.

Besides the inconsistent writing and animations, the other main annoyance is the Invisible walls everywhere, with the pathway to traverse being extremely limited.

As far as the scariness of it, it’s got a creepiness on par with Supermassive’s other games I’ve played, Until Dawn and The Quarry, that is — hammy overdramatized B-movie styled and a nice balance of fear, anxiety, and camp. Really enjoying it. Pretty sure this will encourage me to play all the DP Anthology.

@Th3solution wow, you just started it and you’re already 60% done? Watch out lads, we got a speedrunner over here

Yeah, games like until dawn and life is strange inaverdetly invite comparison to one another in spite of not intending. Just can’t help it, the market for games where you have to avoid stepping on a branch to avoid a nuclear is admittedly, very small

Happy and you and sarge are enjoying it though

@Yousef- I'm not sure what they official call the genre, maybe “interactive drama” or “interactive narrative” games… although I’ve called them “choice and consequence” games, but that’s not totally accurate because they typically have some exploration aspect, as well as QTE’s with have consequences also. I’ve also seen them described as “butterfly effect narrative” games, which fits, and are an expansion of the “walking sim” genre, I suppose. I tend to lump the Telltale games, Supermassive games, the Life is Strange series, and the Quantic Dream games all into a similar experience.

The game looks to be quite short. Most of the time I fall on the longer side of the howlongtobeat estimates, but I think I’ll probably complete this in 6 hours or less. PS5 calculates my time played at around 3 hours. As I noted earlier, the amount of time you can spend exploring is really limited (so far) because the maps have very narrow linear pathways to follow.

I hope none of you run into any problems with Little Hope on the technical side. First time I played it with a co-op partner our entire save just got corrupted and made it unplayable. Since I assume you are playing single-player for the most part however, maybe you're at less risk of that happening with desyncing issues and all. I'm coincidentally playing through The Devil in Me with my roommate currently, so not quite on topic but very close to it! That one's also given us some good grief so far, but luckily nothing game-breaking yet.

Personally, I think Little Hope is the worst entry in the quadrology (having not yet finished The Devil in Me at least). The story just felt the slowest, most unexciting and the ending was genuinely terrible. I also heavily disliked the cast of characters with the one major exception of Angela who, for me, is my favourite character in any of these games. I know, I know... she's not likeable at all and just a complaining cow to say it in the most pleasant way, but something about that just made her so funny to play and watch to me. It brought so much entertainment factor to watch her endlessly quibble with the other characters for often no good reason, which is something I drastically needed in what I otherwise felt like was a complete slog. I'm happy to see y'all falling on the other side of the fence though and enjoying what the game has to offer. If you like what you see and haven't yet given any of the others a shot, House of Ashes is my personal favourite if you're itching to feed more of that October horror hunger.