There are times when the horror video game genre still feels like it's in its infancy, a clichéd mix of jump scares, shambling horrors, and gore-soaked scenery that should have long been buried. Sure, we all love the bloody dogs that leapt headfirst through a window in Resident Evil, and how we were forced to dive into a closet to hide from Silent Hill 2's ever-disturbing Pyramid Head, but the world has moved on. People have moved on. Isn't time the horror genre did too?
That's not say there haven't been some horror classics of late—the terrifying P.T. demo and the, uh, "quirky" Deadly Premonition spring to mind—but horror games that continue to disturb once the end credits role are a rarity, not a standard. First-person adventure The Town of Light takes a brave, if under-realised, stab at presenting a fresh examination of what constitutes horror. The demons, zombies, and severed limbs so beloved of horror games—which are so overused as to have lost all impact—are discarded in favour of showing the grisly abuse, torture, and subjugation human beings are capable of inflicting on one another.
After all, we know the likes of brain-dead zombies and demonic horrors aren't real (right?). But human beings? They're something we can all be afraid of.
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