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The Survival of Survival Horror
Rich writes with this excerpt from GameTopius:
"When it comes to pacing and combat, Resident Evil 5 is being compared to Dead Space, as opposed to its previous peers, Silent Hill, Clocktower, and Siren. This is understandable: Resident Evil 5 is joining Dead Space in a new quadrant of the survival horror genre. These games are akin to survival horror in their look and style, and sometimes in the trappings of their stories, but when it comes to gameplay, they are faster paced, and emphasize tighter controls and tactical decision-making, not the ability to use as few bullets as possible on hard-to-hit monstrosities. The reasons for these gameplay changes have been carefully examined by designers and gamers alike."
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Left 4 Dead is THE survival horror game.
I can't really call RE5 survival horror when the main characters are zombie hunters by trade.
Dead Space is definitely survival horror, but sci-fi flavored.
They're using their grammar skills there.
For one of the nicer instances of the genre, try Call of Cthulhu. You spend a good half of the total game without *any* bullets or guns at all. Good atmosphere, although the graphics are no longer state of the art.
Unfortunately, it seems there will be no sequel. It probably wasn't FPS-like enough to sell very well.
These new awful action games have absolutely nothing to do with Survival Horror anymore. They need their own genre title.
Furthermore, if you're actually scared by these games... you're a lamer on a hilarious level. Don't play Silent Hill.
Come on, SHODAN and her minions crept me out!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Survival Horror, to my mind, was a combination of two types of games. The most obvious is horror. Zombies and other scary creatures wandering about. However, the presence of horror enemies does not necessarily make something survival horror.
Take Painkiller. Painkiller is an old school First Person Shooter. You see something, and you shoot it. However, it was creative in the nature of it's scary looking and scary moving enemies. Since each level was different, not all stand out as horror, but the Asylum creeped me out enough.
The thing about Painkiller though is that you are, yourself a scary, unstoppable killing machine. The game makes it easy to start up again where you died, you get tons of power ups and ammo, and your main weapon is an unlimited ammo flying cuisinart. This is actually not uncommon for games, or for horror themed games.
Now, people are used to the original Resident Evil as survival horror, and it is, but there are more also more recent games that emphasize the other part of survival horror, survival.
Take Haunting Ground. In Haunting Ground your character is essentially a completely helpless teenage girl with no really effective way of fighting the horror. The big game mechanic? Well, when a big, horrifying guy comes along, hide under some furniture and wait for him to give up in frustration and leave. You don't have an effective way to fight back.
Now, the newer Resident Evils seem to have abandoned this to an extent. I haven't played 5, in 4 it is possible to run out of ammo. However... you do a lot more shooting than running in my opinion. At least I do... my approach to the original Resident Evil was to avoid using weapons as much as possible. Run past the zombies, try to avoid going dangerouse places... when dogs enter a room get to the door as quick as possible and don't go back unless you have too. For me a successful, "room run" meant I ran through the room without getting bit and without using up precious ammo. Shooting at something and missing, on the other hand was (for the game) annoying or even depressing, especially with rarer ammo for stronger weapons.
The original Resident Evil was meant to evoke the feeling of the original Dawn of the Dead. Part of the fun of that movie was thinking about post apocalyptic survival. It wasn't just about scary zombies, it was about finding supplies and safe places to stay.
Left4Dead is kind of a mix, I think it tries to evoke survival horror by requiring you to rely on your team, limits on some kinds of ammo and health, and the fact that attacking witches really isn't a good idea.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
*cough* like Half-life *cough*
Really? I honestly don't recall ever having to preserve ammo in Half-Life. Maybe it's just been too long since I've played it but...
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
I've noticed the same trend - except it hasn't been only within the past couple of years.
Games have gotten ridiculously easy, yet I'm honestly not sure what they should do to help this. They could move all the difficulty settings up a notch - but then they might alienate an entire user base, possibly one primarily consisting of children. Perhaps the fact that controls and gameplay have become much more complex contributes to this. Playing Super Mario, with a total of 3 buttons, is nothing like playing the average Xbox 360 or PS3 game - lots of buttons, another dimension to control, more places to go, more things to do. But it does still stand to reason that games should at least OFFER a more difficult level of gameplay - games like FEAR 2.
Perhaps part of it has more to do with my "evolution" as a gamer; maybe I'm simply much better in my ability to play games and execute the necessary tactics than when I was younger. Games HAVE become much easier - but as I mentioned, things have become quite complex and perhaps that evens out for younger or less adept gamers.
Another thing that has become cumbersome is the fact that developers are starting to draw things out in order to make a little more money - which is a mixed bag. On one hand I like an entire sequel to play, but sometimes a storyline doesn't need to be stretched out over THREE titles (See: Halo). On the other hand I understand that they aren't making games for my enjoyment alone (or possibly at all), but rather it is simply their business. That still doesn't justify releasing the same thing several times on practically the same engine... even Half-Life 2 has become a huge cash cow. I would rather wait another 5-7 years for a new engine and new gameplay mechanics than pay $20-30 (making that a total of $60-90, plus the original cost of HL2) per EPISODE.
I played the demo for RE5 and for me it doesn't advance the series from RE4 years ago; RE5 feels like RE4 will nicer graphics. I think Capcom missed an opportunity to further develop the genre they popularized. The control scheme from RE4 was definitely an improvement over past series but now 4 years later it just feels cumbersome and tedious.
During the parts where you're still in the Black Mesa facility, there's never a shortage of ammo. Even the nuclear weapons are well-stocked. In fact, I remember thinking, "This game has WAY too much ammo."
Then I got to Xen, and the ammo supply all but dried up.
Through excessive use of the crowbar, I managed to still have a reasonable quantity of ammo left when I reached the Nihilanth. I ended up finally killing him by zapping him with the (infinite ammo) bee gun continuously for a minute or two after pouring all my ammo into him. (I imagine it's easier if, unlike me, you manage to survive his "teleport" attack; the rooms you get teleported to are full of ammo, the problem is just surviving the floaty death that comes with it long enough to teleport back.)
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
Speaking as a professional game developer...
Games have gotten ridiculously easy....
There are many reasons for this. As you point out, one reason is that you're getting better at the types of games you enjoy. You also understand the conventions of the games you play. One time my sister-in-law was amazed as I was racing through a game it took her months to figure out. I knew what to look for while solving the puzzles based on other, similar games I've played.
There has been a trend in development to make games easier to appeal to a wider audience. One problem you get with some games is that if you build them to be challenging to fans of that type of game, they tend to exclude less hardcore players and newbies. FPSes were like this for a while; unless you had developed precise twitch ability, you weren't going to be able to play the game very well.
A difficulty setting is something that is really tough to balance out, though. The simplest way of modifying internal numbers (enemies get more hps, player does less damage, etc.) doesn't necessarily make the game harder, it just makes the game play differently. Truly changing the difficulty requires developing the game in a different way. In most cases, "harder" just means "less fair, easier to fail" which feels frustrating for a lot of players.
MMOs also show this trend, too. My own game, Meridian 59, is pretty hard-core. It's also a PvP game, which has its own level of brutality associated with it. But, play M59 and then play WoW and you'll see a world of difference in difficulty (as well as graphics, UI, etc.)
My thoughts,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog