I recently read a great article on how the survival horror genre has killed itself over time. Survival horror was a genre that was built out of a necessity. Back in the days of PSX, fixed cameras and shitty controls we just about unavoidable. Many games that could have been great were hindered by what was possible with the gaming technology. But with survival horror, fixed cameras and tricky controls weren't such a big deal any more and added to the overall feel of the game, rather than detracted from it. Furthermore, making it hard to shoot and end up in confined spaces made it a genre where you were encouraged to run away from things, rather than run in guns a blazing.
When the technology got better, people started asking for more and the lines between FPS and Survival Horror got so blurred that it was almost unrecognizable. AS the technology got better, more and more survival horror franchises started moving closer and closer to FPS and then tried to bring back horror elements back in. This was mostly unsuccessful.
Anyway, Rez. Evil will forever be one of my all time long lost favorite games and the article is definately worth a read.
http://www.destructoid.com/how-survival ... 4022.phtml
Has Survival Horror Killed Itself?
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Re: Has Survival Horror Killed Itself?
Survival Horror didn't kill itself...the Americans did, no lie. Most of the good Survival Horror games were made by Asian developers, or smart Americans, but over the years Asian developers slowed down or outsourced. Asian horror and American horror are two very different things, the former being the better in my opinion. Americans think just mowing down zombies is Survival Horror, were as Asians mess with your heads. Isolation, despair, confusion, etc.
In Silent Hill's case, my favorite, the horror was more about what, if anything, was going to be there. You could roam the streets for half an hour without actually running into a monster, but the thought of running into one is what kept you on the edge.
I bought Dead Space a few days after it came out thinking it was going to be the bee's knees, but it sucked horribly. At first I was really scared, mainly due to the hype of it being the scariest game ever but once you realize that every corpse reanimates...its rather boring. You can just walk down a hallway and know where aliens are going to crawl out of, I traded it in after only getting twenty five percent of the way through the game. I only ever played it in two sittings. I had tried to pick it up but the boredom was so overwhelming.
Long story short: Asian horror developers=good, American horror developers=bad.
In Silent Hill's case, my favorite, the horror was more about what, if anything, was going to be there. You could roam the streets for half an hour without actually running into a monster, but the thought of running into one is what kept you on the edge.
I bought Dead Space a few days after it came out thinking it was going to be the bee's knees, but it sucked horribly. At first I was really scared, mainly due to the hype of it being the scariest game ever but once you realize that every corpse reanimates...its rather boring. You can just walk down a hallway and know where aliens are going to crawl out of, I traded it in after only getting twenty five percent of the way through the game. I only ever played it in two sittings. I had tried to pick it up but the boredom was so overwhelming.
Long story short: Asian horror developers=good, American horror developers=bad.