Video Gamers Podcast - Little Nightmares 2 - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are here with our first Deep Dive of 2022 and it’s a great one! Join us as we break down the beautifully artistic and equally atmospheric Little Nightmares 2. We dive into the levels, characters, gameplay, mechanics, plot and so much more in this gaming deep dive you don’t want to miss. Is this a gaming cult classic or an overhyped sequel and is it worth your money? We tell you what we think, rate it in a round of Make Love, Marry or Murder before seeing where it lands on our Leaderboard! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad  Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the year 2022, gamers everywhere are in despair, with no good gaming podcast to listen to, until out of the ashes arose the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, with its funny hosts, incredible gaming content, and phenomenal community. You too can be the hero the world needs by heading over to MultiplayerSquad.com and helping support the show. Now let's hear from our champions in this incredible episode. Hey everybody, thanks for joining us here for the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We love gaming, and we release two podcasts every week where we just sit down and chat about video games. Please remember to rate our podcast five stars in your podcast app.

And if you would like access to two extra episodes weekly, check out MultiplayerSquad.com, which will take you to our Patreon page, or you can subscribe inside Apple Podcasts. Not only will you get two extra episodes, you'll also get these regular episodes free of ads and also a day early. Today's episode is a deep dive. The last couple weeks, we have jumped into Little Nightmares 2, where the big nightmares are caused by this game's controls. I am your host, Paul, the mono of this podcast leading the way, and then joining me, my ever trustful number two, who would never betray me, the sixth of the podcast, it's Josh.

I was really hoping you would say that I was sixth, Paul, because that is fitting, as we may spoil a little bit later on also i love your jab at the controls i had to lean back from my microphone to not laugh out loud over your intro on that so yeah i i was i was proud of that one all right So for those of you out there who are not aware, Josh and I do have our Patreon supporters. We've got multiple tiers. The highest tier is the Legendary tier. And if anyone subscribes, even for just one month at the Legendary tier, they get to pick a game that we have to deep dive on the show. So Wainerman01 was one of our supporters who upgraded to Legendary, and he had selected that we play Little Nightmares 2 today.

And so we do want to give another shout out to Wainerman. Thank you for the support. We were more than happy to play Little Nightmares 2. And I got to say, I love when our Legendary supporters pick games that are relatively short. play Little Nightmares 2. And I gotta say, I love when our legendary supporters pick games that are relatively short. So Little Nightmares. This was like, I don't know, like a six or seven hour game. We were able to knock it out. We can fully talk about the game.

We feel like experts at this point. It really is nice. I think Monster Hunter World was one where Ranger Miller picked that one. And we just kind of went, you're okay with just the first eight hours of this game, right? Because this is like a 100-hour game, man. And of course, he was like, yeah, absolutely. I just want you guys to play it. But I'll say this, man. The legendary tier is not for the faint of heart. But I absolutely love the fact that there are people that, number one, love the show,

but get such a kick out of somebody becoming a legendary supporter because they get to pick a game. And it like the entire discord server goes crazy for this. You know, you get a cool, you know, legendary color for your name and stuff and everybody recognizes it. And then the big thing is, what game are you going to make them play? What game are you going to make them play? And everybody wants to know. We've been historically keeping that fairly under wraps just to pick on our own Discord server and stuff like that. But if it was not for the legendary members that we have had, you and I would not have played a lot of the games that we have covered on this show. Oh, yeah.

And it's great because games like Killing Floor 2. I never would have played that game. We got a member that was just chatting about it today, and he's saying, dude, I've been having a blast playing Killing Floor 2. And if it wasn't for legendary Jakeake never would have played that game you know or the cave or the cave or yeah yeah multiple games you know not all these games are going to be a hit and that's the thing is there's no pressure to pick like a game that we're going to love um and some people have even said like, Hey, make them play Fortnite, make them play Minecraft. You know, we had a Nevo that just asked, Hey, if I go legendary, will you guys give escape from Tarkov another chance? And we said, dude, that's the deal. Like the deal we make with people is if you become a legendary supporter,

we will 100% guarantee that we will play the game that you pick. Like that's the fun of it. And I just, I love the fact that it works so well. I love the fact that you pick. That's the fun of it. And I love the fact that it works so well. I love the fact that you and I get to try these games that we have never played before, for the most part, and we get to rate them. And that's the beauty of it is I don't think anybody expects that because they pick a game that we have to love it, which I really like. It's just to say, hey, here's games that you guys may not have tried, and this is the one that I picked. So anyway, Wainerman, thank you for picking Little Nightmares 2. I never would have played this game if it wasn't for you. Yeah, absolutely. And to speak to what you were saying, people can buy our time

to have us play a game, but they can't buy our ratings. So our rating is always going to be fair. It really is. You and I do not sway what we think of a game just because somebody picked it for us to play. Yes, we will play it, but we're going to honestly rate the game how we actually feel. Exactly. Now, before we do jump into the deep dive, not only do we want to give a shout out to Wainerman01, but we also have a couple of new Patreon supporters to thank. So we had two people who both joined on the same day, January 7th. We have Mr. Anderson, who we have pummeled with gifs from The Matrix pretty relentlessly ever since he joined.

And we also have It's Frosty Donkey, who lives in Scotland. And it still cracks me up because every single day at 2 p.m. Phoenix time, he wishes us all a good night because he is seven hours ahead of us here in Phoenix. But both of them have joined as rare status, Patreon supporters. Thank you so much to both of you. Mr.

Anderson. I told him I'd do that as Agent Smith because I love The Matrix. It was super cool to see him. And that was my initial gift that I sent instantly when he joined. But it's been very active. I love when people jump into Discord and they just fit right into the community.

So that's been really nice to see. And then It's Frosty Donkey has been around for a while. Oh, yeah. Super great, dude. I love playing with the guy. I feel bad because, like you said, our time zones do not line up at all. He loves

Halo Infinite. There's been a few times where we've managed to hop in together and play a few rounds, but it's one of those things I wish those time zones aligned a little bit better so we could get more game time with him. But we appreciate you both for supporting the show. Dude, it's getting to where we're thanking people almost every episode. I

love it. And that just goes to show you how the listeners really make this podcast, man. Well, I'm glad that you like thanking Patreon supporters because I decided to go back and look at our longest running supporters consecut like consecutively without breaks. Don't remind them, Paul. Maybe they forgot that their credit card is running monthly. So I did take a look, and we have

three Patreon supporters that hit their 18-month mark. So we want to say thank you to IamPeterParker, Dakine14, and Andy Holloway. All of them are now 18-month supporters, and they joined all the way back in July 2020. And we also have Grady, Nevo, and Phelps, who have all been supporters for over a year. So I did think that they would probably do a shout-out since they've all been supporters for such a long time.

I mean, I know we say it it and obviously everybody likes support and stuff, but we would not be doing this. If you were listening to this episode, you would not be listening to this episode if it was not for people like that. Just plain and simple. There's expenses, there's time investments, there's all this stuff. And while we love talking about about video games we would not be able to do this the way that we do it without the support of people like those so thank you guys and gals seriously yeah thank you so much all right well enough housekeeping it's time to drift off to sleep and experience the horrors of little nightmares too all, Josh, to kick this off here, I have the description from Steam. Little Nightmares 2 is a suspense adventure game in which you play as Mono, a young boy trapped in a world that has been distorted by an evil transmission. Together with new friend Six,

he sets out to discover the source of the transmission. Now, pretty short description there. It is tagged with horror, adventure, single player, dark, and puzzle on Steam. And this game released almost exactly a year ago on February 10th, 2021. And I do want to say here from the outset, we are going to be diving into all things spoilers. This game is so short, we'd have nothing to talk about if we avoided all spoilers. So if you have not played this game yet, we are going to be diving into all things. Although we are going to be talking about the game basically chronologically.

So if it ends up sounding like a game you want to play, you can always pause the episode. We're not going to get into the major twists and reveals until later in the episode. I was going to say, this game, there is a... I feel like there's one fairly big spoiler that happens at the end. The rest of it is level design and what happens in the levels. So that part, I feel, is not very spoilery. It just describes the game. And yes, we'll talk about levels that maybe you don't see until you're halfway through or something like that. But the big twist, the big spoiler, we'll save for, like you said, later on. Yeah. Now, since we are talking about Little Nightmares 2,

it kind of begs the question, did you play the first? I played about an hour of the first game. My daughter actually wanted to pick it up and play it because she loves horror stuff for some reason. I don't know what that means, but she loves horror stuff. And so she saw this game and I felt like, hey, this is an appropriate game for a kid. And she played it a decent bit. I don't remember a ton about it. I do remember the character in the yellow raincoat, which stands out a lot. I played it enough to know that it's a girl and that she's very hungry. You have this insatiable hunger that's consuming you. And that's the underlying tone in that game. And then I just remember the art style. That's the thing about Little Nightmares 1 and 2

that absolutely stands out to me is it's got a phenomenal art style. It's really visually just incredible. Yeah, I did not play the first one at all. My kids did rent the second one through Gamefly and I remember seeing it on the TV but I didn't stick around long enough to really watch. So really, the only thing I was aware of was just the animation style, which definitely stands out.

And we'll talk about that in a little bit here. So I had no idea that Six is the main character in the first Little Nightmares. So when I ran into this new character, I had no idea that they were related to the first one. I just kind of assumed that Mono was the main character in both games. I did not know that Little Nightmares 2 is technically a prequel of Little Nightmares 1. I just dove in blind. I didn't want to read anything or have anything spoiled. I just played it through and just kind of took it from there and then read things online after the fact. And so I think if you played the first one, the second one is going to feel a lot deeper because you're going to understand all those

connections. It's funny because I did not know that it was a prequel either. There is a part in the second one where it was a moment where six puts you find the yellow ring coat right and and that's when i went oh oh i know who that is like i felt like an idiot because i had no idea and then that's when it kind of clicked and then that's when i went like well wait who am I playing in this game then? Yeah. As far as I can tell, you play as Mono, but Mono is a new character to this series, I think. I think so. I don't know all of the lore, to be honest with you.

But there was that moment where it was the realization, oh, okay, she's the character that's in the first game. Yeah. So. like she's the character that's in the first game yeah so so i i didn't even have a reaction to that moment when she puts on the raincoat because i'm sure i've seen the character from the first one but it didn't even click so to me it was kind of lost on me as as a noob but this game is kind of nuts because since i i'm assuming the first one plays the same, but Little Nightmares 2 has nothing by way of exposition. There is zero dialogue.

There is no text to read in this game. There is a storyline, but there is no villain giving speeches. There's no background given to you about Mono. The game just kind of starts where you pop out of a tv in the middle of a forest with no explanation and you just kind of start running around and doing things and the game is divided basically into like four different levels or four zones and basically you work your way through a hunter's cabin a school a hospital a little of the city, and then finally the signal tower, which has been sending out these waves that have been corrupting all the people in the Pale City. And it's caused the whole city to be filled with distorted people, monsters, all kinds of evil.

So that's basically the general story in a nutshell. But as far as actual gameplay how would you describe the gameplay it is a hundred percent a run from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen 90 of the time i i don't know if that's called a side scroller you sometimes go back and forth a little bit but You do a little bit. There are a few parts where you do backtrack a little bit. But again, that's kind of the style of this game, is you're constantly moving through locations. And that is 95% of the time from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen. That's drastically oversimplifying things.

But you're trying to get somewhere. And this is kind of the interesting part of the game that plays into the art style of it some, is you don't know what you're doing. It's like you hit the nail on the head. There's no intro. There's no opening prologue or something like that to set this game up before it dumps you in. You really just... All you know is you're this kid, you're in these creepy, creepy environments, and you're just moving along. And you come across some really freaky things while you're doing that. It does... The plot of this game does start to kind of come together. It kind of coalesces as you play through it a little bit more and you get these little snippets of like what's going on in the world. Kind of like the signal tower, right?

Like you mentioned that that's not a spoiler. It's just part of the game that you come across and you start to realize like, oh, okay. Like that's the bad location. Am I trying to get there? Am I trying to shut it down? Why is everything trying to kill me? What's with these really freaky adults, like these grownups and kids for that matter? And you start to kind of piece it together that there is something very, very wrong with

this world. Yeah. And you are trying to get through it and survive at the same time. Yeah. I think by way of gameplay, the only thing I'd add on top of what you said is that there is a tiny bit of combat. Not a lot. It's mostly running and hiding. This game is much more about stealth. You're not out there fighting the big bads. You're generally moving in cover when they're not looking at you, and you're just trying to work through the level.

Occasionally, you might have an axe or a hammer, and you have to hit or destroy something or someone. But combat definitely is in the far backseat. It's in the third row of the SUV. It's not front and center. I don't even know if I'd quantify it as combat, to be honest. It's more that you have an interactable object that you have to use that sometimes hits things.

You know what I mean? There's not really combat in this game. And we can talk about how that works a little bit later on. Sure. Because I've got some notes. Yeah. So yes, there are items that you can interact with. Gameplay-wise, it's mostly...

I don't want to say it's puzzle-solving, but it's level-solving, if that makes sense. There are puzzles in the game, but they're not like these weird mind-bending, you really have to think about it. It's more like, hey, this elevator isn't working and you have to find a battery to power the elevator. And so a lot of the level is you crawling around climbing up bookshelves uh swinging from you know ropes or lamps so that you can get to an area that you wouldn't be able to access otherwise so that you can find this battery you can pick it up you can take it you know back through the level to the elevator plug it in and then that allows you to continue um there is a lot of other stuff that goes on like maybe you're being chased by something.

Maybe something jumps out at you. You will die in this game a lot. You will fail. That's just a given in any of these levels. But you learn kind of every time that you do that. But yes, there's objects that you can interact with. There are bosses. I guess I call them bosses. I guess so. Right? You don't really fight them necessarily. So it's not like a boss in that regard. I feel like each level has its own theme, has its own villain, so to speak. And you definitely have to deal with that villain, whether it's just running or sneaking or something like that.

Yeah. So it's got running or sneaking or something like that yeah yeah so it's got some light puzzle elements yeah level solving i think is kind of the right way to put it all right and then uh before we jump into talking about the individual zones we definitely have to talk about the atmosphere because if there's one thing that this game does extraordinarily well it is the game's feel so how would you describe the atmosphere of Little Nightmares? Bleak. Honestly, I cannot think of another game out there that has nailed an environment like Little Nightmares has. If there is nothing else that sets this game apart. The atmosphere in this game is absolutely top-notch. I feel depressed

for this world that these people are in. It is the most dismal, bleak thing that I can imagine. And that's not to say horror, right? There's not corpses and bodies and just gross stuff everywhere. It's just dismal, man. I think I'd rather live in the horror world, to be honest. Yeah, I was going to say, we've often joked about how dark and bleak The Witcher 3's universe is. That is kind of sunshine and rainbows compared to Little Nightmares. The game starts out where, right off the bat, you're this kid

that's wearing a grocery bag over your head with eyeballs cut out. You look like a serial killer villain in a horror movie, despite being the protagonist. And even though you are dealing with the nightmares around you, you're also kind of a nightmare to all of them like i i was under the impression this was more of like a little kid game and it is not at all like the game's subject matter is pretty relatively adult like i'm not saying it's inappropriate for kids but when you are like a kid running around with a hammer and you're bashing ceramic bullies and pieces of like their heads are falling off and they're still running around acting, you know, like these villainous little children and you're smashing them. It's just kind of weird. Like the game definitely does a good job

of giving you a little bit of that pit in your stomach, like when you wake up from a nightmare. And I think that's what they were shooting for. And I think that they nail that perfectly. This is one of the very rare examples where you can have something that is super creepy, super eerie, dismal, bleak, and yet you can let your kid play it without fear that they're going to see something that they shouldn't see or something like that. Like that is a very fine line to walk and they pull it off. Just, just incredibly. You know what I mean? It's one of those things where I don't know how you do it,

but they did it. And I can't really think of too many games like that. Like five nights at Freddy's maybe, but I feel like five nights at Freddy's is, is like a walk in the park. Compared to this, yeah. Environment-wise, compared to what Little Nightmares is. Yeah, and another huge part of the atmosphere is that this game has virtually no music. When you're playing through these levels, there is a lot of ambient noise.

You will hear flies, or you will hear rain, or you'll hear static from TVs. You do get music during certain intense scenes, like if you're being chased by one of the bosses or something like that. But I think that the sound design is also very intentional in cultivating that kind of creepy atmosphere, because you expect these games to fill the silence, but they only do that with the creepy ambient sounds. And so the whole thing really feeds into that. I really do think that the atmosphere is top-notch for what they were trying to achieve. One last thing before we jump into the zones. I don't know about you, but I noticed a lot of references to famous movies and i think that they had to be intentional because

there were a lot of things that were like shot for shot exactly like famous scenes in movies so like for example in the very first area i tried opening the refrigerator and i got an achievement called what's in the box so that's clearly you know it's a direct reference to seven right yep but i saw homages to the shining lord of the rings inception home alone the ring poltergeist poltergeist was the one that really stood out to me i think there's probably a lot more but i do feel like they were intentionally tipping these big budget movies that everyone's kind of watched and they know about, and they kind of have their own homage to it. So I thought that was kind of fun as well while going through the game. There's a lot more to this game than what you see on the surface. That becomes evident

as you play it. Like I said, the story kind of starts to come together. You start to learn a little bit more about the characters. You start to learn about what happens in the first Little Nightmares, which is technically the sequel to this game. But yeah, I did see that too. I don't know that I caught nearly as many as you did as far as references, but I did think it was funny with the achievement pop-up, like the what's in the box. It's like, okay, well, that was a really good nod. The nod to Poltergeist and stuff like that. So there is a lot more to see than what appears on the surface, that's for sure. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so let's go ahead and talk about the first zone. So this is the Hunter's Cabin. You kind of start by walking through the forest. You end up

finding Six, who you kind of have an uneasy alliance with with and you guys are kind of like walking your way through this cabin and inevitably get chased by the hunter was there anything in the first zone that kind of stuck out to you either story-wise or gameplay-wise i thought it was cool that it dumps you into this the forest is kind of nice you know like it's it's green It's kind of pretty. It's vibrant. And it really is jarring when you think about what the game becomes later on. Sure. And it's like, hey, who doesn't want to walk through this beautiful green forest? But then you come across this cabin. There's this weird dude in the cabin. It's your first glimpse at the way that they portray these bosses, because they really are just creepy, man. And very large compared to you. Yeah, exactly. They're these huge humanoids, but there's always just something off about all of

them. They're very exaggerated features. They're just creepy. That's the best way I can describe it. So you're going by this hunter and all of a sudden this guy just decides, I don't know what you are, but I'm going to kill you, boy. And then you go like, oh no, and you better start running. And the game kicks off very quickly in the sense that there is a lot of escape that needs to happen in this game and it heightens the tension a lot. And I died to that hunter instantly. I did not know. I was just like, oh wow wow. Okay. Like no mercy for little children, apparently. No, he will shoot you. You just got to hide behind those rinky dink wooden boxes and they protect you. I think the first thing that's really stuck out to me

is that it really hits you with how dark the material gets right away because you run into this little girl six who clearly has been locked in her room i don't know if she's supposed to be the hunter's child or if she's kidnapped but you see tally marks like as if someone were locked in like a prison or like trapped in a cave and she's counting the days and kind of the only thing comforting her is this super creepy music box that she's turning. And you end up using an axe to chop through the wall. And then initially, she does not go with you. She just tries to bolt and run away. And that's kind of like why the hunter starts chasing you. But I did think that the chase with the hunter was very thrilling. I really liked once you kind of learn how this is going to work.

Okay, I'm not trying to fight the hunter. I just have to run and hide as soon as he's about to take a shot. And then you kind of like go through the swamp and there's stealth elements there. And then inevitably, you end up reaching the last cabin, which has a rifle, and you and Six together kind of are wielding this weapon that's far too large for either of you. But you end up shooting and killing the hunter. And that's when I was like, oh, this game's not going to pull any punches. Like, we've got children locked into rooms. We've got children shooting adults and trying to get out of here.

Now, you shoot the hunter off screen, but it's still there in the game. So this is all the kind of stuff that it just really leads into that atmosphere of uneasiness. And I thought that the game got started pretty quickly. Yeah, it really does. It dumps you in and you just start going. Like I said, there's no preamble. There's no prelude. The game dumps you.

You start walking. You come across this cabin. There's a hunter. And it's funny because you mentioned that when you do shoot the hunter, that that happens off screen. But this game has no issues with a hunter taking a shotgun to a small child and just blowing you away. Because I remember I was like, what? Is this guy going to catch me? And then he's just like, blam, and I go limp like a ragdoll. And I'm like, dude, you just shot a kid, man. None of them are messing around.

None of them are trying to take prisoners. There is no mercy. There is no mercy in this game, man. They will kill you in a heartbeat. But that adds to the tension. The stress. Because you know there's no capture there's no oh you know what's gonna happen it's like you get caught you're dead and it really does help to really heighten that atmosphere that that this game does so well so after you kill the hunter

you have your little makeshift raft you and and Six jump on it, and you basically cross the water very slowly, I might add. Maybe it's not as long as it is in my memory, but I swear it was like four minutes of crossing that water. And you approach the Pale City, and then you go into... Was that your Inception reference? Because I picked that up big time. It looked exactly like when you go to the lowest level of Inception, and that's what it looked like. Yeah. So then you make your way into what I can only say is the most horrifying school of all time. Oh, man.

Dude. The whole place is run by bullies, but it's like they're made out of ceramic. So I even referenced that earlier. You end up fighting a lot of them, and if you hit them with a hammer, a big old chunk of ceramic just falls off of them. But then they'll still run around. So you're half beating these ceramic bullies until they're like small enough that they can no longer fight you. But they've also filled the entire school with booby traps and they're trying to kill you in six as you work your way through the school. Those little kids are freaky. They're

small. They remind me of like what Pinocchio would wear with little suspenders and little fancy shoes. They've got oversized heads. Again, proportions in this game are very weird, but serve to heighten the creepiness of it. So these kids run around with these gigantic heads. They're dressed up like they're in a school uniform or something. Half of them, their face is broken off, but yet they're still running around. You do have to try to get through some areas where there's the kids.

You take a crowbar or a pipe or something to a few of them and you do you bash them over the head and their head falls apart maybe it kills them maybe it doesn't and then the weird thing is the like some of these kids are just obviously insane they're glitching they're they're they're taking apart other kids. They're smashing their head against a wall. Like, and you just like, you go like, what is this place,

man? This is creepy. It's the worst school ever. And then you come across the teacher. Now, the teacher just heightens everything even more. The teacher is this like super strict, super scary teacher. And I don't know if you know this josh

but this teacher was actually modeled after my sixth grade teacher mrs burn bomb um worst teacher i ever had actually your brother-in-law andy he and i had the same teacher in sixth grade i always joke that that's why we're such good friends into adulthood is that we're trauma bonded having gone through having such a bad teacher but this teacher in the game like her exaggerated feature is that she can stretch her neck like all the way out of one room into the next and so you're trying to like stealth your way through her class while she's teaching who knows what to these students she's clearly's clearly the most evil teacher of all time. And not only that, also, don't forget the bullies kidnap Six and string her from the roof,

and you have to go save her. So that also gets pretty dark as well, where they're prepared to kill Six and you have to go rescue her. i think this is the first uh part of the game where your bond with six starts to kind of come into play a little bit like you guys do get separated and it becomes obvious that you are trying to go find her and rescue her at that point uh everything between you is very uneasy and that kind of continues throughout the game but this is the first level where you actually do get separated and you realize like oh okay like you know it's not just me that's in danger like six is in danger as well uh the teacher thing is really strange man she's got the weirdest face in the world and the first time that she starts stretching her neck out

yeah and you said we're talking like anaconda neck we're not talking like just a long neck we're talking she can snake her head through like ac vents and stuff like that and she comes after you and it's creepy man it really is uh and so that level i think that was one of the theiest levels to me. And it's neat that they put that in right early on in the game. And again, it kind of heightens because people think bosses, right? Oh, you got a boss in a video game. You have to take this boss down. You got to fight this.

Little Nightmares doesn't quite work that way. A lot of this game is how do you escape this person that's chasing you? And this teacher decides that it's time for detention, and you're going to detention. And so there is a lot of fleeing from her and hiding and things like that. But at the same time, you're trying to find out what happened to Six. You're around all these creepy kids. I think the school level was one of the better levels, in my opinion. I think it's the best zone out of all of them.

One thing also is that once Six kind of joins up with you in the hunter's cabin, and then you see it more in the school, is that it's very similar to the video game Brothers, A Tale of Two Sons. You both are required to complete certain puzzles. So Six might give you a boost to reach a higher height that you pull yourself up on. And then you go on the other side and unlock the door. Or you have to complete things as a group. And so when six gets kidnapped, you definitely have that sense of loss.

And you know you're going to need six to get through the rest of the game. Now, I wasn't sure if they were just going i thought maybe she's just gone like after we killed the hunter like i i legitimately didn't know it felt to me like there were you know no gloves on it felt like anything was possible but you do end up you know rescuing her so at that point the two of you escape the teacher you just run and survive you end up going through the AC vents. You end up being able to get out, I think, through a window. And you're back outside. It's now raining.

That's the moment when Six picks up the raincoat, which would have been a cool reveal if I understood the reference. And then you enter the hospital. Now, inside the hospital, it's very very dark and then they immediately tell you what button you need to use to turn on the flashlight and i have to admit i audibly groaned i went no i don't want to play a game where it's dark and i have a flashlight do games not know that we hate levels like are there people out there who love, give me that really dark level in a flashlight because that's what I want to play? Yes. When it comes to a game trying to be scary, absolutely. Because the less you can see, the better, right? You don't know

what's lurking around the corner. You don't know what's hiding in the shadows. Now, I think universally, gamers don't really like those levels very much. It's kind of like underwater levels in most games. For whatever reason, developers are like, you know what this game needs? An underwater level. Yes. And then everybody goes like, oh, come on, man. But yes, flashlight levels are like that as well. I'm with you.

The only thing I thought was neat was it's like, oh, here's a theme for this level. And I've got this item that I carry around with me now. But it is not intuitive to use. These levels are 2D in one way, but yet 3D in another way. And it's very difficult to light up certain parts of the room that you're in or something like that. It's weird to me because I think the hospital level was my least favorite level. Oh, it's by far the worst. And it's weird to go from the school level, which I thought was really, really good to the hospital level, which I thought really slogged. This is the part of the game where I was like, am I going to get through this? Does it get better? There's more back

tracking. There's a little bit more of the puzzle solving but i found that the puzzle solving for the hospital was more inconvenience than actual thinking yeah you know like things like that now the the boss for the hospital i thought was kind of neat like that was a neat reveal you got this big fat doctor dude that can apparently just crawl around the ceiling like a spider yeah and so that was like a neat moment where it was like oh okay like this is odd and the doctor is doing some very weird things to corpses or people or i don't even know what at that point so that atmosphere does carry through and it does have a different flavor but i was not

a fan of the hospital level i was not a fan of the hospital level. I was not a fan of the flashlight mechanic. Yeah. The only thing that was neat with the flashlight is that the doctor's experiments, which they don't go into any detail, but he's somehow turning people into mannequins and the mannequins will run around in the dark. But if you shine the flashlight on them,

then they stop moving so i was like okay at least it's not just to illuminate the room you actually use it as like an active item so at least it wasn't like a worst case scenario with a flashlight but this is definitely when i started whining to you on discord where i was like josh this hospital level is so dumb this is where i thought the controls also were the most buggy because there were chase scenes where I was just getting stuck on the floor and I'd have to like stop, move my guy up or down

and then I could suddenly move. There were times when I would try to jump or run away from the doctor and I would just die because my guy was like getting stuck on the edge of something even though he wasn't actually touching it so i i felt a lot better once i got out of the hospital but i will say that i thought the uh the little room with the x-ray that was kind of a neat puzzle it because you had to find a key and the key is inside a giant stuffed bear and you figure that out because you can pick up all these items put it behind an x-ray machine hit the button and then you could

see what's inside it and i thought that was actually really clever it was very clever i thought that was really neat because you can actually see the skeleton of you and six you can see inside these little toys and stuff like that. The hospital level had some redeeming parts. The problem is that I think this level also showcased where this game fails in a lot of ways. And you started to hint towards that. The controls in Little Nightmares 2 are not good. They're not awful, but they are not good either. They're fair at best.

Right. They're fair at best. I think this is one of those instances. Maybe the school level, I think, is where they introduced it, but you have to do it a little bit more in the hospital.

I don't know if that's true or not, but you do get a pipe or an ax and you have to... There's this little crawly hand thing, right, where they come after you and you have to smash it with something there's this little crawly hand thing, right? Where they come after you and you have to smash it with something. And trying to line that up is frustrating at best. You know, you go to smash it, you did it too soon, the hand kills you, you die.

This is where I'm going to complain the most right now in this game. My biggest frustration, this game does have some, my biggest frustration with this game is when you die, it resets you. But it resets you to where you're crouched down in the corner of a room. I'm jiggling the joystick. I play this with controller. I'm moving the joystick. I'm smashing the buttons. I'm like, come on, let's go. Let's go. Your character very slowly gets up out of their crouch, kind of looks around the room for a second. I feel like every time you die, there's this 10-second animation of your character standing up. And I'm just going like, come on! Dude, move! Move your butt! I'm trying to get back to this

part where I died. And that becomes frustrating. The other frustrating part is that this game has a lot of trial and error. And there are parts where I would die repeatedly over and over and over again in the exact same spot, trying to figure out like, wait a minute, I don't even know what I did wrong. Like, what am I supposed to do here to die, to suffer through the 10-second standing up animation, to run right back to that room and die again. And sometimes it doesn't put you in the exact same room. It's usually you're pretty close by. But I found that I was getting very frustrated with the amount of time that it took to get back to the area where I died, only to die again because I had zero clue what I was supposed to be doing. Yeah, I definitely had the same frustration. because I had zero clue what I was supposed to be doing.

Yeah, I definitely had the same frustration. And I don't know about you, but in particular, the hands that crawl around kind of like spiders, and then every once in a while they stop, and then they leap at you. What I was doing is I'm carrying the hammer, and as soon as the hand would stop, I would try to bash it with the hammer and it would bounce right off and then it would dive and immediately kill me. And I did that over and over. And finally I learned, okay, if you stop, let it leap,

you sidestep it, then you can bash it and it works every time. But I was hitting it square in the middle, but the game was like, you're not supposed to hit it yet. So even though you hit the hitbox, it's just going to bounce off as if it were hitting a metal wall. And that was really frustrating as well, because you feel like, I hit it straight in the middle. Why am I not causing damage? Now, for all the frustrations of the hospital, the final scene is actually very neat, because when you find the teddy bear with the key, you take it downstairs to the incinerator, you burn the teddy bear to get the key, and that is a little bit of a foreshadowing, because once the doctor is chasing you, you dive into the incinerator, and then you crawl out through the vent, The doctor follows you in there and then you pull down the incinerator,

yank on the switch. And then that's how you defeat the doctor. And then six, the best part of the whole game, man, I completely agree. Best part of the whole game sits down and starts warming her hands and holding them out to the incinerator fire.

And I was like, that's messed up alive, man. Yes. And starts warming her hands and holding them out to the incinerator fire. And I was like, that's messed up. Doctors just being burned alive, man. Yes. I thought the exact same thing. It's such a moment because this game is so bleak that this fire is the most, like, you know, I don't mean this as a pun, but it's the most warming thing that occurs in this game is you have this beautiful orange glow of this fire. And you sympathize with Six. You go like, yeah, I want to sit by the fire. But you're like, wait a minute.

That's some big fat dude that's being burned alive. Yes. And you're just sitting there warming your hands. But it fits so perfectly that you just sit there for like i watched her warm her hands for a good two minutes you know like going like i get it it definitely made me chuckle i thought it was very funny to have like even though it's a very dark scene the the unexpected comedy that it's the only time that they really hit you with a joke, and it's right in the middle of the game, and it really landed because everything else is so bleak in comparison. Alright, so basically at this point here, you're done with the hospital.

You keep working your way through the city. This is when they give you the ability to use a remote. So the whole town is filled with TVs that just show static, and everyone's glued to the TVs. If you turn them off, they will run and either try to hurt you or find another TV and then they'll stare at it. And then you also are able to walk into a TV and it'll warp you to another TV that's turned on, as long as there are two TVs turned on in that little area. So the puzzles start to take on a little bit of a different method because you're actually turning on TVs, moving other characters,

turning other TVs off, figuring out which ones to jump into. And I thought that this was a little bit better than the hospital, but it was still nowhere as good as the highs of the school, in my opinion. I thought the atmosphere... So this is the Pale City level. And I found that the atmosphere in the Pale City level I loved. Because you do go outside a little bit. You're going from apartment to apartment.

And some of that is jumping from a balcony across a gap to another series of apartments or a fire escape or something like that. And the rain in this game is so oppressive, man. It really helps to just highlight that dismal, dreary, I would not want to live in this world ever. And so I like that aspect of it. I really enjoyed the environment. I liked that the puzzles were heightened a little bit it wasn't so control and like movement oriented like the hospital was yeah and i like that they kind of upped the the puzzle level now these are not difficult puzzles by any means it's all very obvious what you need to do for the most

part um but i found that i was a fan of the Pale City level. I kind of liked it. There's a few moments that I liked in that level. You do see that this transmission tower that's controlling these TVs is really jacking up the people that live there. They're faceless. Their faces have been sucked in. And they can't not watch this TV. And when you turn it off, they just go enraged and they come and kill you. But if you leave the TV on, then you're safe. And so the game does some really neat things with, hey, you have to turn one off.

This person enrages. You turn the other one on and that draws them over there. So I liked that aspect of it. I can't remember if it was this level or not. But this is where my other major frustration with the movement in this game came to play. There's a spot where you have to jump off of some platform and grab a rope that is hanging down. I know which one you're talking about. And I missed that stupid rope 20 times in a row, dude, because this game is, like I said,

is two-dimensional in most aspects. Occasionally, you can go towards the back wall of a room and climb up some file cabinets or something like that. But the perspective is off to where it looks like the rope is in the foreground or the background. I don't remember exactly. And so on the controller, I'm pushing the direction where the rope looks like it is, and I keep whiffing this rope and falling to my death, and then watching the 10-second get-up-out-of-the-crouch animation go back to the rope, jump, miss again. Dude, I got so frustrated at this part in the game

that I literally just quit playing for a little while because I was like, this is stupid, man. How can I not grab this rope? I was like, this is stupid, man. That rope. How can I not grab this rope? I've been gaming for 40 years, man. How can I not grab this stupid rope? And then it's just it's a perspective thing. It's a Z axis thing where it just doesn't look right. And you whiff.

And I got really, really frustrated at that part because it's like, this doesn't work. Like, why did you put this in the game? Yeah, the perspective itself, we haven't totally talked about because it's like, this doesn't work. Why did you put this in the game? Yeah, the perspective itself we haven't totally talked about. Because it's not 2D, but it's not fully 3D. I do think they actually call it 2.5D. Because it's not quite like an isometric viewpoint. You're not that far up in the air. It's nearly side-scroller, but at a slight angle.

And so it does make it hard sometimes to line up because you can't tell field of depth terribly well. The one thing that we have not mentioned up to this point, but I think now we have to bring it up, is that there is a recurring segment throughout the game where there is a TV that is blaring and you walk up to it. You start to crawl into the TV and there is a door at the end of the hallway and you're trying to reach that door. And each time you discover another TV like this, you get a little bit further down the hallway, but then Six always grabs your feet and pulls you back out of the TV. But at this point in the game, you now get far enough that the door opens and there is a character that is known as the thin man and he now that the door is open six pulls you out of the tv but now the thin man

crawls out of the tv just like the girl out of the ring out of the ring yep clearly paying an homage to that but to me that was like the first oh crap moment of the game that worked really well because now you've got a run from the thin man but eventually he ends up capturing six and then drags her into the tv and now you're gonna have to go try to rescue her which kind of leads into the next section uh was there anything else about the Pale City you wanted to talk about or cover before we move on? The Thin Man reveal was really neat to me. I thought that that definitely heightened the, hey, here's what looks to be the main bad guy in the game. You get that sense right away that this is the big player, so to speak. He looks different than all of the,

like the teacher and the doctor and stuff like that. Uh, and so you get it right away. He seems like he's very powerful. Uh, you know, I think he's also a little bit of a throwback to like slender man because of how very tall and skinny he is and stuff like that as well.

He instantly kind of starts coming after you uh i felt like that definitely heightened the the tension in the game because you don't know why this guy like why were you seeing this hallway what's at the end of the door you finally got there why is this guy now coming did you free him is he mad because you made it that far like you just don't know these things and i like that fact fact of the game, that it's like, well, wait a minute. What did I do? Yeah. And what's this guy's motivations? What is he trying to do? How does he relate to the tower? And you don't really have any of those answers. But then at the end of this section, you end up in the middle of the street. And now the thin man is walking directly up to you. Now he has the ability to somehow like control these signals and you discover that you actually

have the same ability that he does. And you end up just kind of like disintegrating the thin man. So you're kind of like, oh, here's the big bad of the whole game. But now all of a sudden he's just kind of gone. And then you end up entering the signal tower, which is the final part of the game. And at this point, you are trying to rescue Six because she has disappeared into the TV. You know that she must have been taken to the radio tower. And so that's now where you are.

So at this point now, the puzzles are slightly different because you're running in and out of these pink doors that teleport you to different sections. And it doesn't take very long, but I did think that it was clever that you hear the sound of Six's music box. And so once you put that together, as you get close to a door, if you hear the music getting louder, that's the door you're supposed to go through and it's going to lead you closer to six. And I thought that was actually pretty clever for the puzzle. It was clever. I'm not going to lie and I'm going to call myself out here, but you get in this one area where there's only a few doors and as you go through

the doors, it just warps you back to the same room that you were in. Right, right, right. And I don't know if I didn't have my sound up loud enough. I don't think I was playing with my headset. And I kept just going through these doors and going, what's going on? What the heck? Like how many times? No lie. I thought, oh, this was one of those like endurance moments. So I kept just running from one door to the other door. I must've run through 30 doorways paul and then i was like oh i bet i have to go backwards so i ran backwards through like 30 doorways yeah and that's what i just went you know what man i don't have time for this and i

straight up cheated i went on to google and i went little nightmares too can't get through doors and it pops up and it's like hey you got to listen for the music and i went oh that's funny oh i'm such an idiot it was fine after that oh it's so funny you gotta turn up those hearing aids josh yeah you gotta listen to the music so basically long story short you end up finding six but now she's been inside the tower she's kind of been distorted and warped like the other people she's protecting her music box and she's not inside the tower. She's kind of been distorted and warped like the other people. She's protecting her music box, and she's not going to leave because she has it. And so you go through a couple of puzzles, and you basically destroy her music box,

and then she returns back to normal. And then here's where you get the very last sequence in the game, where the two of you are now trying to run out of the tower, which is starting to crumble. And apparently the building is filled with this almost brain-like matter, which is filled with eyes. And it's kind of like closing behind you and chasing you. You're running your way out of the tower. And then finally, you reach a point where Six runs on ahead of you, and she's standing right a point where six runs on ahead of you and she's standing right next to the tv portal to get out and then the bridge behind you falls

apart and the game goes into slow motion where you're running which of course doesn't make any physical sense but we'll let it slide you're you're running on this you know free falling bridge at this point and you jump and six has her hand out, you put your hand out. You've done this move 50 times over the course of the game. And then do you want to tell the people this twist in the story? Yeah. So this is the big spoiler for the game. So if you don't want to know what the actual twist is, then just pause the episode. But like I said, all the rest of it, it's just kind of levels and you'll come across those and you kind of have to see that stuff for yourself. But if you don't want

the big spoiler, pause it now, play the game, come back. All right, that was your warning. So you and Six are buddy-buddy this whole game. You can actually hold hands, which a lot of people thought was super cute in this game. And again, you are very trusting of each other as you progress. You kind of start off distrustful. You build that trust through multiple leaps of faith and helping each other and rescuing each other and stuff like that. So you're at the end of the game. You've made it through the signal tower. You've rescued Six from her crazy music box distortion and all that stuff.

You're running along this bridge. It's the first slow moment, slow, slow, slow motion moment of the game. You make the leap and you're like, you're not going to make it. And then she grabs you and you're safe and you just breathe the sigh of relief. And then she lets you go. Well, she lets you dangle for a couple seconds. Like you can kind of see the wheels turning in her head. And then she drops you and you fall into the abyss. She straight up drops you. And this is not, I dropped you because she can't pull you up. This is...

It's a conscious choice. She straight up betrayed you and let you go and fell into the abyss. And that was... I was like, what? That moment really got me because I was not expecting that at all. Well, because you're like, I saved you from the bullies. I saved you from the thin man. You go out of your way to rescue Six over and over just to have her betray you. And then you get what I think is actually the biggest twist of the game, which is what I thought you were referencing earlier, you end up stuck in this tower and the years go by and your character is

aging, but he's being distorted by the brain eye monster. And the next thing you know, you are the thin man and the thin man somehow has the ability to travel through time. The whole time, you've been actually trying to get away from your future self. Josh, this is a time loop game. Who saw it coming? We can add this.

We can add this to the time loop. Yes, it literally does create a time loop yes it creates it creates it literally does create a time loop yeah it does uh but it's not a major mechanic of the game but that was kind of like the twist is that you are actually the thin man from the future that you have killed and now you are turning into the thin man and so that's kind of like the big here. But here's the question, Paul, because that is the big reveal, right? Here's the question. Did Six let you go because she knew that you were the thin man? She could see inside you. There's that moment where you're looking at each other while you're dangling and you're like, pull me up, man. Come on. And then she lets you go and you feel super betrayed.

But then if you think about it, it's like, did she know that you're the thin man? And so she can't rescue you. But then by not rescuing you, does she create the thin man? Because that's what leads you trapped. You don't think she knew? No, no, no. There's all kinds of theories because the game doesn't give you definitive answers for anything. I think it's entirely possible that ever since you got involved in the story, she keeps getting kidnapped, and maybe she's just sick of it. How many times did she pull you? She keeps pulling you out of the TV, but you keep jumping in and creating chaos around her. I think it's entirely possible she's just done with that and just wants to go solo.

I've also seen people who say apparently she has the ability to learn other people's abilities in little nightmares one and so they say she holds on to your hand long enough to absorb your tv portal power and then that's why she then lets go so then she can use the portal ultimately i don't think it really matters. You know, ultimately, you're betrayed. You find out you're the actual villain. Kind of a neat concept. I know that we're kind of running a little long on the episode, but a couple other just very quick details. You can collect hats in this game.

I was so surprised by this that I was like, why? I can swap out my grocery bag for, I don't know how many hats are there in the game. It's not a ton. It's like 12 or something. I don't know. I found like two. It's goofy.

And you know which one I wore? Which one? The paper bag. Yeah, I put the paper bag back on because I was like, this is a cool look. It's like the cannon hat in my mind. So I left it on. Yeah.

You can also find and collect glitches which you end up learning are whenever the thin man takes someone they go into the tv world but then it leaves behind a glitch of themselves if you collect all the glitches in the game it does unlock a final sequence where you see six exiting the tv portal after she betrays you. And she sees a pamphlet for the Maw, which I guess is related to Little Nightmares 1. And then her stomach starts growling with hunger. And so that kind of ties the two games together and it sets you up for how Little Nightmares 1 begins. Yeah, which is a really neat thing. I love that nod in that aspect that as you finish Little Nightmares 2, you basically

end up right where Little Nightmares 1 starts. And I thought that was a really neat touch. It's like Rogue One, right? Like the ending of Rogue One setting up Star Wars 4. Yeah, exactly. Anything else we're missing? Anything else you'd want to touch on for Little Nightmares 2? No, I think we've covered... I mean, we've covered the stages, we've covered the mechanics, we've covered what works and what doesn't work. I mean, dude, we're good at this, Paul. We've been doing it a while. $30 game. A little pricey, I would say. Yeah, for five, six hours, I think. It's a five or six hour game. Yeah, although it does look fantastic. You can tell a lot of work went into the game. It did get nominated for the steam awards for visual.

I don't remember the exact wording, visual performance in a game. The winner was fours of five, which kind of made me chuckle a little bit. Cause you and I have kind of talked about our dislike of racing games. So that one ended up winning, but little nightmares too, did get nominated. All right. So you guys kind up winning, but Little Nightmares 2 did get

nominated. All right. So you guys kind of know a little bit about what we think of Little Nightmares 2. Josh, what does the community have to say? All right. So I pulled Steam reviews like we always do anytime we do a deep dive. I've picked a couple of good ones and a couple of bad ones just to give you guys a different perspective. At this point, if you've been listening to the show, you kind of have an idea of how Paul and I think about games. But hey, it's a big world out there and there's lots of other gamers. So this first one is not recommended. 5.2 hours on record. So they probably beat the game. And it says, should be called Little Frustrations 2. Slow, unresponsive controls trial and error gameplay viewing angle makes it difficult to

judge the z-axis leading to lots of dumb deaths intentionally clunky mechanics to artificially heightened tension flashlight hitbox and slow melee startup this guy touched on everything that i had a complaint about 100 this one negative review hit everything that i had a complaint about a hundred percent this one negative review hit everything that i think does not work in this game so here's the thing everything in that review is 100 accurate that is undeniable truth that all of those things are objectively true about little nightmares the thing is either the atmosphere and the feeling will outweigh those issues or those issues will outweigh the atmosphere and those are going to go on the scale one way or the other clearly for this guy

it the negatives outweighed the positive but i i have to give that guy props those are real issues with the game yep all right this next one is recommended 12 hours on record this person probably played through twice or went and collected every hat or something like that. Now, while I could do the one sentence review that gets a bunch of helpfuls and funnies marked on it, I've decided now to be an attention seeking dimwit. And I have decided to give an honest review that gives my thoughts on this game. Little Nightmares 2 is beautiful. It's a wonderful, tragic, beautiful, creepy world oozing with thought and personality. The developers and those behind the game have

really outdone themselves, and I don't even know where to begin. The ideas shown, the execution of said ideas, the visuals, the level and puzzle design, it all adds up to a wonderful result. If you are considering picking up this game, do not let the price tag scare you away. In every way, this game is 100%, no, 110%, no, even better, 120% worth the price, and it is a 10 out of 10 in my eyes. Okay. I get it. That person really loves this game. Sure. Yeah. I totally understand. So, all right. So next one next one not recommended 3.4 hours on record i have a feeling this person just gave up during the hospital yeah right yeah story and

art design are fantastic the gameplay and controls not so much having to deal with split second timing especially in the flashlight section was a huge huge nuisance. That's the hospital. There you go. The repetition is tedious as hell due to that. Enjoyed the first one much more, even if it had similar but far less aggravating issues. There is a sequence in the hospital that many, many people complain about because it feels like it's almost completely random if you get through it or not and i get that frustration i feel like this is probably a part of the game where most

people went i don't want to die anymore like it just keeps resetting and i don't know what to do and then you just miraculously make it through somehow and it's like oh thank goodness i made it but you don't even know what you did right at that point. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Last one. This one's recommended. 15 hours on record. Wow.

Where to begin? Never in my life have I been brought to tears over a game. Not until I stumbled across Little Nightmares 2, that is. My beloved boyfriend gifted this game to me for Christmas. I unknowingly opened it thinking it would be a sweet game to express his love for me. I was wrong. This must be his way of telling me he hates me because I have never felt such distress over a video game. Would I recommend this game? Maybe. Maybe I'm a masochist. Maybe I like the pain. We'll see, but I give it a 7 out of 10. That's funny. I remember people joking about taking your spouse...

Oh, wait. You've never seen the movie Gone Girl, right? Or have you? I think I have, but I don't remember much about it. Okay. So the whole movie is about murdering your spouse. And I remember there was a big joke at the time saying, don't take your spouse for your anniversary to go see Gone Girl. And that's a little bit of what they experienced. It's the boyfriend buying this game that maybe you think is going to be a sweet encounter, and it's all about betrayal. And yeah, it's exactly the opposite. How funny. All right, Paul. So that's two good reviews, two bad reviews from people that have played the game.

After that, we get an idea of what people think, and you and I always try to guess what we think the overall review score is on a scale of 0 to 100, because that's how Steam does it. I don't remember who won. It's been a while since we've done a deep dive. It has been a while.

I think you won last time. I don't remember. I might have. Our last deep dive was Battlefield, which I believe was somewhere around 30% have. Our last deep dive was Battlefield, which I believe was somewhere around 30% positive. I feel like it was. I think I rated it a lot lower than that. So I feel like you won. So why don't you go first on this one? All right. This one, I feel like the game's got a great reputation. At the same time,

while I was playing it, I kind of felt like I could sense there's probably a lot of people like me who are kind of on the fence. I like it, but there's a lot that I dislike. I kind of felt like I could sense there's probably a lot of people like me who are kind of on the fence. Like I'd like it, but there's a lot that I dislike. I kind of feel stuck in the middle. Uh, I think this one's going to be somewhere in the mid to high eighties. I'm going to say 88%.

I thought you were going to steal my answer, Paul, because I'm the same way. I think that there is a lot about this game that really, really stands out to people. You can take one. If you showed me any screenshot in this game from anywhere in the game,

I could instantly look at it and say, that's Little Nightmares or Little Nightmares 2. Just the art style, the visual style stands out immensely. There were moments where I got frustrated and where I went, the gameplay just doesn't, it's not doing it for me necessarily. And so my thought was, it's probably going to be well-liked. I don't think it's perfect. I gave it an 86% as my guess. So you and I were very close. Yep. We're right there. The actual on this is 95% overwhelmingly positive.

And there's a lot of reviews out there. I feel like there's 20,000 reviews for this game. And it's a 95% overall. Dang. You know why that might be? Even though I would not say that I loved this game, I certainly did not hate it. I'm kind of stuck in the middle. But I would never go out of my way to leave a negative review for this game. So I guess I can kind not hate it. I'm kind of stuck in the middle, but I would never go out of my way to

leave a negative review for this game. So I guess I can kind of understand that. I think even most people who don't love it, they can recognize enough good that they're not going to go rate it low. They're just going to maybe not rate it at all. I feel like this game is a beautiful painting to where you can look at it and you can say, that's not really my style. I don't like that. You know, maybe you don't like landscape paintings, right? Or maybe you don't like wildlife paintings or something, but you can look at a painting and go, dude, that's beautiful. I can see the talent. I can see the talent. It's just not my style. That's how I feel about Little Nightmares 2. I can 100% appreciate what they created and how beautiful it is. And at the same time,

I can look at it and go, the gameplay is not really up my alley. Maybe I could have done some things different to make it more enjoyable for me. But I feel like that's a good way to say what this game does so well. But I'm with you. Even if I didn't like this game, I don't think I would hate it enough to give it a negative review. Yeah, 95 though. That's one of the highest that we've ever done. So, all right.

Well, Paul, I guess it's time to actually figure out how we feel about this game overall because I think we're going to the leaderboard. Well, before we go to the leaderboard well before we go to the leaderboard we got one last segment to do before let's hit that music oh hey there miss long neck teacher uh is there an airport nearby or is that just my heart taking off? All right. So this segment is called Make Love, Marry, or Murder.

We can make this one relatively quick here. Little Nightmares. It's such a short game. I can't rate it a marry. I don't think it rises quite that high. If you had asked me halfway through the hospital level oh i would have said murder i really would i would have too yeah but honestly i i beat this game probably like nine or ten days ago and honestly the more that time passes my thought of the game does keep going

higher where the negatives are being erased from my mind quicker than the positives. So at this point here, I would just give it a make love. I think it's worth playing if you like this style game. I don't know that I'd go full price, but I am going to say it's worth playing if the price is right. If you like this genre, it's going to be worth the 30 bucks. Generally, I'm not totally into games like this, but I will give it a make love. It's funny you say all that because I feel exactly the same way. There were times when I was playing this game where I'm just going like, I'm going to wind up murdering this game. The gameplay feels slow. There's parts that are frustrating. I felt like I was slogging through parts of it. And then I would get to some really neat parts or some of the atmosphere or make it

to a new level. And then I'd find myself wanting to see what happened next and all that stuff. And I'm with you. I think I beat it probably 9-10 days ago. And I am exactly the same way in that the slog has worn off. And I'm left with this like, hey, this is a beautiful game. And it tells this really interesting story without using any words whatsoever. And I think I'm appreciating the art of the game itself a little bit more. I give it a make love. I'm not going to murder this game by any means because I don't think it's a murder type game. It's not a Mary because it is short and it's not perfect in any way.

But I'm finding that my memories are actually becoming more and more fond the longer it goes, which is weird. Yeah, this is one of those rare cases where the lack of recency bias is actually helping the game. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, now it's that time, Josh. I know you're excited. I can't believe it. This is no lie. You and I don't talk about what we think about games before. No, we don't. We always leave it a surprise to each other. And I have even tried to trick you before, but you know me well enough to pick on some of that,

you know, but it so I've really wondered where this game is going to wind up on the leaderboard. I am wondering as well. So let's figure it out. Let's go to the leaderboard, see where this game stacks up. All right. If you're new to the podcast, anytime we do a deep dive, Josh and I have a master list of every game we have covered, and we decide as a tandem consensus where does this game place compared to all the others. It is highly subjective. This is based on what we enjoy. It's based on how much bang for your buck you get. What's the cost? How do we really rate these games together when we're looking at a $60 game like Resident Evil Village or a free-to-play game like

Apex Legends. And so we always try to put all these things together. If you want to see the leaderboard, you can go to multiplayerpodcast.com. It's right there on the main page. You just got to scroll down a little bit. We are now up to 62 deep dives. We have Overwatch still holding steady at number one. It goes all the way down to Battlefield 2042, which was our last deep dive, which is actually dead last. And I don't know, right smack dab in the middle, we've got Outer Wilds at 31. I know you're not happy about that, but oh well. So when we're talking about Little Nightmares nightmares we both gave it a make love i think this is maybe maybe somewhere in the late 30s maybe early 40s i don't know that's kind of what i'm thinking i have a spot in mind paul i've been scrolling through the list while you've been

talking i've been going i can't put it above that game i can't put it above that game. I can't put it below that game. I have the perfect spot for it in my mind. Okay. What is it? Well, you kind of touched on that because you said somewhere in the late 30s. Uh-huh. And I went, I think it's number 37. I think it goes one under RimWorld. I think it goes

above Deathloop. Really? Okay. Yeah. Why? are you thinking higher or lower? Now that I'm looking at the list, I think I would have it at 44. I would rather play the Cave and Cuphead and It Takes Two, which we have right there in the, the early forties. So, you know, I, I'd be okay kind of putting it anywhere here in in this range but i guess i'm just a little bit lower on on on it than you are it should also be said i mean i think it's you know we didn't clarify this but this is single player only while there are two characters you

know mono and six in this game you cannot play with a friend. It is single player only. That's the experience. I'm okay. You want to split the difference and put it at 40? I was going to say, do you want it above or below GTFO? Because you like GTFO

more than I do. GTFO is a lot of fun, man. But then I feel like if we put it below GTFO, I'm going to want to put it below the cave because I would rather, well, I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't. Maybe I would rather play Little Nightmares 2. I started thinking about it when I was in that stupid hospital level. I would have put it way below. But then I look back and now I'm going, the cave or Little Nightmares 2.

And I think I like Little Nightmares 2. I like the art. It's that feeling that this game gave you. Like, The Cave is much more fun to play in a gameplay sense. But when I look back, am I going to remember The Cave or am I going to remember Little Nightmares 2? And I feel like I'm going to remember Little Nightmares 2. You know what?

You have fully talked me into it. I think you had the right spot to begin with. Let's put it at 37. Okay. I like being right. Sorry that I just wasted the last two minutes. You were right. I just, I don't even know what I was thinking.

Did you see me pause for a second? Like, Paul, that's what I said in the first place. This is not me trying to bring up controversy. I don't know what I was thinking. I think you're spot on, Josh. So let's put it below. Keep talking and nobody explodes. A way out.

Borderlands 3 and RimWorld. We will have it above Deathloop, Knockout City, Star Wars Squadrons, and GTFO. Perfect. All right. We'll lock it in. All right. So to close out the episode here, we do want to let you guys know that our next deep dive episode technically you and i did not decide on this is it going to be demio yeah it's going to

be demio that's what i was thinking okay because i want a little bit more time for hollow for hollow night deep dive after that this will be our first vr game yeah right we've talked a lot about various vr games but this will be the first deep dive so So Demio will be coming up in two weeks. So if you want to get in any time on that, if you have an Oculus Quest 2, you can pick that one up. And then the next deep dive after that will be Hollow Knight, because we famously have been juggling all of these games at once. We're trying to prep for all these shows. That'll give us a little bit more time to finish up hollow night and so we have no shortage of games as a reminder please consider supporting the show on patreon or apple subscriptions you can find our patreon page at multiplayer squad.com you can find us on all

social media at multiplayer pod and we will have our next 30-minute episode on Thursday as we cover This Week in Gaming. And I think we're done, Josh. I think that's it. I'll say this. For people that may not have experienced VR or had a quest or something like that, you still want to check out this episode that's coming up. Because part of what we're going to talk about is how is this game heightened in VR? So I think it'll do a lot of good to explain the VR experience to people that maybe haven't experienced it as well. It's definitely becoming much more mainstream,

but don't shy away just because you haven't played VR or tried this game in VR. It's a good point. And Demio, kind of more than any other vr game is probably the most accessible to anybody because it's literally a board game that you play in a vr format right so it's highly accessible to everybody so if you were maybe thinking about picking up a vr system demio is a great one to start out on it'll definitely ease you you into VR and I can't wait to talk about it. It's gonna be fun. Yeah. All right.

Well, we're all done, Josh. Let's say goodbye to the people and we'll be back on Thursday. I don't want to go, Paul. But all right. We'll see you, everybody. Have a good one. See you all.