Survival-Horror, you either love it or hate it. Whether Nemesis is chasing you down Resident Evil 3's cramped hallways, or Pyramid Head is cornering you in Silent Hill 2's dark rooms, or Sae is stalking you relentlessly in Fatal Frame 2, it's a genre that is bound to get your adrenaline rushing and your heart pumping, so much so that you might find yourself feeling dread and wanting to turn the console off. But that's why we play them, after all. We want to be scared.

Joystiq takes a look at the newly released Silent Hill: Homecoming and Dead Space, and how they both use drastically different menthods to scare the player and leave them feeling uneasy after playing ...

With the debut of a brand new IP and the return of an over-the-hill franchise taking place in the space of a few weeks, fans of survival-horror have undoubtedly felt relieved to find their genre considerably more alive than many of the frightful creatures that inhabit it. Counting myself among them -- the fans, not the creatures -- I've eagerly been spending my evenings roaming the sinister streets of Silent Hill: Homecoming, as well as the cramped corridors of Dead Space. While they shamble towards the subject of scariness in remarkably different ways, both highlight the same, inherent contradiction that lies at the still-beating heart of the genre: A good survival-horror is one you don't enjoy playing.

There's an element of self-deception at work here, one that willingly sets you up for the scare and the relief that comes when you realize that, oh, none of it's real. Of course it isn't, you're playing a game! But a good survival-horror will make you forget that critical fact, long enough for you to question what's around the corner and frequently enough to have you gasping at the sight of polygonal blobs leaping through the windows. It is -- and should be -- a stressful experience, a constant source of worry and unanswered what-ifs. Are you anxiously counting your spent bullets? Do you hesitate before ambling down a suspiciously long hallway? What a weird way to have fun.

That's really the oddest thing. All games are about immersion to some degree, but survival-horror, whether it's a foggy town or an abandoned starship, is the only genre that takes you to places where you wouldn't want to go. Whereas games offer to make your dreams come true, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dead Space and Fatal Frame invite you into your worst nightmares. Yet, we'll willingly draw the curtains, don our headphones and dive in headfirst, if only to wake up on the other side and say, "Phew."

Miss Razz via joystiq.com »