Little Orpheus Review (Xbox Series S)

by Jim Smale · Published September 12, 2022 · Updated August 18, 2022

For our Little Orpheus Review, we go back to the year 1962 and NASA is trying to put a man on the moon. In a remote corner of Siberia, a Soviet cosmonaut is heading in the other direction. Comrade Ivan Ivanovich is dropped into an extinct volcano in his exploration capsule, Little Orpheus, to explore the center of the earth. He promptly vanishes.

Little Orpheus Review Pros:

Beautiful graphics.
6.7GB download size.
1000 Gamerscore.
Graphic settings are just chromatic aberration.
In-game cutscenes.
Action-platformer gameplay.
Tutorial pop-ups as you play.
Stunning locations.
The game is told as a story of what happened when you tried to find the lost Little Orpheus.
Animated back and foreground.
Superb voicework.
Just feels like a good time.
Brilliant little setpieces and action hotspots.
QTE makes a comeback and is well suited to the situations.
Nine episodes.
Very easy to remember controls.
Basic actions are crouch, slide, and jump.
Has a mix of puzzles, stealth, and action platforming.
Episode level select
The game is split into episodes.
At the end of an episode, it does the whole next time on Little Orpheus show-style ending.
Can replay levels.
An episode completion will trigger a skippable list of credits.
Every episode has a Catchy TV show-style name.

Little Orpheus Review Cons:

Cannot rebind controls.
Has a slow pace to it.
Not always responsive to trying to grab ledges and ropes/vines.
In stealth situations, you only crouch walk which is really slow and not fun.
You cannot skip or fast forward text/cutscenes.

Related Post: Elex II Review (Xbox Series S)

Little Orpheus:

Official website.

Developer: The Chinese Room

Publisher: The Chinese Room

Store Links –

Xbox

10/10
Graphics - 10/10
9/10
Sound - 9/10
9/10
Accessibility - 9/10
8/10
Length - 8/10
9/10
Fun Factor - 9/10

9/10

Summary

Little Orpheus, is a game so beautiful, so engaging and so much fun to play it has you smiling from ear to ear the whole time you are playing it. I don’t like to swear a lot, the odd word here and there but Little Orpheus has made me change my perspective on it, it’s a game that after ten minutes I shouted “For fucks sake” Mrs comes in wondering what happened and I explain “This game is so fucking beautiful I am angry!” this, of course, made no sense except to me because I’m weird but it is a game that evokes happiness despite the dire situations you put Ivan in. Little Orpheus is a platformer game with no actual combat and a slight sprinkling of puzzles but it’s predominately a platformer and the whole game is split into chapters, nothing crazy right? Well after each chapter you get the old TV show ending of what will happen next? Will he die will the bug make love to a tree and spawn a new bug tree? And then credits roll… Brilliant it’s just brilliant. The game story is told in a flashback style with your character reliving his exploits to his commanding officer, sounds boring but with such excellent writing and voice performances it’s almost Oscar-worthy, the story is full of drama, action, and humor and the way it’s delivered is just a masterclass. I found parts of the game to repeat its level design or formula and it was a slight niggle but the overall takeaway was that Little Orpheus shines a bright light of happiness into a dark kinda sad real world. Whilst the actual gameplay is nothing new, the production values of everything else are the reason you play, the reason you keep coming back, and the reason you will go and play it now.