Hmmm, well to be entirely honest I am not too fond of survival horror games without a decent combat mechanic. I think the best games are the ones that can have combat while still maintaining the atmosphere and so on.
For me part of the fun has always been being able to eventually turn the table on the monsters. What's more being armed is a very common sense reaction to a lot of the horror stuff, since weapons are relatively easy to improvise, and if I feel I'm in danger from some monster the first thing I'm going for is a weapon before I go plodding around in the dark looking to figure out what it is. A lack of combat mechanics and such rapidly turns the whole idea into a joke akin to the least believable horror movies out there. If something as simple and common sense as personal armament is missing it says a lot about the game and the writing.
Forget shotguns, swords, and all of that stuff. I can see how a lot of people might not be used to having that kind of stuff around, but what about tools? I mean my garage has dones of them. I have a maul near my bed that I keep handy, it sort of wound up there after I (believe it or not) thought our cat crawled through a hole and got stuck in the wall and we were trying to get it out (and the little fluffy bundle of joy was somewhere else the entire time). For that matter there is also a tool bench outside my room (seeing as I am the quintessential basement dweller). I'm going to find SOMETHING. Heck, even if it's one of those "your car breaks down in the middle of the spooky woods" or "you wake up with amnesia after a car crash" moments, I've still got a bloody tire iron.
Of course, perhaps it's the sadistic PnP GM in me, but when I run horror RPGs as my players find out just because you have weapons does not mean they are going to be effective. I've sort of been waiting to see if some game designer was going to ever develop a game with a combat engine, but where none of the weapons were effective, just for lulz to address this issue ("OMG! What do you mean LAW Rockets just bounce off" - quote from Knights Of The Dinner Table).
At any rate, all rambling aside, a lot of it probably comes down to the fact that chase mechanics in games have always annoyed me, and that is what this sounds like. Maybe it's flashbacks to the weapon free beginnings of "Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth", or some of the flight/stealth related parts of "Siren: Blood Curse", or maybe dozens of other things (oh noes! It's Scissorman!) but in general being forced to avoid monsters endlessly as opposed to doing so as a tactical desician tends to be annoying. After the 47th time you get munched it stops being scary, and becomes annoying.
