Reanimal

Tarsier Studios' spirital successor to Little Nightmares is here.

Summary

An orphaned brother and sister (known as only The Boy and The Girl respectively), enter a broken world of land and sea to rescue lost friends from monstrous fragments of their mysterious past.

Explore hell

Depends on player of course, but I'd suggest most will finish this in 4 hours (providing non-essential hidden stuff is ignored, like concept art posters, lighting statues and opening coffins).

Claustrophobic environments include an orphanage, a hospital and farm, which is resident to a giant pelican, whose throat pouch is creepily exaggerated.

Battering aggressive seagulls or zombie-like children with a crowbar is extremely satisfying, and combat is a huge step up from II.

Mistakes are punished without mercy, but blame is attached to yourself rather than design. 

Characters are of few words and ask questions which are never answered, which may or not frustrate.

Ambient sounds fit sinister atmosphere like a glove and music delivers a dramatic punch during chase sequences.

Auto-saving aside, we can manually do so by sitting on a sofa, which is surely a nod to Ico (2001).

Unreal Engine 5 ensures this is a fantastic looking game, with superb lighting and shadows, but does unfortunately suffer from pop up (which I assume is across all formats), particularly noticeable when first antagonist The Sniffer sticks his head through a door.

Also, vast open spaces are purely for spectacle. 

Puzzles are extremely basic, largely involving grabbing a key or nearby object.  In fact, the only time you'll have to use a bit of imagination is using a pair of binoculars to reveal the solution to a Connect 4-esque code.

Yes I've nit-picked, but the last hour or so is ABSOLUTELY thrilling.

Passing through a submerged city leads to The Abyss, which had me purring with admiration.

Climax takes place during an alternative World War, where soldiers casually blow their heads off or themselves up.  Diabolical sequence is compounded by machine gun nests and snipers taking offence to our presence, all while we're being pursued by a bloodthirsty, multi-limbed sheep.

Post-credits

The well fills up with black liquid, culminating in 'something' floating to the surface.

Explanation

Well, my take at least.

After girl died, the children tried to resurrect her, but blood ritual only succeeded in summoning an unwanted demon (the lamb), creating a swirling shit storm.  Creature represents dark arts and why everything reanimates.

Verdict 8/10