Little Nightmares VR Altered Echoes Makes You Glad The Original Games Are So Slow

I love a spinoff that opens up a bigger understanding of the world of the main game, an Little Nightmares VR Altered Echoes is very much that. Bandai Namco Entertainment's horror-platformer series has taken the next logical step in its evolution, going from sidescrolling to first person as you navigate the typical Little Nightmares fixes. 

Set around the events of Little Nightmares 2, the game feels like exactly what you'd want out of a VR title- it's like an amusement park ride, letting you experience all the horrors of a typical Little Nightmares game through the lens of a VR headset. 

Title: Little Nightmares VR Altered Echoes

Developer: Iconik

Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment

Platforms: PS5 (PSVR2), Steam VR, Meta Quest

Terrifying In First Person

Hey, guess what. Little Nightmares is already plenty creepy on its own. As you walk through hallways, empty houses and hospitals, the simple act of running left to right has plenty of ways to get under your skin, be it through mannequins or flesh monsters or being chased.

Doing it in first person? Infinitely more terrifying. In just the first stage you're treated to these floating staircases, where you can look down and see eternity as you walk by. As someone with vertigo, guess what- I got dizzy and fell off the edge, sending new character Dark Six to her death. 

One of the things the game really does well is take advantage of the new first person perspective. There's lots of cool things you can interact with in ways you simply couldn't in past games. All items have physics and collisions, meaning you can grab things like toys and move them around, sometimes having to push them out of the way to access new openings. 

Where it really starts to shine is when it makes you do things from the game itself, though. Early on you're treated to a classic Little Nightmares 2 sequence- pick up a sledgehammer and bust open a door. The catch? It's not a simple button press anymore. Dark Six has to manually adjust her grip on the hammer, and you have to physically swing it- at great risk to any monitor setup you might have. 

Yet, despite that you get a sense for how much fun it is to make these systems more tactile. In that same level I had to suddenly make use of throwing skills- there was a button just out of reach, and you needed to pick up one of several floating items to hit it. This is the kind of stuff that would have been a simple one-button press in the regular games, but having to actually figure out your trajectory and throwing velocity makes for a novel experience. 

It does have its downsides, however- ledge climbing is also incredibly manual now, being a complex system of using your hands to hoist yourself up. This may take some getting used to, especially since it's one of those systems where you need to understand how the game tells you something is a ledge they want to climb. 

Similarly, it can also affect things like switches. The game retains the chunky, heavy animations from the original series, and unfortunately that means something as simple as flipping a switch can be a lot harder than it ought to be. I'd personally spent a lot of time trying to get the switch to go all the way down- though maybe what you really need is commitment to the bit and just getting on your hands end knees to make sure it hits all the way. 

Little Nightmares VR Altered Echoes Verdict

If you're looking for a fun VR experience, I couldn't recommend Little Nightmares VR Altered Echoes enough. Not only does it use its new camera shift to make interesting gameplay choices, I have a newfound respect for the game's cast now that I know how hard it is to climb and pull switches. That's not me being facetious, either- those systems can be genuinely hard to get used to, especially since the game itself doesn't have a jump button like the base games do. 

As it is it's a fun little amusement park ride that highlights some cool moments from Little Nightmares 2. Considering that's personally my favorite of the three, it's nice to see so many familiar yet nightmare-inducing faces. Part of me wonders if there maybe could have been some wilder swings, but if you wanted to just experience that particular slice of Nowehere again, Little Nightmares VR has you covered. 

Game reviewed on PSVR2. Review copy provided by Bandai Namco Entertainment