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.

Comments

Same problem as movies.

[B5_geek]

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.

Re:Same problem as movies.

[KDR_11k]

Uncertainity is a good source of fear IMO, in a game it's not that scary when you see a huge monster stand in front of you, it's scarier when you know there's a sniper hiding somewhere in the area. Having to react to an event that can happen any time (enemy found between the rubble or something) or dying very quickly induces fear, it doesn't work when the enemy isn't dangerous enough (so you could take a hit or two before reacting and still be fine) or when you have enough advance warning (e.g. a long time between spotting the enemy and it attacking you).

Re:Same problem as movies.

[MikeBabcock]

The chainsaw people in RE4 did a good job of giving me panic attacks. The game even tells you they're coming -- but since its nearly impossible to kill them without being well-prepared early in the game, knowing they're coming, or even from which direction doesn't help you avoid death the first few times.

Re:Same problem as movies.

[hairyfeet]

For me the last two good scares was F.E.A.R and Bioshock. Walking along feeling big and bad in Fear and then hearing that little "zzzzt" noise that let you know those fast moving invisible bastards were around, that was scary for me. And the first time I went after a Big Daddy was extra scary for me because I engaged by total accident. I was chasing a splicer and was going to pop it with my electro plasmid and finish it off with my pistol when I flew around the corner and fired my plasmid...and completely missed the splicer and hit the Big Daddy square in the back. When that big bastard turned around with those red eyes I knew what a bunny must feel like when looking at a grizzly. Now THAT was scary.

So I don't think the genre is dead so much as we have evolved away from the "cheap scares" of using the controls and camera angles to ramp up the spook factor. But as the author pointed out in trying to switch from the cheap scares style to something more modern some of the old favorites are losing their way. But I think that just makes room for new games that won't be tied down with the legacy of the original RE or SH. I personally can't wait to see what kind of new scares the game designers come up with.

Re:Same problem as movies.

[hairyfeet]

You must have better eyesight than me, because while I had no problems tracking them once they moved, locking in on them before that was a royal PITA for me. And I also had the "why won't you die!" problem with them. I finally got decent at one-on-one with them using the shotgun at point blank range, but 1 second off on your timing and you was going to be hurt bad. But if there was more than one and they tried to gang up on me, that was when I was doing a Predator and firing like mad trying to drop somebody, anybody before they just beat me into the ground.

And that brings up a good point. For me to be scared in a game there actually has to be some risks. Too many of the games are now either giving you one or two "BFG" style weapons that as long as you have ammo for it is a turkey shoot, or they give you so much ammo on your regular weapons you can shoot more rounds than a Rambo movie and never run out. That is why I think Fear and Bioshock worked for me, because the invisible guys had speed and stealth and like you said were damned hard to kill, and even with the decent weapons in Bioshock a Big Daddy can still bring the pain if you aren't careful.

But I think that what made RE and SH scary for me wasn't so much the cheap scares(although the dogs through the stained glass in RE was a good one) but the "Oh crap I am nearly out of ammo!" feeling I had throughout the game. It is kind of a shame that on most games nowadays you have to crank it up to "super extreme hardcore" difficulty just to get that same out of ammo feeling because they go so overboard with the rounds. But I agree trying to drop those invisible bastards was a nerve racking experience due to their toughness.

No...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It's Evolving

[bonch]

Fallout 3 has a lot of the same problems Oblivion did. Also, the writing and voice acting can sometimes be quite bad, and the plot sort of rushes and falls apart embarrassingly once you reach your father.

It's also breakable. I killed Burke before he could kill the sheriff Simms. When Burke died, Simms promptly disappeared in front of me, and all NPC scripts still acted like he had died. That's when I knew I was playing a typical Bethesda game.

Re:not for me

[p0tat03]

I know you've been modded funny, but I think that's actually quite insightful. Left 4 Dead has proven that "die zombies die!" type of survival horror can be immensely popular - even more so than traditional scare-your-pants-off games like Silent Hill.

I know when I pick up a controller after a long day of work I don't want to be scared out of my mind - same reason why I have no great love for horror movies. If they were somewhat interesting in terms of story, sure, but like most horror movies, they are not - just a lot of pseudo-scientific Freudian psycho-babble by game designers who think they know horror. Yes, this applies to Silent Hill - they have perfected the art of scaring you, but not so much the art of writing a compelling storyline that isn't full of juvenile metaphors that's so thick you can cut it with a knife.

So given the choice between run-and-gun fun with my friends mowing down hordes of zombies, vs. playing a game with a dumb plot and too many "LOOK, WHATS THAT SKITTERING IN YOUR PERIPHERAL VISION?!" moments, I choose the former.

Bring back the old franchises

[Anonymous Coward]

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.