3/5 ★ – PhatBaby's review of Little Nightmares III.

Wow, it's diet Little Nightmares. A lot of people are saying this is sheer trash, and I think that's a bit much. It's not terrible by any stretch. It's absolutely gorgeous, completely serviceable outside of the trademark Little Nightmares jank, and Alone is an adorable character. Whoever designed her and her goofy little mannerisms needs a raise, cause I was ride or die for that little shit. But it's so obvious that Tarsier didn't have a hand in this, and SuperMassive just doesn't make pasta with the same levels of sheer sauce. It's so overtly corporate and forced, and you can feel through to its very bones that Bandai Namco saw dollar signs from the last two games and wanted to try and cash in hard. The fact alone that this costs 35 great British pounds when it just scrapes being 3-4 hours long is pretty damn cheeky. But then booting up the game and immediately being hit with: "EXPANSION PASS AVAILABLE. DLC COSTUMES AVAILABLE. PAY US FOR THE FACT THAT YOU LIKE THIS FRANCHISE" is just straight up egregious. Bandai Namco really don't give a fuck that they're being outwardly greedy, and despite that being kind of hilarious considering we're talking about Little Nightmares of all things, it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. It's especially wild considering the game is just an uninspired and somewhat hollow tracing of the originals. It's sort of like when a cult TV show gets revived by a network under the pretence of rewarding the "real fans," when in actuality, it's just so they can sell fuckloads of merch while bleeding you dry. Regardless, though, the actual game is aggressively fine. It's more Little Nightmares, but specifically a full game of the short stretches in the originals where they'd coast on autopilot for 15 minutes while setting up the next big setpiece. It kinda feels like what AI would come up with if you prompted it to make a Little Nightmares game. Visually, it's entirely there, and it has the right gist gameplay-wise, but it's missing so much of the stuff beneath the hood that made Little Nightmares 1 and 2 such smart horror games. All of its monsters are pretty forgettable when you stack them against the roster Tarsier put together, lacking memorable gimmicks that make their encounters unique. All of the main levels (barring one) are samey and forgettable, never really finding their own vibe and mostly borrowing from Little Nightmares 1. Every puzzle is piss easy, meanwhile nearly every enemy encounter is unintuitive, because the game is terrible at communicating when something is a scripted setpiece or an area where you're supposed to be doing something specific. But the worst offender is just the pacing. Little Nightmares 2 specifically is paced so damn well. It drops you in this creepy ass world with no context, directs you to move forward and then starts building tension. There's zero dialogue, but it's using every scene to weave a story while slowly amping up everything that's happening in it, making you question where the fuck you are, why you're here, and whether the teacher with a slinky neck you just ran into is about to extend her fat ass head straight through the dark vent you're trawling through. Nothing is ever too short; nothing is ever too long. Enemy encounters are concise but memorable, and by the time you reach the finale, the tension explodes into this wild final area that brings everything to a head. It opts to not waste a second of your time because it wants you to remain immersed and feel constantly under pressure. Little Nightmares 3, on the other hand, consistently has the most bland pacing possible. It's 3 hours long, and still somehow feels bloated and boring. Enemies hang around for far too many encounters, and the main levels are either way too brief or endlessly long. And it never really feels like it's building or answering any mysteries. There's so much in this world that's vague and mysterious, and considering this is right on the heels of Bandai Namco's push to expand the lore through multimedia projects, they don't go anywhere with it. They made a full-ass game to tell you, "oh yeah, this franchise sure is mysterious," which is only emphasised by how cut and dry its own story is. It's pretty obvious from the halfway mark how it's going to end, and when you hit that point, you're like, yep, that's exactly how it ended. The funniest part is the build to that ending is so flat that you actually have no idea what you're watching is the ending. The big moment you've been predicting for 2 hours happens, and I got excited for a moment, thinking, okay, cool, standard boss without much big fight feel flair. They must have a major final level that digs into this big moment, and then the game literally just ends. The whole thing is so safe, bog-standard and determined to stick to formula that there's no chance in hell you remember it three days later. And that sucks. Little Nightmares is such a damn good franchise, but what's more frustrating is that SuperMassive does, at one point, show they can cook under the right circumstances. The Carnivale section is fantastic, and it's full of unique, fun ideas that really land. Creepy fairground monsters, strange attractions and the cool-ass rollercoaster ride. There's a reason the Carnivale stuff was what they mostly showed pre-release, and when you're in that segment, you're like, man, they can go. But if the rest of this is a glimpse at what Bandai Namco intends to do with Little Nightmares going forward, then I dunno man, the series might be cooked. Tarsier's making Reanimal, so at least we're getting more REAL Little Nightmares soon, but I dunno if I can do a Little Nightmares 4 if it's more of this. Who knows, though. By then, it might be an 80 quid live service battle royale extraction shooter, where I can buy the stitch-skinned battle pass to unlock a free Bojangles the rickety neck janitor skin to pair with my griddy emote.