Reanimal review: A highly anticipated journey where not all is well beneath the masks

I’m not a horror fan in the slightest. Any game with even a sprinkle of horror elements or any tension is a no-go for me. Since Reanimal is branded as Little Nightmares, but more intense and with a stronger horror focus, I thought writing a Reanimal review meant I was in for a petrifying journey that would remind me of why I don’t play horror games. 

To my surprise, I didn’t find Reanimal to be scary at all, neither in the atmosphere, the cast of monsters, nor the very premise of escaping a hellish island plagued by violence. If that doesn’t give you an idea of whether or not Tarsier Studios managed to pull off a darker experience, I don’t know what will.

If you’ve played the Reanimal demo, you’ll know exactly what to expect from the opening sequence of the full game. In fact, the Reanimal demo is almost the entirety of Chapter 1. 

Capturing all the angles

The brother and sister duo begin their goal of escape and survival on a boat. The pair is voice-casted, but you don’t hear nearly enough from them for this to have any relevance. As you’re playing through the eyes of two children, everything seems larger than life, from the respectably varied amount of monsters to the world itself, expressing a sense of vulnerability. An area Reanimal delivers incredibly well on is the camera, as it switches from displaying cinematic views to enhancing compact areas seamlessly. Even though the color palette mostly consists of various shades of gray, blue, and brown, the camera angles do contribute some charm to your surroundings.

One of the biggest irks the community had when they got a Reanimal hands-on preview through the demo was how much it liked to hold your hand. That sentiment continues in the full Reanimal game. There are white arrows everywhere, showing you where to go and what to interact with. If you’re playing solo, there are some instances where the AI will automatically direct the sister to where you need to go next, or even where you need to be to avoid a monster before it performs its action. If you don’t know how to progress, running around until a white arrow appears will more often than not do the trick. 

With that said, Reanimal lets go of your hand when you need help the most. There’s an instance in Chapter 2 that left me stumped, as it took me a while to realize you actually have to backtrack for the first time in your playthrough, instead of progressing onward. 

The gameplay in Reanimal is just as simple as finding your way around each of the nine chapters. You’ll mostly be traversing wartorn buildings, roads, and the surrounding waters in your boat. Aside from running, jumping, and crouching to sneak by foes, you have the ability to slide, but I didn’t find any use for this. You can find and collect masks for your character to wear that are purely cosmetic, and pick up concept art along the way.

As you’d expect from a Reanimal review, there are some light puzzles that you’ll solve along your journey to save your friends, which, in some instances, you have to save more than once. By the end of Reanimal, there’s a band of five of you in total, the brother and sister, along with three friends. I do wish the friends had a bigger role in the game than just being there to be saved, to put a greater focus on friendship, rather than them waiting for you to complete the next steps before following you along your journey, like strangers you grabbed along the way.

A sliver of gameplay variety

There are segments that switch up the regular stealth approach and chase scene formulas of Reanimal that I appreciated. There’s a moment you spend underwater that uses the camera well to portray a sense of claustrophobia, and a section that attaches the brother and sister together, requiring you to make it through a broken path while tied to one another. These were all great and began to redeem my initial mixed Reanimal impressions, but they simply didn’t last long enough. 

Another welcome addition is the presence of combat that I didn’t expect to feature in a game like Reanimal. You will take out fast-moving enemies lurking in the waters with harpoon arrows while driving the boat, and even fight off pesky seagulls with your crowbar. The best combat aspect is when you get to take control of a tank and blow up some of the enemies that have been tormenting you the whole game, and cause destruction to buildings to clear the way forward. But, like with many of the best parts about Reanimal, good things come to an end way too soon. 

Horror lies in the poor optimization

Even some of Reanimal’s greatest moments can be skewed by bugs, and no, I’m not talking about the six-legged kind. There was one example of a game-breaking bug that prevented me from being able to progress, as a door that was supposed to automatically open after completing a puzzle remained shut. This is where I discovered that Reanimal has a chapter select menu that doesn’t make itself known until you create a new save file, which is good news for completionists and mask hunters. Hopefully, the bug will be fixed by the time the Reanimal release date comes around. 

Performance, on the other hand, is something I’m less hopeful about being fixed early on. This Reanimal review was done on PC, and while I don’t have the best rig, it’s enough to meet the minimum system requirements to play Reanimal. Although the game mainly ran just fine, I did experience stuttering, which was more prevalent in some areas than others. One particular room caused me to stutter so much that I could barely move. Luckily, all you have to do is collect an item in that room and leave. 

Is Reanimal good? For many, it’s probably a decent way to spend six to eight hours to pass the time with a friend, especially for Little Nightmares fans, since Reanimal is a spiritual successor to the first two entries in the Little Nightmares series. However, the best way to describe Reanimal is just an “okay-ish” package, tied in a bow by an underwhelming ending. Reanimal did have high expectations due to its associations with Little Nightmares, but unfortunately, it is unable to live up to the hype, never mind blow it out of the water. There are some highlights, but the game and its plot aren’t all that memorable because it loses sight of its story in favor of trying to stun you with horror that isn’t remotely scary, creepy, or tense.