SCOOBY GANG

LITTLE HOPE is a ghost tour that's better with friends.

Cerebral horror is fine, but I like my scares to come from monster chases and stuff jumping out of the shadows. Idiots in peril, abandoned towns, maybe some ghosts—that’s where I get my thrills. Little Hope, the second game in the Dark Pictures Anthology, has all of that, along with multiplayer modes that help it simultaneously capture the experience of watching and being inside a goofy horror flick with your pals.

Like its predecessor, Man of Medan, it’s through the co-op modes that the game reveals all of its mysteries. In single-player, you’ll control different members of the stranded quintet, trapped in the town of Little Hope by fog and plagued by visions of 17th century witch trials. The shared story, however, lets you experience these scenes from a different perspective, and when the game splits you up, you’ll have to rely on your co-op buddy, listening to them investigate ruined buildings or get ambushed by a monster, with only a QTE between them and death.

The frantic QTE sequences made me feel like I was always just about to die, but they’re actually easygoing. To make them more accessible, there are unobtrusive alerts ahead of the prompts now warning you that a QTE is coming. This extra second to prepare doesn’t diminish their impact, but it does make it less likely that you’ll hit the wrong button.