A Ghost Town Without Thrills: Little Hope
Supermassive Games’ third choose-your-own-demise horror entry misses the mark by a wide mile.
Having watched horror classics such as Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, Ridley Scott’s Alien, and Wes Craven’s Scream, all before the age of 10 (through sheer cunning and deft bypassing of all parental supervision) I often wonder if my early exposure to masters of the genre have left me somewhat desensitized to horror movies and games.
It is difficult to gauge to what degree one’s familiarity with horror classics actually prevents the fear response, the rush of adrenaline, the inadvertent scream, or at the very least, the noticeable thundering of one’s heart for a minute or two. What one inevitably develops a tolerance and distaste for, is jump-scares. I often view a horror director’s over-reliance on sudden movement accompanied by a crescendo of violins screeching, as an admission of defeat; an acknowledgement that they needed to induce panic in the viewer, because they failed in creating meaningful narrative choices, intentional lighting schemes, deliberate dialogue pacing and successful sound effects, that should, ideally, create an atmosphere of fear.
Perhaps mindful of its slow, drawn out nature, the game attempts to inspire fear through an unfortunate over-reliance on…
