Are you sick of fake "survival" horror games?

Okay, this generation of gamming is lacking in the Horror department imo. Sure there are games like RE5, Deadspace, Condemed, ect ect. But something that has gotten under my skin lately is that whenever a game comes out that is suppose to be a Survivavl Horror game, it always just ends up being a Horror game.

See lets look at Deadspace, that game is apparently a "Survival" Horror, but I want to know where is the Survival element? People argue with me when I say Deadspace is not a Survival Horror game, and that it is just a Horror game. They always ask me why, and whenever I say it is because you can purcahse weapons ect ect they get angry and they sit there and try to beat around the bush telling me it is still a Survival Horror even when in certain "Survival" Horror games you can purchase these things like ammo,weapons,health. It does not make sense, you would think that if a game was going to be a "Survival" Horror they would make you scavange for weapons and ammo, like in Condemed or Resisdent evil 1-3, instead of letting you purchase these items conviently at your local Vendor/Vending Machine.

Now when ever I bring up the old purchase excuse, my arguer always says "yeah well you still have to survive from eniemes". Okay well how about for now on any game you play where you have to fight eneimes we slap on "survival" to it. So mw2 is now a Survival FPS, Red Dead is now a Survival Sandbox and so on and so forth. I would like to see what other people's opinions on the subject are, and thank you for reading lol.

I see you point but as far as Dead SPace is concerned I would say its the best in the genre this gen. I wouldn't use Condemned or the older RE games as examples either, the former since I found it highly disappointing and the latter because they were never very hard or horrifying, although if you had said Silent Hill 1 or 2 were u had a focus on melee early on I would agree.

So the one difference of scrounging for ammo versus buying it from a machine makes it not survival? I disagree. In Dead Space, you're still scrounging for the money to buy these things. It just adds one extra step in the acquisition of ammunition, but uses the same mechanic: you're still scavenging to find ammunition.Gammit10

[QUOTE="Gammit10"]So the one difference of scrounging for ammo versus buying it from a machine makes it not survival? I disagree. In Dead Space, you're still scrounging for the money to buy these things. It just adds one extra step in the acquisition of ammunition, but uses the same mechanic: you're still scavenging to find ammunition.Melpoe

Dead Space is the best survival horror gme I've ever played, hell, its the best game I've ever played. Never has a game made me feel so nervous.

I don't know if I'd classify Dead Space as survival horror, since you're an armoured guy armed to the teeth with powerful guns and telekinetic powers. Sure, there were times when you ran out of ammo, but for the most part you could blast your way through the enemies fairly easily without having to worry too much about 'survival'. It was more of a horror-action game, although even then it wasn't particularly scary, so...it was a horror-themed action-adventure game, like RE5? Planeforger

I found Dead Space to be scary-- that game had me jumping every few seconds and taking it slow out of suspense.

I would go as far to say games like Dead Space aren't even "horror" to begin with. As they use gore, extreme violence and jump scares to "frighten" the audience, when in fact atmosphere, tension and dread play more to being "horrific" than anything that Dead Space uses.

I know that I was more frightened during the hotel sequence in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth than at any point during Dead Space. The major problem with horror games these days is that they have essentially become gory shooters, instead of relying on the tried and true methods of instilling dread in the player (such as making a sound that unsettles the player, but it not having a verifiable source and eventually that source is discovered, and it wasn't what the player expected).

If you are interested, I hear the Penumbra series is especially frightening and stays true to the "horror" ideal (in that once you are discovered, its game over). I haven't got into the games yet, as I am on other games and still need to finish Dark Corners of the Earth.

but i still like my dead space :)

I don't know how anyone could make a game a true "survival" horror.

Having a Sandbox horror - maybe set in a town - with a day/night cycle, where the day time is spent doing missions or quests, gathering ammo and exploring, while the night time sees you running around the landscape, literally trying to survive the enemies (zoms/monsters/Dead Space type things) with your limited ammo (which you gathered from stores in the day) and health (which is determined by your food in your inventory) until the morning comes. Maybe then the game would actually fit the "survival" element. There would have to be some form of tactical thinking and/or rationing of supplies to stay alive, in order to fit with a "survival" tag.

Maybe they should ditch the "survival" tag and stick with "horror". That or massively ramp up the difficulty and heavily restrict our ammo.

I would go as far to say games like Dead Space aren't even "horror" to begin with. As they use gore, extreme violence and jump scares to "frighten" the audience, when in fact atmosphere, tension and dread play more to being "horrific" than anything that Dead Space uses.

I know that I was more frightened during the hotel sequence in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth than at any point during Dead Space. The major problem with horror games these days is that they have essentially become gory shooters, instead of relying on the tried and true methods of instilling dread in the player (such as making a sound that unsettles the player, but it not having a verifiable source and eventually that source is discovered, and it wasn't what the player expected).

If you are interested, I hear the Penumbra series is especially frightening and stays true to the "horror" ideal (in that once you are discovered, its game over). I haven't got into the games yet, as I am on other games and still need to finish Dark Corners of the Earth.

foxhound_fox

[QUOTE="foxhound_fox"]

I would go as far to say games like Dead Space aren't even "horror" to begin with. As they use gore, extreme violence and jump scares to "frighten" the audience, when in fact atmosphere, tension and dread play more to being "horrific" than anything that Dead Space uses.

I know that I was more frightened during the hotel sequence in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth than at any point during Dead Space. The major problem with horror games these days is that they have essentially become gory shooters, instead of relying on the tried and true methods of instilling dread in the player (such as making a sound that unsettles the player, but it not having a verifiable source and eventually that source is discovered, and it wasn't what the player expected).

If you are interested, I hear the Penumbra series is especially frightening and stays true to the "horror" ideal (in that once you are discovered, its game over). I haven't got into the games yet, as I am on other games and still need to finish Dark Corners of the Earth.

smerlus

I know that I was more frightened during the hotel sequence in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth than at any point during Dead Space. The major problem with horror games these days is that they have essentially become gory shooters, instead of relying on the tried and true methods of instilling dread in the player (such as making a sound that unsettles the player, but it not having a verifiable source and eventually that source is discovered, and it wasn't what the player expected).foxhound_fox

Agreed, although despite being brilliant at times, even Call of Cthulhu turned into a shooter in the end.

If you are interested, I hear the Penumbra series is especially frightening and stays true to the "horror" ideal (in that once you are discovered, its game over). I haven't got into the games yet, as I am on other games and still need to finish Dark Corners of the Earth.foxhound_fox

I bought the trilogy a while back and never even finished the first game. Not because it was bad, not at all - more because it was very unsettling. :oops:

I'm still going to be the first person to make an open world zombie game.

If in a game you need to survive in a horror setting then does that not define the therm "Survival horror"?Treflis

the hotel portion in CoC:DcotE played out just like the book or the movie Dagon. it was an amazing part of my gaming life. I'm so glad i barely made it throufh in my first try. i don't think i would have had the same impression if it took 2+ tries to get through it.

smerlus

The only difference between survival horror and horror is in survival horror you not only worry about when you might encounter an enemy, but also about if you will be able to fight that enemy.

In the earlier Resident Evils you not only had to scavange for ammo,you also had to consider if engaging was a good idea because something much worse could be coming.

With horror, you only have to worry about when you will be attacked due to the fact that weapons and ammo are most often lying about everywhere ( RE:5, Dead Space, etc ).

[...] In the earlier Resident Evils you not only had to scavange for ammo,you also had to consider if engaging was a good idea because something much worse could be coming. [...] Gnosis13

I wanna be scared damn it.dakan45

Come on guys, "survival" horror is a marketing term to sell the first Resident Evil, not a genre. At best, it is a sub-genre, and one that is not as popular as it used to be. Also,a genre classification has nothing to do with quality. If a game isn't scary, it doesn't matter. What matters is what the game is trying to do, not whether or not it succeds. If I play Resident Evil and am not scared, it doesn't cease to be a horror game.

Firstly, the term survival horror was coined by Capcom back when they released the first Resident Evil on the PS1 and since then it has been adopted into the gaming lexicon to denote titles that share similar structure and themes. The narrow definition that some of you are claiming as definitive is anything but and as a point of fact the genre is quite broad and always has been, including all sorts of games and mechanics. It's also important to note that Capcom has clearly broadened the notion of what constitutes the genre of survival horror (as it is there right to do given they created the term and evolved the genre) with several of their own offerings, dating as far back as Dino Crisis 2 (much more action-centric than the first) and more recently RE4 and RE5.

This notion that true survival horror must fulfill some sort of pre-determined recipe in order to qualify as authentic is merely the postulations of gamers who don't enjoy the current crop of survival horror titles, which is fine but not particularly academic when deconstructing or analyzing the genre. Some of the definitions being dropped in here suggest that some of you have very specific requirements when categorizing the genre but those specifications have no real weight beyond personal taste because again, we are dealing with a relatively broad genre that includes all manner of games. Recent efforts such as Alan Wake, RE5, Dead Space, and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories are all easily classified as survival horror because they all contain the base elements that qualify them as such, specifically a horror theme and combat/survival mechanics.

What's interesting is that some of you also cite the delineation between different types of horror, including "jump scares" versus more dark, disturbing themes and imagery. I would actually argue that none of the RE games have ever been particularly scary but were more about tension and anticipation rather than instilling any real sense of psychological fear. By contrast, the Silent Hill games have been more about minutia and the subtleties of psychological horror, with an emphasis on surrealist aesthetics rather than the oft-utilized tropes occupying the RE games. Truthfully, these two prominent franchises couldn't be more disparate and yet I would classify both as survival horror along with everything in between because again, genre labels are merely for the purposes of broad and easy classification.

That's my two cents on the issue.

I don't know how anyone could make a game a true "survival" horror.

Having a Sandbox horror - maybe set in a town - with a day/night cycle, where the day time is spent doing missions or quests, gathering ammo and exploring, while the night time sees you running around the landscape, literally trying to survive the enemies (zoms/monsters/Dead Space type things) with your limited ammo (which you gathered from stores in the day) and health (which is determined by your food in your inventory) until the morning comes. Maybe then the game would actually fit the "survival" element. There would have to be some form of tactical thinking and/or rationing of supplies to stay alive, in order to fit with a "survival" tag.

Maybe they should ditch the "survival" tag and stick with "horror". That or massively ramp up the difficulty and heavily restrict our ammo.

KlepticGrooves

STALKER games do that.

Preaty fun running trough a forest at night and seeing glowing dogs all around, then running over an opening and a huge 2 legged meat ball charges at you...
You say "to hell, mah pimp'd M16 with teh foregrip, sight, barrel and stuff will make short work of him"
*ratatatatatata... reload... ratatatata.... reload.... ratatata....*
"crap..."
*run away like a little girl*

And eaven better when a bloodsucker jumps into your face out of nowhere :D.
"ima just walking around... doing nothing"
*zap...*
"................................ oh my ****ing god wat the hell!!!!!"
*game over*

[QUOTE="dakan45"]I wanna be scared damn it.foxhound_fox

I agree with TC, and especially the games he mentioned ^^

Some of those might be Horror games, but there is no "Survival" aspect in them.

You are rarely if ever in a tight posision with ammo, and you pretty much always have ample ability to fight back. Ammo is not scarse atleast not to the point where you have to chose to fight or run.

In deadspace I Pretty much just stuck to 2 weapons upgrading them and restocking on ammo, worked well... too well... it was just a corridor shooter, with nice atmosphere no survival... not at all.

I have not playied alot of this gens horror games through based on this, and I find it embarrasing that small obscure Devs (well pubs more like I take it?) Like Tripwire, grasps the concept better in "fun" games then most survival horror games do.

Example:60 shots for a shotgun vs, 200 enemies... simple concept, works better then most survival games in that aspect, every shot counts, you simply can NEVER afford to waste ammo to make potshots.

It was like that in the good old days in Survival horror games aswell. Alone in the dark (the first ones) Silent hill (combat was sort of a last ditch panic thing to do), RE, and the list goes on. You had limited ammo, and fighting were not really the best course of action on alot of cases.

Nowadays it is pretty much "oh monster" *blows it away* In my oppinion it doessnt just take away the survival aspect, but also the horror aspect?

Afterall what is the scariest? A posessed -insert monster, horrorthemed creature here- Or the big bad man with a huge freakin gun blowing it away with a smile?

well, there was the new silent hill game, where you could not fight at all... I did think that game was fairly good come to think of it ^^

Please, stalker sucks enough as it is. No need to support its terra weak weapons for survival elements points.dakan45

[QUOTE="dakan45"]Please, stalker sucks enough as it is. No need to support its terra weak weapons for survival elements points.muthsera666

[QUOTE="muthsera666"][QUOTE="dakan45"]Please, stalker sucks enough as it is. No need to support its terra weak weapons for survival elements points.dakan45