As a general rule I agree with what this article is saying as I pointed out above. In a more general sense I've been saying for a while that I think the current trend towards combat-free horror games was BS, and felt incredibly immersion breaking to me. This is one of the big reasons I never really got into the "Amnesia" games which started this as I pointed out, because the whole thing felt kind of contrived and silly, as did the defenses for it. While some people argued the lack of combat raised the tension and increased the horror, in my mind it just made the games increasingly absurd, being pretty much forced stealth mechanics/sections tossed into a horror atmosphere.
I do tend to agree that some games pretending to be horror did wind up becoming brawlers or shooters by doing things wrong, but I felt that was simply a matter of bad design going in the other direction. I however do not personally think that the developers of a lot of the current crop of horror games chose to omit combat from the games simply to raise tension, and make them scarier, but more as a way of making it easier to design the games since they don't have to worry about a combat engine, and of course going wrong with the hardest part of the game.
This is not to say that monsters that can't be killed do not have a place in horror, because they do, however that needs to be done the right way. Basically if your dealing with a ghost, demon (as in the intangible field of evil kind), or the manifestation of a curse, it makes a degree of sense that your not going to be able to beat it to death with a club, shoot it with a gun, or whatever else and are going to have to run away. Building forced stealth/evasion sections around that kind of thing makes sense when your dealing with a relatively normal guy who otherwise doesn't have any special powers and is using ordinary stuff to survive. On the other hand when your enemies are just normal dudes (even if crazy), zombies, or otherwise have a physical form (even if large and hulking) some degree of physical resistance is expected. Sure going hand to hand with an 8' mutant with a survival knife or club is not something an ordinary person can do, but at the same time that same 8' mutant doesn't need to be fought head on, I mean if you get him in a position where he should logically be totally at your mercy, it's unrealistic and immersion breaking to not be able to do anything. I mean heck, if I'm hiding under something and slice thuggo's hamstrings, sure I might not kill him, but he sure as heck isn't going to be running around chasing me anymore either, and even if he is normally 8' tall while he's going "argggh my legs" that's the point where I might say bash his head in with a sledgehammer or something.
In short intangible monsters, like say a bunch of ghosts in an Asylum, works better for this kind of thing, than "a bunch of crazy dudes with their junk hanging out" or one big ugly dude that lumbers around in the dark periodically.
I personally consider the gold standards of "horror combat" to actually be games like "Manhunt" and "Condemned" which actually needed some polish. Condemned with it's melee mechanics was brutal, and did a pretty good job of convincing me of what it would be like to get into brawls with crazy dudes using improvised weapons (well at least as far as a video game could). The "Manhunt" games likewise did a nice horror stealth/kill combination and helped popularize it, albeit Manhunt played up how ruthless and brutal your character was, in a game where your supposed to be more normal the same basic thing would work, but it should be stylized a bit better. Both of those series died I believe because they decided to change what worked as opposed to refining the existing mechanics, both Manhunt and Condemned ended with sequels that were heavy on gunplay, especially towards the resolution.
I'll also say that guns are not entirely a deal breaker for horror games either, providing they are handled well, which means making it so they neither solve all problems, and also have a fairly realistic placement of ammo. Half of what ruined things like later "Silent Hill" games was that they began to pretty much walk the hero through mandatory action set pieces, and placed ammo and such around based on difficulty level and when the developers figured the player would need it. Sometimes the placement was creepy and unexpected and worked, but other times it was very immersion breaking and video-game like. Basically the game wasn't thinking about where ammo would likely be (or would be the most disturbing) but handing it out specifically to encourage me to blow monsters away, while frequently positioning re-spawning monsters in ways that made evasion unlikely specifically so I'd approach things as an action game, and meet most challenges through the sight of a gun, or by gleefully running up to fight things hand to hand that I'd agree the protagonist shouldn't be able to handle with a knife.. at least not in a straight fight. Okay fine, one of those creepy nurses with a syringe or a scalpel, I'll buy that (they move slow except for bursts of occasional speed, and their weapons are crappy) but say charging a metal spider-demon thing with a combat knife? (Silent Hill, Homecoming... I'm looking at you) no, just no... not even for an army vet. Maybe if your some kind of heroic fantasy character, but
that's the wrong genera.
The point of the rambling here is that for horror to really return, they need to work on balancing combat into these games and having it fit the conventions, not remove it entirely.
One odd thing I'd also point out, as silly as it might sound, is that I feel regenerating health bars actually work better in a horror setting than they do in an action one. I say this because it's an odd genera trope that the main characters in horror movies get horrendously mauled, and carry on between that. Oftentimes getting ravaged, taking a breather, and then getting ravaged again, as they run the gauntlet from bad to worse, until the final credits. Indeed the whole idea of stopping to use first aid and such struck me as being a bigger issue in terms of immersion. I've often felt that if your going to do a horror game a better way to handle it is to have the character die if they take too much damage at once, but more or less carry on with increasingly visible wear and injuries as they progress. Perhaps getting things like a limp, or a battered arm (slowing reactions) at times they come close to death, with those things taking a long time to recover, or being what takes the use of medical supplies. On some levels this might make things "easier" from a gameplay perspective, but it better fits the tropes (and fear can be conveyed through the increasingly disheveled appearance of the character and their injuries even if the behind the scenes numbers aren't much different) than say some dude stopping in the middle of Demonville to down a health drink to recover their hit points. Look at say Ash from "Evil Dead" (even if that had comedic elements, it was also billed as "Grueling Horror") the whole point was he kept coming despite being beat every which way from sunday, and in doing so was getting crazier than the monsters. He didn't sit there and go "hold on Demonites, I need to down some 5 hour energy to get my hit bar back".
