In Nightmare House 2 you wake up inside an abandoned hospital with no understanding of how you came to be there, only a vague memory of the girl from Nightmare House haunts you. Soon it will be difficult to determine between a dream and reality. How long will it take you to realize that escape is not an option?
The original Nightmare House was an unexpected treat, for me. Set in a claustrophobic, filthy little house in the woods, I found myself genuinely spooked by the events that took place inside. You really got a sense of oppression in its cramped walls - without much space to move around, you often found yourself uncomfortably close to whatever horrible monsters you had to battle. The final message of Nightmare House as one completed was one of hopelessness. You cannot escape. You cannot win.
Rather than end it there and let that chilling message stand on its own, Nightmare House 2 would rather use it to tell us a story. It also wants to try and scare us in doing so, but doesn't do the best job.
The opening remastered edition of NH1 now deals in cliche ghost girls with too much eyeshadow. Dopey bullet time sequences are apparently meant to heighten the fright factor, but instead end up telegraphing scares too blatantly - much like F.E.A.R., the game they're borrowed from. The rest of the NH1 remake quickly sets the tone for what's to follow: you better be afraid of deep bass stingers and unpredictable objects leaping out at you, because that's pretty much where the scares in Nightmare House 2 begin and end.
NH2 properly opens in a hospital, where we're forced to endure blood-stained ramshackle rooms, and lumbering zombies. Spring-loaded boogey men attempt to shock us, but only manage to do so in fleeting doses. Occasionally, NH2 happens on something genuinely scary - there are some really creative mapping tricks employed to screw with your head. But mainly, it's the creators yelling "Gotcha!" every time you jump at one of their funhouse scares.
That's not to say it isn't fun, however. There's a surprising amount of variety to be had in Nightmare House 2, and even if it's not really very scary, there's plenty of action and puzzle solving to keep you occupied until the credits roll. In the end, it may be more Resident Evil than Silent Hill, but who's complaining?