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

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/10/14-more-games-join-ps...

Not many crazy additions. But felt it was worth dropping anyways in case anyone needed a look.

Actually, is Alan awake II on PS extra?
Edit: no

@Yousef- I could of told you that without even looking lol.

@JohnnyShoulder you’re could of the famous “told you that without even looking lol.“ tribe? I didn’t know!

Sony is clearly monitoring this thread because they know we’ve been talking about our various levels of enjoyment of the Dark Pictures Anthology. I was hoping they’d eventually include the fourth and final entry Devil in Me and I’m glad they have. Now I’ve got access to the full set through PS+.

And @Yousef- they did give out Alan Wake Remastered for a PS+ essential game before. I don’t think AW2 will be coming for a while though. I think there’s a physical version of it coming out soon, if I’m not mistaken.

@Th3solution I see, thank you.

First of all, Hello Sony thanks for reading - please send free stuff my way whenever is good for you.
Ahem.
I made a tentative start on Little Hope this evening. Enjoyed the bleak intro/prologue bit. When the curator turned up he said something like "Welcome back. We have another story to tell. It's different from the last one..." I expect that is the extent of the differences I get for having the MoM save data on my system.

then to the game proper. Well what a bunch of insufferable tw#*s I get to spend an adventure with this time around. Don't like professor pompous, snotty old lady or initially arrogant Talyor. Andrew seems fairly blank as the main protagonist(?) to start with and Daniel is ok (as are most Daniels. It's just a Dan thing. You wouldn't understand). I did have a fleeting thought that maybe I'd just try to kill them off as soon as possible for a laugh but I wont... Probably.
And yeah jump scares... When the first one didn't really bother me you probably shouldnt attempt two more in the next five minutes but thanks for trying.
Got as far as poking around in the bar and setting off for town before the next curator bit where I thought I'd leave it till the next time. Did like the creepy kids voice doing nursery rhymes - that's always good for a horror movie.

@sorteddan Little Hope is my first of the DPA and the curator greeted me with something like, “Well, I see we’ve never met before. I’m a curator of stories… (yada, yada, yada…)” So yeah, I guess that’s the extent of unique content.

I think you’ll warm up to some of the characters, but there an unlikable cast at first.

Survived my second hour in Little Hope...

Accepted that I'll probably pick the wrong dialogue option most of the time and miss the vital evidence to inspect and examine despite constantly walking in zig zags with whichever character I'm controlling.
Finding the QTEs really easy but have failed both the heartbeat events I've encountered so far (just haven't got the timing rhythm) the first one made me fun away from a cat in a shed!
Quite intrigued to find out where the story is heading but quite distracted by trying to figure out where the olde day accent is from (thinking maybe Greater Manchester or Lancashire).
Found some secrets and premonitions... And now I know a second of two of something vague is going to happen with one of the characters at some point. Good to know.
And yeah jump scares... Blimey. If a jump scare takes place in the woods but nobody jumps or is scared... Then keep on throwing them at me I suppose.
Still think professor John is a dick. Don't mind the others so much.

Also if my mate Isaac was here with his plasma cutter then you things creeping about in the bushes wouldn't think you were so scary without your hind legs attached!

I am enjoying it though. I just picked the dismissive/caustic option when typing this up.

@sorteddan 😂 I’m glad you’re sticking with it so far. I’ve not had time to go back and finish it yet but I suspect I’m only one or two game sessions from the end, although who knows if I’ll have time this week. But I do really like how quickly the game seems to progress, even though at 4 hrs along I am still not much closer to knowing exactly what the deal is with these characters and their relationship to the flashbacks. I expect there will be a large climatic reveal and then the game ends. But some six hour games feel like they last 12 hours but this one feels like it’s flying by really fast.

The premonitions do seem relatively useless to me too, although maybe I’ll see the value of them the further along we go. In the few instances where the premonition has come around and happened, it just has given me a glimpse into something that will happen and yet I haven’t really have any control over whether it occurs or not. When they did something similar in Until Dawn, if I’m remembering correctly, the premonition/foreshadowing vision was a clue as to maybe something to avoid in order to keep a character alive. But the utility of these in this game hasn’t really been as clear cut.

As for the jump scares, I don’t mind them. A couple of them have legitimately startled me, but as with many of the scares in these types of games/movies it’s often obvious a scare is about to come when the the camera angle pans out a certain way or focuses on a certain part of the screen, etc.

And as far as choices, I think a lot of the dialogue and reactions choices are often too similar. Sometimes there’s two heart options or two brain options instead of a ‘heart vs head’ dilemma, and so I’m not sure what the point is on some of them. I can’t think of a specific example but there have been a couple times when the two options were “Hey, we should go this way...” vs. “Well, I guess going this way is our best option…” , or something like that. There was one that I was led astray from what I would have chosen merely because the way the dialogue option was worded didn’t quite correlate with how it was perceived by the group and so everyone hated the response and I got red down-arrows across the board. I have yet to allow a dialogue choice to go by without choosing anything, so perhaps I need to keep the “say nothing” option in the repertoire more often.

Also, I see that there is a trophy for choosing all the heart options and one for choosing all head options, so I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do when you are only given two heart options. Maybe you have to choose nothing on those instances. It’s no matter, since I’ve screwed myself out of those two trophies because I’ve been all over the shop on my responses so far.

@Th3solution
You are right about now quick it's going. I've had two sessions of roughly an hour each time and the home screen currently says 50% which surprised me. And yeah I've also just been choosing whatever option without worrying about trophies or anything. Some games I play for trophies, others I just play for completion and I prob won't be bothered to do the many plays required on games like these. I usually do a first run where I try to save everyone and then another where I try to kill em all off just to see the death sequences and then decide I'm done with it.

And I did choose a say nothing option when I was trying to not interrupt the witch trial as I thought saying something might cause a reaction which outed them as being in contact with spirits and therefore condemn them. Wonder if there's a trophy for choosing say nothing throughout the whole game?

@sorteddan I didn’t see a trophy for saying nothing the whole game but that actually sounds like it could be an interesting playthrough. 😄

There is a trophy for doing that in Oxenfree. I had always intended to go back and platinum that game and that playthrough of saying nothing was one that I never took the time to do. Now I’m too buried in backlog to likely ever go back to that. Good game though. I need to play the sequel, actually. 🤔

Little Hope #part 3
Early on I had another curator bit where he told me I should've explored better and already found a weapon, but too late for that now...
That guy is great 👍

Certainly the hour(ish) that I've enjoyed the most. It seems to be leaning into the horror part more now.l
What with the chainey swamp witch and all.
Liked the crumbling briidge, chose to rescue Angela over John but he made his way up anyway. Failed a reaction bit which meant Angela got dragged into the sewers which seems a bit perilous!
Actually managed to complete one of the heartbeat parts but it was just Vince with his bike so seemed relatively unimportant. Spent some time reading headstones in the graveyard, coz why not it's not like I'm in a rush to get anywhere!
Have made a couple of decisions which feel like they might prove important like finding a knife and letting Taylor, rather than Daniel, keep it. Also not letting John burn the poppet in the museum

Also popped trophies for making Andrew empathetic, Daniel amiable and maxing Daniel and Taylor's relationship.
Have a feeling I know how the plot is going to play out...
Got to the next curator section and have so far refused his offer of hints from him.
More tomorrow.

@sorteddan Wow, it’s interesting how differently I’ve been playing it. I rescued John rather than Angela, and she got pulled down by the creature (the corpse of her witch doppelgänger I think) but I’m not sure if she’s actually dead yet and suspect she’s survived. I gave the knife to Daniel, and I burned the poppet. And I haven’t been able to make Andrew empathetic yet or Daniel amiable. I did max out Dan and Taylor’s relationship though. Oh, and I’ve been taking the hints from the curator. Not very helpful though.

I think you’re almost caught up to me now. I haven’t played any yet this week. Hopefully this weekend.

@Th3solution
That's quite amusing how different our instincts and decisions are, love it! I bet you always choose to go right when exploring as well.
Home screen says 65% now

@sorteddan Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending) I waver between right and left. 😅 Usually whichever is darker is where I go first because the lighter route is the one they want you to take! I take the road less traveled!

DPA:LH #4th go.

So not all of my Scooby gang will make it to see the credits roll. But that's ok, a horror flick where everyone survives is a bit lacking in my opinion. Do have to agree with @LtSarge earlier post that having someone's fate decided by not having unlocked traits that I was unaware of needing and knowing how to do seems a bit unfair.

Have thought, on a few occasions that the game looks really good. Just like in certain shots I think it does look like a cool horror film. My main issue (very pedantic) is with the characters using their mobile phones as torches, I keep thinking how come you still have battery!!

Home screen now says 90% so almost there. Tempted to go back tonight if I get the time.

@sorteddan Right? That mechanic was honestly rather unnecessary in my opinion. At the very least they should've explained it thoroughly to you at the beginning. But even if they did, you still won't always know which option will lead to you unlocking that specific trait.

Little Hope: 5th session

Turns out I was only a half hour from the end. Just had a final summation from the curator and now seeing the credits roll.

I managed to keep then remaining four alive in the last bit and think I mostly made the correct call about the olde timey bit. And then the ending and final reveal...
Well that was all a let down wasn't it! Haven't yet had much time to reflect upon it but it currently seems an unsatisfactory way to wrap things up.

Anyway I enjoyed playing (watching) it overall and it was as I expected it would be, happy to have this thread to share my thoughts and experiences and now pleased it's done and I can move on. At this moment I think it's unlikely that I'll do another play through.... Though that could change.

Thanks for having me gameclub, enjoy the rest of your spooky month of games and I look forward to reading the rest of your posts about the two games.

I finally finished Little Hope as well and also enjoyed it quite a bit. In my version —
I only saved 2 people. I accidentally shot Angela with the gun (although I suspected she was still alive after the sewer scene, I didn’t expect her to be a shadow in the woods though!) Then I lost Daniel to his doppelgänger stabbing him in the eye (not sure if missing a button prompt did him in, or the fact I was missing unlocking two traits of his at the time). Then I lost Taylor in the house at the end when her doppelgänger lassoed its tongue around her neck and choked her as the house was collapsing. (With her I’m pretty sure it was mainly not having her traits all unlocked). So that left only John and Andrew to survive. I did save Mary and was able to convince the judge that the reverend was the source of the problem.

As far as the ending, I thought it was actually pretty good. Rather overly convenient, I realize, to have the whole thing be a multiple-personality delusional psychotic disorder of the bus driver. But it does leave some things open to interpretation — was he psychotic to begin with? Or did the ghost of Little Hope turn him insane? The fact his bus is empty before he’s diverted off the road toward Little Hope would lead you to believe he was already off his rocker. But the town seemed to clearly have a history too, and the fact it was a hotbed of the ancient Witch Trials probably fed into his paranoid schizophrenia, or whatever his issues were. I do think it was a missed opportunity to somehow link Mary to the bus driver, like maybe she is his long lost daughter, and he harbors some deep-seared emotional trauma in his past because she died at a young age or something? The ending I got did not do any follow up on Mary and why she was significant

As far as criticisms of the game, I definitely agree that there was a lot of inconsistency with emotion from the characters, and I noticed many times that they would get over a dramatic experience quite quickly and a lot of the dialogue and voice acting wasn’t convincing. Someone dies and then after a brief moment of regret they just kind of… move along. I know it’s hard to portray real fear, terror, regret, and sadness in a 6 hour game when you A) don’t have time to really do a thorough character analysis of five different people, and B) it takes away from the fun and playability of a game if there’s too much weeping and wailing. Characters have got to get over things quickly so you can go on to the next gameplay section. The strongest gaming characters who I empathize with (Arthur Morgan, Kratos, Joel, Senua, Sam Bridges, Jesse Faden, etc), the ones that feel real and while I’m playing as them I really can feel a sense of what they’re feeling — those characters have plenty of time devoted to getting into their thoughts and experiences. It’s going to be really hard to do that with the short story style of game like Little Hope.

My other complaint is also the character trait mechanic, as was mentioned by others. I think it’s a reasonable idea, but I think it’s quite arbitrary. It would force you to be very inconsistent with your choices for that character from the very beginning so you cover all your bases and unlock all the traits.

I probably won’t go back and replay right now, mostly because I have a large backlog to get to. I am curious how things may play out with different choices and I believe there’s a way to get everyone to the house at the end still alive and then have everyone die in the house at the end which would be interesting to see how that plays out.