My first thought when watching this game's trailer was: "Holy Cow that looks good". And look good it does. What Runner 3 lacks, unfortunately, is the enjoyably simple mix of gameplay and challenge that the 2nd game (Runner 2) had. Runner 2 had 3 difficulty levels that you could select when starting a level. For the casual player, you could enjoy the level on Easy and still progress through the game. For the completionist you could beat the same level 3 times, once on each difficulty. For the hardcore gamer, you could simply beat the game on Hard. -Runner 3 removes the difficulty levels, and adds Jewels as a 2nd difficulty, among other things. The difference is that in Runner 2 you could enjoy the entire game at your own difficulty preference, whereas Runner 3 is quite hard by default, and it only gets harder if you want all the character costumes and other rewards. There are times when there is so much going on on-screen that you can no longer see your character. There are also quite a few obstacles that, at least for me, could not be reacted to. This results in me dying and having to make a mental note to avoid that obstacle the next time -- it basically means you have to memorize levels. This was true in the harder difficulties of Runner 2, but again it's true as a default in Runner 3. This will not be enjoyable for everyone, and it certainly wasn't for me. There are also vehicles now, but rather than being a fun addition these have controls that make them a feature I dread. There is now a store, so rather than unlocking costumes by simply playing the game you have to unlock various in game currencies to buy them. Some of these currencies I have yet to find even a single one of. All in all this game looks really good, and perhaps in short bouts you can have fun with it, but the difficulty makes it too frustrating for me to play for more than 30 minutes at a time. And this is coming from someone who 100% cleared Runner 2.
Little Nightmares is my GOTY for 2017 thus far. It looks and feels so polished. I grew up reading a lot of books, kids' books as a youngster. This game seems to me like a lot of those darker books brought to life. The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairytales, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Where the Wild Things Are -- if you could turn some of these stories into a 2(+1/2) dimension video game, you'd have Little Nightmares. The game features no in-game UI, which I personally think is a great way to immerse the player. I am sick of flashy, invasive, screen-real-estate-hogging UI's with life meters, minimaps, health indicators, collection indicators, etc. There's none of that here. For that matter, there's very few 'collectibles' which pop up so often in games nowadays, which is nice. It lets you the player just experience the game without worrying if you missed a Golden Puzzle Piece or hidden treasure room. And experiencing the game is really the focus in Little Nightmares. The art style and aesthetic are slightly reminiscent of Little Big Planet, but decidedly darker and with a more coherent theme. For all I know the developer could have started with a LBP user-made map and then just expanded it to an entire game. The controls and gameplay are not revolutionary or great, but as I say I am far more interested in experiencing this game rather than trying flashy maneuvers or beating the game quickly. In that regard I would say Little Nightmares is sort of a hybrid between a platformer game and a walking simulator. It is apparent to me that the platforming is there really to only get you from set piece to set piece, and it's not so much the focus. Which is nice because it lets the game's level design tend towards creative aesthetics rather than being gameplay oriented. In summary, I love the setting and visuals of this game; it reminds me of so many storybooks that it's the closest I've ever seen to a storybook brought to gaming. Each area is like a page of a (darker) children's book, and I often just have to stop and marvel at how creative and striking a given area is.
