Parents' Guide to The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope

Like an interactive version of a very scary horror movie, this not only casts you as all of the characters, but as the director and co-screenwriter as well. In The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope, four college students and their professor survive a bus crash, only to find themselves stranded in a spooky New England town that rivals Salem on the creepy meter. To survive, you -- playing as all five characters -- not only have to explore, you also have to interact with each other, and it's how to you do so, and the other choices you make, that could determine which characters live or die. But while we've seen this in other games that are basically interactive cutscenes, what sets it apart from other titles like this is that it doesn't try to recreate hand gestures and other movements with the controls, but instead employs ones like those in action games, which makes it easy to avoid making stupid mistakes.

This game also fixes some of the issues that slightly undermined the first one, Man of Medan. For one thing, your foot speed is more appropriate for someone in a life or death situation. Similarly, the camera works a bit better this time around, though it's still not as good as if this employed a player-controlled one. And this is true whether you play this alone, with a friend co-op online, or with four friends in the same room, during which each of you control one specific character. Though we'd suggest first playing this one on your own...late at night...with the lights down low.... After all, truly scary games like The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope are always best when you're alone in the dark.