https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/obzor-the-dark-pictures-anthology-little-hope-uzhasy-nashego-gorodka

The story of the second horror from The Dark Pictures anthology is dedicated to the small town of Little Hope, which is lost somewhere in the wilds of provincial America. In the 17th century, the locals became famous for especially zealous witch hunts in the best traditions of Salem. And in the 1970s, Little Hope turned into a ghost town – the factory, which employed most of the population, was closed, forcing residents to look for luck elsewhere.

The gaming adventure begins nowadays, when a regular bus crashes at the entrance to the city. Five passengers – a professor and four students from a local college – find themselves in a mystical trap. A thick fog separated them from the outside world and left no other way but to go to Little Hope, which has been empty for almost half a century.

The heroes of the story very soon realize that Little Hope is far from the most ordinary, and certainly not the most pleasant place. Here and there they stumble upon traces of witch rituals, and in the dark they clearly feel someone’s gaze on them. Meeting the locals doesn’t bring any relief either. It seems that there are only two of them – a crazy old man who cannot break away from the bottle, and a little girl playing all alone in an empty city.

If the ghost town, witches and the mysterious fog intrigued you enough, then the authors of Little Hope have two more trump cards in store. The first is that the heroes are periodically “pulled” into the 17th century, where they witness a witch-hunt. And the second – all the characters are inexplicably connected not only with each other, but also with Little Hope.

As stated above, in Little Hope we are writing a five-character story. These are college professor John and his students – Angela, Daniel, Taylor and Andrew. They are all very different and obviously gathered on a joint excursion by accident. However, “chance” is called into question when we get to know the heroes of other time periods. For example, in the 1970s, they were James, Anna, Dennis, Tanya and Anthony.

As a result, instead of a typical horror movie, we get a kind of mixture of a horror movie with a time travel story and “Cloud Atlas”, which makes Little Hope interesting. The game itself is not very scary. Largely due to deliberate cliches – night, witches, religious fanatics, creepy little girl. Newcomers to the genre may be impressed by such an atmosphere, as well as predictable, but still screamers. However, horror fans are unlikely to even flinch.

The story from the 17th century, telling about witches and the hunt for them, also cannot boast of special intricacy. The game first pokes at one main villain, but very quickly dumps a whole mountain of hints at you that everything is not so simple and the other person should be blamed. There is no particular intrigue in this.

What might really interest you is the nature of time travel and the mysterious connection between the characters. These details are finally revealed only in the finale. We must pay tribute to the writers: the ending came out unexpected, but at the same time damn logical. However, despite these advantages, it cannot be called successful, since it devalues ​​most of the player’s decisions and actions of the heroes. Almost everything that happened – experiences, struggle, personal growth – loses any meaning due to the ending. And the clues themselves, though logical, are very simple, even lazy – and because of this unsatisfying. In addition, some of the questions still remain unanswered.

From a gameplay point of view, Little Hope consists of classic interactive cinema mechanics – line selection, QTE, and basic exploration. The only innovation is the warnings that appear before the start of the QTE. They are intended for those who suddenly forget to press buttons at all in the game. Funny, but very convenient. In addition, in the menu, you can further simplify the gameplay – turn off the QTE timer and assign all actions to one button.

While exploring the territory, you can find two types of collectibles – secrets and postcards. The first are simple notes and objects that reveal the world of the game a little deeper. The latter are more interesting: they show short excerpts of a possible future. However, since these visions are devoid of any context, they can both help to avoid a dire fate and bring it on.

For example, you can find out that a pistol is hidden somewhere, but you do not know what its discovery will lead to – whether it will help protect against a monster or, conversely, will cause the death of one of the heroes.

A similar controversial help is provided by the storyteller – the mysterious custodian of all stories. In between chapters, he analyzes the player’s actions, noting the most important moments of the passage. In some ways it resembles a dialogue with the developers, through which they seem to comment on their own brainchild, and this is quite interesting. The narrator also sometimes gives clues, but he does so by quoting from the works of Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. They are not very helpful, but they help set a course for reflection.

Thanks to the narrator, you can identify the most important events that could have happened very differently. Like other games of this genre, Little Hope has a lot of variability in the passage. In theory, every decision and action of the player should significantly affect the entire plot, in practice, everything is not so rosy.

Take that same pistol, for example. All events associated with it depend on whether you pick it up. It is clear that without him one of the heroes will not be shot. However, in most cases, the change is not so significant: instead of shooting at the monster, you can simply hit it.

There are only three endings in the game, and they differ mainly in emotional color. Well, and those who from your team managed to live to see them. The latter is one of the features of Supermassive Games studio. In her stories, no one is immune from death. On the first playthrough, this adds a special edge to the gameplay, especially if you really set yourself the task of saving the lives of all the heroes. The lack of manual saves and the constant risk of dying force you to carefully (albeit very quickly) make decisions, as well as be very careful during QTE.