The ultimate failure of the Survival horror genre

[sorry user name taken.]

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

this isn't a Survival horror (i think) but it scared the crap out of me LOL.because isn't everyone forgetting the fact that these games are suppose to be atmospheric? these games have gotten to technical and lost the point of it.

=/

i guess all people want these days is to shoot stuff and ask questions later...

 

[goodman528]

I fail to see why Dead Space is quoted everywhere as a good horror game.

I'm waiting for Alan Wake.

 

[USSR]

I think Fear 2 will turn out to be a great survival horror game.

 

[JediMB]

Personally I support the development of more First-Person Survival Horror Shooters. >_>

I would also like to add that the lack of scares comes up often with the newer games in this vein but does no one else find it ironic that "survival" is the first word in "Survival horror" does it not imply that "survival" is the primary mechanic "horror" being secondary?

Actually, I'd say that in "Survival Horror", "Horror" is the subject (object? - me and grammatical terms...), while "Survival" is descriptive. Much like, say, a "First-Person Shooter" or a "Warrior Monk".

 

[stiver]

Having not read the article I still feel commenting on this thread is important. Survival horror is NOT about crippling the player, but that is a very easy way to implement a survival horror game. You don't lose the genre by opening up the player, you just have to change things around.

Survival horror games need to make the player want to avoid confrontations. If the player dreads every single monster attack, not sure how to survive form point A to B, then it is a survival horror game.

RE4 and Dead space fail at this. To many weapons, and far to strong. The first 20-30 minutes of Doom3 for example as fantastic, as everything was confusing and scary, and you were limited to weapons that only just got you through. It is when you start having the ability to buy yourself awesome shit (RE4/Deadspace) or the game starts providing you with amazing equipment later (doom 3) that the game stops being scary or tense. Truthfully with a bit of a tweak I think Left 4 Dead is a very good example of a game with fluid controls and strong weapons that still presents a very dangerous environment trying to avoid attack and getting to the end quickly. I'll bring up Silent Hill 5, because if you look at the game, you barely had ammunition, but decent weapons. Despite the overall game design being sloppy, it was still pretty tense because you didn't have a rocket launcher and a chainsaw. It is naive to look at recent games that dramatically changed from earlier ones, and then blame only a couple little things for that change.

 

[Mindex]

I agree with a majority of what has been said. When I first played Dead Space, I really never was scared, i was more or less startled by the in game occurences. Survival Horror games ultimatly fail because in the end they are games. You know that it is a game so mental you will never be scared by what happens. You know in your mind that all you need to do is go back to the last save point and try again if you die. I cannot deny that while playing Dead Space I noticed that they tried to pull the same gag more than once. Everytime i went down a long hallway, I used the line gun, every time there were undead babies I used the plasma rifle. While playing you fall into a groove, you already know what is going to happen before it happens, and that is because with Dead Space, it is fairly easy to recognize where the next attack is coming from. What I can say about playing a survival horror game, it is always more fun to play with a bunch of friends like watching a movie, every time you die, someone else plays. The life of a survival horror game should not be determined by what it limits the player to, it should be determined by how fun they game can be. The main reason that attracts people to Left 4 Dead, isn't the zombies, its fighting zombies with your friends. Its the movie aspect of the game.

 

[Calax]

Harhol:The answer is call of duty. If you are going to move and shoot and try to aim you will move slowly. You can still move quite fast and shoot a pistol so long a you don't try to aim. Your (non)counter argument demontrates a lack of creative thinking on your part..

The biggest difference between COD and the entire survival horror genre is that in COD you play as a soldier, they at least have some training about how to use heavier weapons than cops. Also even COD bends the laws of realism a bit to allow you to move and shoot at the same time with any degree of accuracy. I've never seen any documentary or recreation that showed a soldier firing on the move, mainly because the kickback mixed with the fact you're moving would make you incapable of hitting a broad side of a barn.

In survival horror, you play (generally anyway) an average joe thrust into an extreme situation. Usually they know how to use weapons via tv and other media which means that about all they know is "point barrel at opponent, pull trigger, repeat". And while an average joe might run and gun, he wouldn't hit a zombie for anything of worth damage wise.

Resident Evil generally has you playing as cops, and while this might make a case for walking and shooting with a pistol, I doubt that even cops really know how to manipulate some of the weapons you're given in the series (machine guns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers etc.) Shotguns and pistols and maybe submachine guns I buy that they can operate effectively but not the heavier stuff.

All that being said, I think that one of the things that survival horror has lost is the fact that a simple zombie can kill you. In RE1 + 2 (these are old memories so they might be a little inaccurate) I was always worried because the standard zombies could kill me pretty easily by themselves. Not to mention things like Hunters and Lickers. I haven't played four, but it seems like those standard zombies have lost their power over the generations. Instead the developers use super zombies and bosses to try to kill you while you mow down legions of the standard zombies with a single shotgun blast.

Left 4 Dead on Expert brings back that feeling of vulnerability because even the simple zombies take MASSIVE Chunks of health from your life bar (20 per hit from a basic) so you have to make sure that you and your friends are able to mow them down before they reach you. The special zombies also do alot of damage with their attacks, and they have the added bonus of making you incapable of knocking them off without help. I'm not even going to go into tanks and witches on expert because they basically one shot you.

So, TL/DR version: Nobody can run and gun, despite what FPS's would have you think, RE lost it's sense of vulnerability because they made the basic zombies really easy to kill and not do much damage, and Left 4 Dead did survival correctly because even the lowliest of zombies can kill you fairly easily.

 

[blackcherry]

I do not believe it fair to say that a single game was the death blow, not when the changes made to the game merely exposed the inherently flawed mechanics behind the previous games. In reality I do not believe that any of the "Survival horror" games were ever about survival at all. What they were about was needless restrictions being placed on the player to create the illusion of difficulty. It's the difference between Super Ghouls and Ghosts being "hard" because you cannot save the game, and the recent Ninja Gaiden games being hard because the enemies require skill to defeat without you getting rocked.

Hmm. I think that the game mechanics are each down to personal choice and preference. Myself, whilst I quite liked resi 4, it was for completely different reasons to the rest of the resi series (which is on its 6th game in the main storyline, so there ;-p). I never felt scared through resi 4 after the first half of the game, as I came to understand the source of my fear.

The feeling of dread was based on the experience from other games in the series, in that as I coin it to my friends 'I've got to be careful, I never know when resi is going to try and do me over'. Once I realised that, no I was no longer vulnerable and quite likely to die I breezed through the game on its hardest difficulty with ease.

By placing such restrictions on the player, it enhanced the sheer terror of the games enemies, who could defy them most of the time. Survival horror plays to the mindfuckery scariness in that less equals more.

By placing such artificial restrains on the player, you begin to imagine what is round the corner, long before you actually know. The genre uses the assumption that anything you can come up with is far worse than what they could show and works well because of this.

You are right in that the game genre was restrictive in some of its controls. What you fail to take into account is that the genre, like many others, became that way because every game designed and their aunt sally copied the game mechanism to a t because it was successful. There were (and still are) games out there in the genre that have different mechanics. They just aren't as well known.

As to the naming of the genre, well I imagine when it first came to prominence it was just used without much thought as to its meaning. Its was used by enough people till it was used by all. In the very loosest sense it is survival horror, as you are trying to get out of a rather terrifying situation with a rather limited amount of resources.

Nice idea about the shots drawing enemies by the way. Would add some tension to the genre as you have to choose how to dispatch a foe bearing down upon you, whilst figuring the odds you would draw an unknown number of similar or different assailants (due to camera angles).

 

[PirateKing]

I don't like the idea of breaking bones but I do like the idea of being able to move and shoot at the same time. Even the idea of gunfire attracting enemies. In real life we don't have to wrestle a camera to hit something in the head with a piece of pipe. I'd like it to be that way in games as well.

 

[shadow skill]

A. Their control scheme does not make much sense when you realize that the overwhelming majority of the people playing the game are right handed It's really just as moronic as making southpaw controls that don't also let you remap the face buttons making it physically impossible to manipulate the right stick and still use any functions bound to the right most face buttons. The fact that they decided on that control scheme does not make them stupid for doing so.

B.This statement hear implies as I said earlier that the genre is predicated on gimmicks. They may want you to use a given feature in the game, but what is the point if you are unrealistically proded into using it.

C. Once again if your game mechanics are all smashed by giving the player a reasonable freedom (Which won't have any real effect on regional damage since the player would be free to stop take aim and shoot thereby utilizing region damage at his or her whim.) the problem is the way the game is made not the person saying that said freedom does not have to cause the genre to not exist for all intents and purposes.

D. Many people are satisfied to buy products that don't work this does not validate your argument.

E. I never said anything about FPS? Why even bring this up? Makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[blackcherry]

In real life we don't have to wrestle a camera to hit something in the head with a piece of pipe. I'd like it to be that way in games as well.

Really? I find that when fighting other people (usually exceptionally drunk at the time) half the battle is wrestling with the camera

 

[Calax]

E. I never said anything about FPS? Why even bring this up? Makes no sense whatsoever.

Because you're argument the being incapable of firing on the move only has basis within the FPS genre.

 

[FascistHippie]

New thread title "Why I hate RE4+"

 

[shadow skill]

E. I never said anything about FPS? Why even bring this up? Makes no sense whatsoever.

Because you're argument the being incapable of firing on the move only has basis within the FPS genre.

Metal Gear Solid 4, Graw one and two. In Cod the only real way to shoot and move is by aiming down sight which slows you to a crawl and still is not nearly as accurate as standing still. Running and shooting from the hip is really just for suppressing the enemy. Also I don't really envision doing this sort of thing with a long weapon like a shotgun or a rifle. I see this done mostly with pistols which make a boatload of sense because they are light weight and fairly accurate.

 

[PirateKing]

In real life we don't have to wrestle a camera to hit something in the head with a piece of pipe. I'd like it to be that way in games as well.

Really? I find that when fighting other people (usually exceptionally drunk at the time) half the battle is wrestling with the camera

Well...I was just assuming that the character would be sober. Though playing as a drunk character could be fun. Or playing drunk.

 

[shadow skill]

In real life we don't have to wrestle a camera to hit something in the head with a piece of pipe. I'd like it to be that way in games as well.

Really? I find that when fighting other people (usually exceptionally drunk at the time) half the battle is wrestling with the camera

Well...I was just assuming that the character would be sober. Though playing as a drunk character could be fun. Or playing drunk.

The Witcher is for you my friend.

 

[jebussaves88]

I would say that Resident Evil 4 (and indeed 5) are not survival horror; merely "action horror". The definition of Survival Horror should be "Trying to survive a surreal and twisted environment populated by characters associated with the horror genre". Resident Evil 4 and 5 actively send you into areas to deal with hostiles. You're not surviving in Resi 4 and 5, you're attacking. It is you who are on the offensive. Gameplay mechanics then vater to this. The same can be said for Doom 3 and Dead Space
Left 4 Dead on the other hand, along with Resident Evils 1-3 and the Project Zero games, emphasise the need to survive, rather than simply attack everything. Therefore, ammo is precious. There is no need for you to kill everything, though it may be neccessary to do so to survive the scenario. A good "survival horror" game will cater to this.

As technology and graphics all move on, people are staring to look at what could truly frighten us as gamers, aside from the graphics of the nasty monster. However, it will require the addition of some gimmicks until we reach a point where the modern survival game is sophisticated enough to shut up all those who are being overly fussy. This game will come one day I'll wager, but for now, you'll have to pick between the action horror games of Doom 4 and resi 5 when they come, or play Silent Hill or Project Zero, whose lack of combat emphasis the "survival".