Starhawk Drives the Offensive
14 hours 59 mins ago
Is the survival-horror genre dying? It's a topic that has recently come up on gaming sites, with many recent survival-horrors (such as Dead Space and Silent Hill: Homecoming) taking a more action oriented route to attract a larger audience, thus losing the "survival" aspect that many older horror games had.
While horror games may be gaining in popularity, is survival horror slowly disappearing?
There's been a bit of discussion of late on whether or not Survival Horror still exists as a genre. Curiously enough, it was one of the few 'genres' we have in videogame culture that is not solely contingent on mechanics, offering some amount of theme that had to be followed as well--though mechanics are a rather large portion of its definition. Most of the games do have in common a certain level of capability to offer frightening situations with the role of one person trying to survive with limited resources, however. Whether this be by zombies, frightening psychological trauma, or other externalized fears, the supernatural was almost always involved in some way.
Recent reviews on Dead Space mostly seem to point out that the game is not very frightening. The monsters may jump out at you, but that's the extent of the horror. Ammo may not come in droves, but is still plentiful enough to gleefully rip apart your opponents, and you get the feel that survival is not a large portion of the game. Which makes me wonder if we're done with the survival element of games because, let's be frank, a large portion of the videogame audience does not wish to be frustrated by poor combat mechanics and frustrating (albeit rewarding) gameplay just for the sake of a good horror story.
I do believe that we can find another way to have interactive story elements give us a good scare (well, some of us not including myself), but perhaps we need to find new methods of such. For now, what I might suggest is not to throw survival on every game that happens to be horrific. Horror can exist without the need to frighten you beyond a few anxious, palm-sweating and making the controller slip moments when a monster may jump out at you, or is heard clanking about in the background when you expect something that never comes. That is to say, we may be moving into using horror elements in action settings, and the survival horror game may not be as front and center as we expected from Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
News story attached to:
- Dead Space™ [iPad, iPhone, PC, XBOX360, PS3]
- Resident Evil [Wii, GC, PSX]
- Silent Hill [PSX]
Comments
Now they're trying to fix the gameplay and make it scary, and everyone who liked it the way it used to be, are going all old man story on them. The whole, back in my day survival horror was scary and you couldn't just go around shooting things.
It's kind of unfair, like asking Half-Life to be more like the original Doom, because it's too easy to get a headshot.
If I'm playing a Resident Evil game I expect the characters to know how to use a gun, know how to melee, know how to dodge, and walk while using a gun (don't know why Capcom still haven't implimented that one yet).
If I'm playing a Silent Hill game, I prefer the characters to be useless in combat because that's how a regular everyday person would be in such a situation. I thought that was done rather well in Silent Hill 1... Giving Harry a deliberately useless aim and the inability to use heavy weapons effectively did make the game scarier and more believable... And kicked in the survival-horror aspect too - It's wiser for an average-joe to run from danger rather than face it.
In that instance, yes, "crippling" the controls based on the characters skills is neccessary. It's not a flaw, though there is a fine line between shitty gameplay and gameplay that has been deliberately limited for a reason.
I know some is going to disagree with me, thats fine.
Hell if the future of Survival Horror has some action in it like Dead Space then I can certainly say it will rise again.
That being said, the adventure aspect for Survival Horror is surely dying. In this year alone, I can only think of 2 or 3 Survival Horror games that focus on more exploration aspects than the action:
SIREN, MAYBE Silent Hill: Homecoming (Though that game tried too much to appeal to the action than the adventure aspect). Fatal Frame is going through the same thing Siren 2 went through. This gen, horror's not exactly doing so good on consoles AT ALL.
Dead Space, although not in my opinion a true Survival horror, is fantastic. I truly think the development team went to massive lengths to mould and shape their game. I have NEVER been so immersed in the developer diaries.
As far as im concerned, The Silent Hill series has been tainted, and it is in desperate need of repair. Of course, the dedicated will bite my head off...feel free for healthy debate.
Back to the topic of horror...making Silent Hill more action oriented recieved some backlash ever since SH4, so Homecoming failing was foreseen a long time ago.
Prehaps as sound quality, graphics, and narrative conventions are heightened and improved throughout the console years, Survival Horror will return to form? Those are things I certainly look for in a game, and they are things which improve as technology and time progesses.
Well, thats my two-cents anyway.
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