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Survival-Horror Genre Going Extinct?
Destructoid is running an opinion piece looking at the state of the survival-horror genre in games, suggesting that the way it has developed over the past several years has been detrimental to its own future. "During the nineties, horror games were all the rage, with Resident Evil and Silent Hill using the negative aspects of other games to an advantage. While fixed camera angles, dodgy controls and clunky combat were seen as problematic in most games, the traditional survival horror took them as a positive boon. A seemingly less demanding public ate up these games with a big spoon, overlooking glaring faults in favor of videogames that could be genuinely terrifying." The Guardian's Games Blog has posted a response downplaying the decline of the genre, looking forward to Ubisoft's upcoming I Am Alive and wondering if independent game developers will pick up where major publishers have left off.
And then an other genre comes flying out of an air duct or dark corner!
wondering if independent game developers will pick up where major publishers have left off.
Two different roles.
How to make a gaming article when you have no original material:
a.) roll a d6
b.) According to the result, choose one of the following:
1.) PC
2.) Adventure
3.) Single Player
4.) Survival Horror
5.) DRM-free
6.) Windows-only
c.)Insert result in following sentence: Is this the death of $getrandomstring() gaming?
I don't know if I 100% agree. I a lot of people complain immediately when they don't get the standard fare. A number of these same people are responsible for the Playstation DualShock controller not changing in any really noticeable way for 10 years. The result: Resident Evil 5 is turning into a Halo style first person shooter.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
True horror/fright can only be produced by ones imagination. While Hitchcock understood this and did a decent job of using it only books ever get it right. Instead today as with movies you mostly get sub-par lighting that hides things from your view.
Remember the mess that Doom3(?) was that you couldn't hold your shotgun and flashlight at the same time? The game imposed a limitation on you that felt forced and limited the submersion.
One game that got it right; Thief. The suspense of trying to sneak, and then panic heart-attack when you step on a squeaky floor!
I have played Alone in the Dark, and many others in the genre but none have ever had me wound-uptight as Thief did.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Umm...What about Left4Dead? I fail to see how the genre can be 'dying' if it includes a wildly popular new release? I mean, I guess you could argue that Left4Dead isn't similar enough to to qualify as a member of the genre -- but it seems like a perfectly valid (and, frankly, awesome) way to evolve the genre. Oh, two more words:
Dead Space.
Maybe you've just got a really, really narrow definition of what qualifies as 'survival horror'?
Silent hill wasn't fixed, pre-rendered perspective like resident evil was. That's one of the reasons why I never got into RE, but I loved Silent Hill. SH was also so much creepier and suspenseful than RE.
Another thing, isn't Left 4 Dead somewhat of a survival horror game as well? It's one of the top games right now yet there's no mention of it.
At some point early on in Resident Evil 4, you encountered a door. Leon promptly kicked it open with his boot and you ran into the next room. It was a statement. The entirety of Resident Evil 4 was a statement. That statement was, "Survival Horror has Evolved". The evolution could be seen early on in games like Resident Evil 3 and Dino Crisis 2. Games like Dead Space are continuing that evolution. The genre is changing, not dying.
If you want a genre that is truly going extinct, just look at RPGs. I'm still waiting for any half decent one to come out in the PS3. It's depressing when you think back to the genre's boom time of 1997-2000.
May the Maths Be with you!
Survival horror isn't going extinct, it's just waiting for the next sequel... and this time it's gonna be personal!
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
Maximum PC reviewed Left 4 Dead and rated it a 10/Kick-Ass. Doesn't sound like the genre is doing that bad.
Just because a couple of series that are notorious hallmarks of the genre arguably jumped the shark, it does not mean that the genre is necessarily in trouble. I don't know what specifically occurred in their development, but I do know the names drew a lot of attention. It's hard to avoid people coming in thinking 'it's pretty good, but we need to tweak it'. I have observed it in all sorts of long-standing products in all industries, some people manage to get a share of control that think they know what the customers would want better than the customers or the people who originally captured said customers' attention.
That said, I'm not sure what I would compare to Silent Hill (I didn't think overly much of RE, except to agree that RE4 dispensed with what few aspects of RE I found frightening). Left4Dead is a fun game, but it isn't quite comparable. Without a substantial narrative, it just isn't scary to the degree or type that Silent Hill has historically been.
I think the original Silent Hill team stepped away as they realized they were pretty much out of ideas on where to take things.
I think most people are like me after playing regular FPS games. I don't get scared, I just get motivated and angry. They're like "oooh, are you gonna make it out alive" and I'm thinking "umm yes, and I'm gonna drive this motorcycle so far up that zombie's ass he'll be farting exhaust fumes. Then I'm gonna go BOOM HEADSHOT, BOOM HEADSHOT! Then I'll scream 'THAT'S RIGHT BITCHES!' and then break out the window all actiony and we'll see what's what then! You can't intimidate or scare me!" It's really either that or actually act really scared and freaked out about whether or not you're going to survive the entire game and who the heck wants to feel like that for like 8 hours? You could just walk around New York City alone at night for free to feel that, and most people tend to avoid that feeling. So if they'd just let me scream "****ing zombies, DIE!" and give up trying to scare me, it'd be fine but then that's not really survival horror.
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The reason games like Res. 4, Silent Hill Homecoming, and Left4Dead aren't proper survival horror is that your first reaction to seeing an enemy is to kill it. In the original Resident Evil or Silent Hill, killing everything in your path would result in you running out of ammo quickly, and/or taking massive injuries due to bashing them up close in melee.
While you could interpret survival horror as being about, as the name implies, surviving scary situations, the genre is supposed to achieve this by making you feel vulnerable and desperate. This was achieved, as stated before, by limiting your supplies so much your were forced to sneak around and avoid enemies, or by making you dread the situation, fearful you could be overwhelmed at any moment.
Silent Hill achieved both of these rather well, especially with the radio and flashlight. Keeping the flashlight off prevented enemies from finding you, but you could barely see. The radio would keep you on your toes, looking around frantically for the enemy the that is there, but you can't yet see. The general inhumanity and psychological implications of the monsters, as opposed to the zombies of Resident Evil, also added to the creepy atmosphere.
Going through with the attitude you could kill everything would easily get you killed. Survival horror is about surviving because you do so against all odds, not because of good combat skills. So, as the genre evolves into action horror, it is definitely not the same as survival horror.
I think that by "indie game developers", the article meant "indie game developers who self-publish their PC titles". Are you thinking of consoles, whose makers have historically had policies against smaller publishers?
seems pretty horrific to me, but I am a wuss..
It is going dead because there are no quality games being made for this genre.
The Silent Hill series was great, but they stopped making games after SH3. SH4 was a different game with last minute changes to include the Silent Hill universe and had mixed reactions from fans, SH Origins and SH5 were not produced by KCET and had completely different American and European development teams. They both paled in comparison to earlier games in the series and reeked of shoddy effort.
RE4, while a wonderful game and hugely successful, blended survival horror with the action of an FPS. Capcom showed they could certainly make next-gen survival horror games with traditional elements like Resident Evil 0 and RE: Remake, but they seem to have no intention of making more games of that type.
Fatal Frame became more action oriented as time went on and the series is dead. Siren filled a very niche market and the new games appeal to some, but definitely not others.
For survival horror to get back on its feet, Konami needs to make traditional style RE games in parallel with the new model that RE4/RE5 use. God knows I'd buy both types. Konami needs to regroup the people involved with Silent Hill 1-3 and make a new game themselves, without farming off the rights to talentless developers with only a handful of poorly made games under their belt.
Survival horror is a genre that can come back at any time, providing somebody puts the effort into it. Other than Capcom keeping things going with RE5 (and its fun but untraditional stylings), there really isn't much more.
But it is in no way "scary." I sure laugh my fuckin ass off though.
They're talking about the death of truly suspenseful, terrifying games. Games with a pace so painfully slow, and fearful satisfaction so rare and powerful that you're afraid to turn the system back on. In all honesty that genre died a long time ago.
How about System Shock 2? I got scared in that immersive game. DOOM 3? Aliens vs. Predator series?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Did you play RE4? Specifically on the GameCube? The graphics, at the time, were VERY good, and the game is the epitome of a survival horror. Truly, a polished game. If you have the Wii, pick up the RE4 for the Wii, as it has the contents that appeared in the PS2 version, which weren't in the GameCube version.
I really don't get it. Everyone complains that games are the same. They're all the same. There's nothing new.
Then, we get some really cool games coming out. We get GoW which takes 3rd person shooters viable (okay, so it's not that different). Stepping further outside genres, we get GH & Rock Band, a whole new way to enjoy music and video games. Going further, we get Ban & Kaz from Rare, which is an amazing vehicle/puzzle/action game. We get Dance Dance Revolution. We get the Wii and motion-sensing remotes. We get Wii Fit. And then we also get user-input games like LittleBigPlanet. All of these have either created new or revitalized old genres. I'm sure I'm missing a bunch more that have been amazing.
And now everyone's complaining that people aren't playing the old stagnant genres as much? It also ignores how successful games like Left4Dead have been? Or shoot-off genres like Dead Rising?
This is stupid.
Yes, I had a Wii and RE4 for it. I was talking about old RE games vs. the original Silent Hill. Since the article summary talks about those and fixed cameras.
How can Clock Tower be missing here? Particularly the very first one running on SNES, which still gives me the creeps, even when watching youtube recordings of its gameplay (example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7N8Q69--Ws). This game is VERY VERY scary.
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The genre may or may not be dying, but I would like to see more brought to the table than rehashes and sequelitis. I get that people liked RE0-3, but the last thing I want to play is RE27, fundamentally unchanged from RE1.
This poo is cold.
They Hunger was a good Half-Life mod, and they're working on a new one with the Source engine: They Hunger: Lost Souls. They haven't updated their progress in a while, but I still have hope.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
then all you're doing is running some unpaid pest control service.
An easier way to separate FPS from survival horror games... in a survival horror game, it's impossible to kill every enemy you can find. You've got to run from / avoid a fair percentage of them if you want to survive.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Destroyoid is running an opinion piece looking at the state of the first-person shooter genre in games, suggesting that the way it has developed over the past several years has been detrimental to its own future. "During the nineties, first-person shooter games were all the rage, with Quake and Unreal using the negative aspects of other games to an advantage. While mindless play, repetitive combat and bland color palettes were seen as problematic in most games, the traditional first-person shooter took them as a positive boon. A seemingly less demanding public ate up these games with a big spoon, overlooking glaring faults in favor of videogames that could be genuinely exciting." The Conquerer's Games Blog has posted a response downplaying the decline of the genre, looking forward to Epic's upcoming Unreal Tournament 2110 and wondering if now-independent game developers will pick up where major publishers like popcap have left off.
My small independent team is working on a few! survival horror titles right now.
I'd say that as the bigger publishers continue to congeal, all the creativity will be left to the little guys.
I just finished playing through Penumbra: Black Plague. It's sort of a combination between resident evil-style survival horror, without guns, and half-life 2 FPS physics puzzles. It's got some really neat angles, including a virus in your brain that develops an alternate personality, and an alien hive-mind. I can really reccomend it for all survival horror fans.
-- Surreal Puppet
The genre isn't going extinct, its just... evolving!
...or going reverse?
Campfire seems interesting - if it ever comes to life.
http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=44373&mode=thread&order=0
I want to see the book (and soon to be movie), The Road, made into a game. That'd be survival horror. The main character runs most of the course with no more than a couple of bullets!
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Just finished Deadspace, and I don't think the genre's dead -- but I think the standard's been raised.
Fear and it's two expansion packs are already out.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Ok, I lie but god damn that game had it right and the formula hasn't had to change much since, so people think it's stale, when it's just an old but tested game type.
Look at Dead Space, same as AITD, it has a control and battle system just clunky enough to antagonise you but not enough to hate it and jumpy stuff.
I think it's a bloody fantastic genre and if I wasn't such a pussy I'd still be playing it.
(As I've gotten older, I've become MORE scared than I used to by these things, I literally can not play Dead Space, period - more than 5 minutes and I have to quit)
I wouldn't call Left 4 Dead a horror game. It's more of an Action Survival game (there is very little that will make you jump out of your seat)
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Why play a game when you can look at real horror any time you turn on the News??? Endless war in the middle-east, up to our collective hinnies in terrorist assaults, an environment that looks more and more like an unflushed toilet, and a global economy that makes the environment look good... Fighting unwashed mutants is looking less and less like an escapist activity, and more and more like a proper survival training.
Did anyone else find Dead Space creepy more than a few times? The audio did a spectacular job of creeping the player out.
Speaking of independent games... The last decent horror game I played was from a small developer. Check out Penumbra. There are three games in the series. Really great atmosphere and creative use of physics. On top of that, they all have Linux versions. You can check out demos at http://www.penumbragame.com/
I see the second game at Gamestop sometimes.
A new splatterhouse is in the making...
Fear, deadspace, Left4Dead.. all great shining examples of recent survival horror, not to mention the silent hills, resident evils and doom clones.
Dare I say it, but survival horrors are still lurking behind every corner
Well, not every corner...
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Zombie Panic: Source: A free, third party online HL2 mod that can be downloaded via Steam is another horror 'option'. I guess you could call it an alternate to L4D. Certain maps really do retain the horror feeling to a certain degree and there generally isn't enough ammo to go around.
...well, almost comic relief.
You'll often find yourself using filing cabinets and desks to try to barricade yourself into house. As your fellow survivors fall, you run out of ammo and the zombies increase in numbers you'll be forced to retreat into that last room, or to the roof of the house. There you will make your last stand with whatever weapons you have left. A pistol with a few remaining rounds, a wrench, a chunk of wood with a nail in it, a computer keyboard, etc
This is made all the more stressful by the constant parinoia that one of your fellow survivors barricaded into the room with you has been infected with the zombie virus. As the survivors dwindle down you face conflicting emotions. You now have one less person to help you barricade the room, but the pistol with 4 rounds you pick up from their body may help you survive just a little longer.
The only thing limiting the horror feel is the fact the game doesn't end when you get killed by a zombie. You become a zombie yourself whose job is to go after the remaining survivors. Any tension that had been built up while running from the zombies very quickly turns to
Let me tell you, as a zombie it is incredibly amusing to watch the survivors scramble to reinforce their barricade to try and keep you out unaware that one of their own is about to tear them apart with their bare hands.
Ummm hasnt this guy played left 4 dead? The game rocks(well as long as you have a cordinated team at least) This guy should get off his soap box and try it out.
it's not (IMO) survival horror. In what horror movie can any of the characters survive hand-to-hand against large numbers of the (aliens/mutant plants/zombies/whatever)?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?