Brainy psycho-horror is fine, but I prefer the monster chases and the scares that seem to pop up out of the shadows. Fools in peril, towns in ruins, maybe even supernatural deviousness ...... Little Hope, the second installment of Supermassive's Dark Pictures Anthology, has it all, and with its multiplayer mode, you can watch goofy horror movies with your buddies and be in the middle of them at the same time.

The first game in the series, "Little Hope" is all that and more.

Like its predecessor "Man of Medan," it is in the cooperative mode that the game reveals all of its mysteries. In single-player play, you control various members of a five-person team. The quintet is trapped in Little Hope, a haunted town shrouded in a seemingly magical fog and haunted by visions of the 17th century witch trials. In Shared Stories, however, these scenes can be experienced from a different perspective. And when the group splits up, they must rely on their co-op companions, who will hear them investigating ruined buildings and being ambushed by monsters.

I have been on both sides, the side listening and the side being attacked, and I have a hard time choosing which is more stressful. Hearing your friend being attacked could really suck. You are far away and all you can do is listen to your friend panic and you may not be able to go help. In some cases, however, you may have the opportunity to intervene. What if you mess up a quick-time event and play a huge blunder? What if a player dies because of you? That would complicate the relationship.

The frantic sequence of QTE actions always made me feel like I was about to die, but it is actually very easy. To make it more approachable, Supermassive has added a discreet alert before the prompt, not only warning you that a QTE is coming, but also letting you know what action to take. Jump, Attack, Shoot ...... All have icons. The extra second for preparation does not diminish its impact, but it does make it less likely that you will press the wrong button because you are surprised. Even if you fail a QTE, you usually have several chances to gain the upper hand or escape, so one mistake doesn't kill you. As such, I was able to forgive all of my co-op buddy's rescue failures.

Little Hope is a social game. It can be fun alone, but you will miss the best parts. You get to yell out, speculate about why the gang is trapped, and develop your character together. With each surprise or near-death experience, I found myself repeatedly pausing, discussing what just happened, and building the whole picture from each of our perspectives. This is the magic that made "The Man from Medan" so successful, and good cooperative play makes it easy to overlook the game's lack of sophistication. However, "Little Hope" does not develop it further and, in fact, does not make much use of its advantages.

The theme of paranoia in "The Man from Medan" was also reflected in cooperative play. For example, one could be standing in the exact same room at the exact same time, but actually see slightly different things. It instilled suspicion and distrust. While "Little Hope" offers a more ambitious narrative, different timelines and more complex mysteries to unravel, it does not create the novel co-op tricks and twists seen in its predecessor.

The drama and conflict among the characters is still present. The gang consists of three students in their 20s, one mature student, and a professor. Two of them are secretly dating, but no one in Little Hope gets along that well. They are stressed, but with one bland exception, they are also kind of jerks. They are the familiar archetypes: vanilla good guys, tense academics, and Karen. However, this broad description makes it easier to get into their personalities when controlling them, and while none of the characters are particularly nuanced, most make for enjoyable role-play subjects.

Most memorable is Karen's queen, Angela. She is totally unexpected and wonderful. No, no, no, she is terrible, but she is great fun to play. Within minutes of meeting her, you know that she is going to sue the university because the bus crashed, that she has absolute contempt for the only woman in the group (which implies that most women do), that she has an unrelenting hunger for boy meat, that she has cutting remarks and insults at every turn. It is clear that they have.

Harsh bachelorette is a tired expression, but Angela rules. I thoroughly enjoyed calling bullshit on everything in this harrowing adventure. She will happily admonish ghosts and humiliate her friends following traumatic events. She has rubbed these little bastards and fucking ghosts the wrong way so far. I might add, she improved over time, and by the time I finished playing, none of the fellows were willing to die for each other. The game is short, about four hours, but a lot of life and a lot of death is condensed into that time. The culmination of my choices was the third act, filled with heroic moments and gangsters going one-on-one with supernatural hunters. You can train this ragtag group of students into a real badass group. If you can keep them alive.

Between QTEs and conversations, there are plenty of opportunities to explore. The camera has been freed up to make it easier to walk around and to repeatedly break into abandoned buildings that are obviously haunted. There are not many difficult questions, but "Supermassive" uses its time to build up nasty surprises and hint at what is really going on. When you have someone to talk with about your findings, it feels like you're solving an elaborate mystery, even though you're just clicking through books and photos.

But sometimes the cinematic notion prevails, and the camera suddenly switches to a dramatic angle, as if we are being watched from the bushes. This may be perfect for cinema, but every time this happened, my cooperative play partner and I stopped in our tracks, thinking we had hit a cut scene. There are quite a few places where the scene transitions are choppy or the tempo suddenly speeds up to the point where you lose track of what's going on.

But mostly it's like being stuck in a chickered but lovable horror movie. It's played straight on the surface, with little tension-relieving humor, but actually revels in its absurdity. It's like "Final Destination" meets "The Crucible," one minute you're watching yourself die and the next you're participating in a dimly-lit witch trial... Not a real development of Supermassive's experiment with "Man of Medan," but still an entertaining co-op game and perfect timing if you're looking for a game to play this Halloween.