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."

Comments

really, no Left 4 Dead?

[DragonTHC]

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.

Re:really, no Left 4 Dead?

[SirLurksAlot]

Left 4 Dead is THE survival horror game.

I really enjoy that game but I wouldn't call it the epitome of survival horror. Unlimited ammo and the ability to essentially rez your friends near the end of each stage count against it as far as the "survival" bit is concerned. RE4 was a much better example of survival horror. You really had to watch your ammo and fight smart if you wanted to get anywhere.

Really though I'm still waiting for a game to come out that looks at survival horror in the long run. I'd love to see a MMO or RPG-esque zombie game come out. Instead of worrying about the next thing to jump out at you around the corner (though you'd have to worry about that too) you would have to worry about things like having enough food and supplies to outlast the zombie hordes, or having to fight off other people from taking over your shelter. You could work with a team of other survivors to find a safe haven (i.e. clear this area of zombies and defend it). Since your supplies would constantly be depleting another aspect of the game would be leaving the safety of the shelter (while still leaving enough people back there to defend) would be going out into the world to find more. I'm sure there are all kinds of problems with a game like this and I don't know that anyone aside from myself would be interested in playing such a game, but it would be a nice change of pace from the "instant survival horror games" out there right now.

PS - I just finished reading World War Z and The Walking Dead, so it may be somewhat unsurprising that I'd be interested in a game like this ;-)

Re:really, no Left 4 Dead?

[ral8158]

...why don't you start playing expert mode, and we'll talk about unlimited ammo.

Re:really, no Left 4 Dead?

[centuren]

Instead of worrying about the next thing to jump out at you around the corner (though you'd have to worry about that too) you would have to worry about things like having enough food and supplies to outlast the zombie hordes, or having to fight off other people from taking over your shelter

I had that experience playing Fallout 3 (PC, hardest setting), especially in the first 25% of the game. During that period, it felt like no matter how much I scrounged around for scrap to sell, I never had enough ammo, couldn't afford beds or a doctor, and the food I found had to be rationed for threat of radiation poisoning.

Whenever I set off to a new destination, I basically crept along in the grass. It seemed like if I was attacked in route, I would usually not die, but then I wouldn't have enough health or ammo to accomplish my objective (or really survive at my destination at all).

Eventually I built up a strong arsenal and collected some wealth, but until that turning point, I was constantly worrying about surviving in the long term. I actually started to think about how it would work as an MMORPG, much as you describe (I decided the major obstacle would be defending fortifications against attacks planned while most players are asleep).

Re:really, no Left 4 Dead?

[Fallingcow]

Normal is super easy. I recommend that new players play one or two levels (not campaigns) on normal, then crank it up to advanced and never go back. Experienced FPS players who have someone to guide them around levels ought to just start on advanced.

These days, I only bother playing Expert when I do Coop. Versus is where the big replay value's at, but if you can get some friends together IRL, Expert campaign is wonderful.

It's like this:

- Easy is unplayable. Ugh. Serously, the zombies do like 1 damage per hit, and there's NO friendly fire. The tank dies if just one or two people empty their Uzis into it, and can't possibly get close if you're paying any attention whatsoever, let alone actually hit you. Why bother?
- Normal is easy enough that you can screw around and do dumb things intentionally and still win. Tank still goes down too fast, and even if you've already got one guy dead you should be able to take it with 3 before it hits you at all.
- Advanced will punish you severely for screwing around too much, but legitimate mistakes (and a limited amount of screwing around) can usually be recovered from. Tank is now a threat, especially if you have Tier 1 weapons.
- Expert allows for few or no mistakes, and absolutely zero screwing around. Mess up once and your team might well get wiped out and have to re-start the level. Tank is a monster and will haunt your nightmares.

Some bonus advice: if you haven't started playing Versus yet, I'd recommend waiting until you feel like you've gotten what you want out of Coop; playing Versus for any length of time will ruin the AI infected for you, with the exception of the tank, by making them a total joke and non-threat, even on expert.

Mind you, I'm not 'leet by any means, and I only rarely get sucked in to online games of any sort (the only other online FPS games I've gotten in to in a real way were RTCW:Enemy Territory, ST:Elite Force, and SW:DFII:Jedi Knight), so this isn't some godlike FPS player telling you to play on Expert because Normal is for wimps or anything. I think that a player of average ability should enjoy Advanced more than Normal, given the nature of the game, and after a while will be able to do OK in Expert, which is where the Coop play gets really good IMO.

Re:really, no Left 4 Dead?

[SirLurksAlot]

Zombies are metaphors for death. We all join them in the end.

I always took them to be a metaphor for powerlessness and despair. Once people start to feel they're powerless they can't escape it, and that feeling can spread to others. Survivors are those who refuse to be powerless victims. I've also heard the argument that zombies (at least in modern times) are metaphors for consumerism run rampant. Dawn of the Dead was a good example of this. The world starts to fall apart and where do the survivors end up? In a mall; a classic symbol of the consumer lifestyle. And they're essentially trapped there by their own choice. They have no ability to create new supplies and they know that at a certain point the mall will no longer be able to sustain them. Obviously there are differences between the original and the remake (no biker gang to ruin their sanctuary in the new one), but the idea of consumerism run rampant still fits.

Then again I always hate reading too much into my zombie fiction ;-) Give me my poorly defended farm houses and overrun cities and I'll be happy.

Re:really, no Left 4 Dead?

[4D6963]

Left 4 Dead is more a casual "shoot a hundred zombies a minute" type of game. I play it when I have 5 minutes to kill, choose a random level, and get shooting and pistol whipping like I'm a factory worker. It's not because it has zombies that it's survival horror now is it? Cause besides that Duke Nukem 3D is probably more like survival horror then, and actually scarier by the way.

try Call of Cthulhu

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:try Call of Cthulhu

[Steauengeglase]

The Devs imploded before it came out the door.

Re:No

[The Orange Mage]

I agree on the lack of scare in these newer games, but I'd like to have my scares while having some semblance of decent controls. The genre essentially says "Here's the game, here's the archaic and awful controls with which we cripple you in order to make the game scarier."

Survival Games

[sesshomaru]

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.

Re:No

[Toonol]

True, RE has historically had crippling controls. Fixing their controls with RE4 and moreso with RE5 isn't a problem in and of itself, but I think the threat from monsters should have been cranked up correspondingly.

Want to know a survival horror game? The first time I played Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. I approached it as a first person shooter for about one minute; then I realized that one bullet from a unseen assailant can instantly kill me. From that point on, I crept forward as carefully as in any zombie-infested underground research lab. A survival horror game loses its horror if you ever get to the point of seeing a monster onscreen and thinking "I can kill that, no problem." A single zombie in the middle of an empty room should still make you nervous.

Re:No

[Haeleth]

That's RE, not the genre. There have been survival horror games with pretty good controls; System Shock 2 comes to mind. (Of course, there's no way a control scheme like that could be made to work on a console.)

Re: The Survival of Survival Horror

[genw3st]

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.

Re: The Survival of Survival Horror

[Psychochild]

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,