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The evolution of the "Survival Horror" Genre
DiosEol
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What started with maybe Sweet Home on the nes, then was redefined by Alone In The Dark to be polished by both Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
There. That's at least for me the guideline for the survival horror genre.
Yet within these games, the genre has suffered many evolutions.
First, the emphasis was put on suspense (Alone in the Dark) then came the notion of "survival" with the first 3 Resident Evil's extreme attachment with the scarcity of bullets among other gamefactors. Silent Hill draw from that while adding a definitive and unique psychological dimension to the game.
That would be the evolution of survival up until Resident Evil 4 came. With that game a new evolution took place. The premise had changed: survival, of course, but with an undeniable arcade-action twist, that made it clear was moving in another direction. Silent Hill 5, while in a lesser degree, has become too more arcade oriented.
Personally, I love both Resident Evil 4 and though I haven't played 5, it seems more of the same so bring it. But I definitely miss the classic survival so to speak, and playing Umbrella Chronicles I realized that even more.
Where is this genre gonna go next? More action? A return to the basics?
There. That's at least for me the guideline for the survival horror genre.
Yet within these games, the genre has suffered many evolutions.
First, the emphasis was put on suspense (Alone in the Dark) then came the notion of "survival" with the first 3 Resident Evil's extreme attachment with the scarcity of bullets among other gamefactors. Silent Hill draw from that while adding a definitive and unique psychological dimension to the game.
That would be the evolution of survival up until Resident Evil 4 came. With that game a new evolution took place. The premise had changed: survival, of course, but with an undeniable arcade-action twist, that made it clear was moving in another direction. Silent Hill 5, while in a lesser degree, has become too more arcade oriented.
Personally, I love both Resident Evil 4 and though I haven't played 5, it seems more of the same so bring it. But I definitely miss the classic survival so to speak, and playing Umbrella Chronicles I realized that even more.
Where is this genre gonna go next? More action? A return to the basics?
'' The fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh ''
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Helloween can attest.
I agree, and I'd even say it constituted one the latter underground trends of "survival" games. I can think of Penumbra and a russian game called pathologic. Very low budget, yet very inmersive.
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Dead Space is a good starting point.
They ain't zombies. They're lame ass Nemesis wannabes.
Nurse Yukie has your prescription for terror.
Currently there are a few games that still hold to the tenants of true survival horror. Alone in the Dark (ugh!), Silent Hill Homecoming (darn you, western devs!), the Fatal Frame series (whee!) and Siren: Blood Curse (:^:).
Siren's made by a bunch of the folks responsible for the first Silent Hill. Resident Evil has evolved beyond its roots, for weal or woe, and action-horror is no longer the sole property of the Doom series. But there are still some games that remember what a really scary experience is about (and sometimes, more importantly, not about).
Is Silent Hill different? I've heard that the atmosphere is really something, and wish that RE would move in that direction.
I don't think a lack of ammo/skills should be necessary to be deemed survival horror. Dead Space seems to have fixed that problem, never played it though (too scary!).
This, basically. Resident Evil was the progenitors of 3D survival horror, but it's moved beyond that now. The reins have been adequately taken up by other series, though Silent Hill also seems to be in its twilight. Otherwise you get horror as a sort of tertiary element in other games, like Bioshock.
The problem is a lot of survival horror these days appears to be J-horror, and that doesn't always make it overseas. I'd kill to get a translation of Nanashi no Game, for one.
I didn't play 3, but 1 & 2 had downright terrifying moments.
If you want to put it that way, then the whole RE series and games like Dead Space follow the same tack. Survival isn't really much of a concern when you're some grizzled supersoldier fighting ugly things in a dark place.
Incidentally, the big-name survival horror franchises have a habit of dropping you into the shoes of some yutz who probably couldn't hold a gun the right way at first. This is sort of subverted in Siren 2, where you get a couple of really professional and well-armed soldier types who nevertheless crack under the pressure in a really big way.
What constitutes a survival horror game? Should there even be a "survival horror" genre, rather than just plain "horror?" Is scarcity of weapons and ammunition really important to horror in games? Can a game be scary if you're loaded up with bullets?
And what, exactly, is scary about these games? Is it a sense of helplessness, of isolation? Do bad controls inherently make for a more terrifying experience, or are they just frustrating?
Personally, I think none of those ideas are important to horror if it's well executed. I can be loaded down with numerous guns, a bunch of ammo, and have a couple buddies with me, and I'll still be scared shitless if the atmosphere is powerful enough. Hell, I might be more scared if I had AI characters with me, since they might notice things I wouldn't, jump at things I didn't see, get freaked out and nervous and increase the tension
Oh, and music! How much music should a horror game really have? Should it have those stupid music stings that horror flicks like to use in excess nowadays, where the music swells then goes away then goes BOOM just before the scary thing happens, thus telegraphing and ruining the moment they were trying so hard to build up? I say no, but then I think about Silent Hill 2 and Bioshock and I know that music can be used to enhance the atmosphere. Still, I think quiet is best for cultivating tension and a sense of unease, especially during action sequences when you'd expect a fast paced tune to kick in
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Stings can work really well sometimes. They've been used in horror movies for years for a reason. Maybe it's a bit cheap, but it can really turn something that was a little surprising into a real jump out of your seat with your heart in your throat moment if the proper tension has been built. They don't always work and sometimes cheapen it, though. I can think of a few instances like that from Dead Space. But generally it comes at the same time as the scare, hightening its shock factor by adding a loud, screechy auditory element to the visual scare.
When it comes to music, though, it really depends on the nature of it, the setting, and how the music is presented to the player.
Silence can work to build tension and unease in a player, but at the same time, a complete lack of silence can always work just as well. One of the things I intially felt uneasy about in Bioshock, for instance, is that you have this ruined, nearly dead underwater city. It was sparsely populated and it felt like I was being stalked to some degree. But no matter where I went, it was never quiet. There was noise everywhere and any of those noises could have been something dangerous or any of those noises could hide the sound of something dangerous. The same thing occurs in many areas of Dead Space.
Still, it depends on the nature of the atmosphere being built. It's difficult to come up with hard and fast rules when the setting and what the developers are trying to accomplish dictates so well what can and can't be done.
Silent Hill has always freaked the fuck out of me, and let me tell you, it wasn't because of lack of ammunition or bad controls.
I think that series (before Homecoming, at least, never played it but the clips look way too hectic) perfected survival-horror sound for pretty much the whole genre. You have its frantic music, which usually sounds like a nightmarish slurping multi-armed abomination from Hell banging together chunks of metal and the skulls of your loved ones, slower-paced percussive music for cut scenes and so on, and dead silence for the rest, which was the worst of all. I remember walking through the abandoned apartment complex in SH3 and hearing a series of thumping noises while peeking into a dark bathroom. They were totally innocuous, but they still raised my pulse. Same goes for the somewhat less innocuous noises in the sewer level - a woman's scream, running footsteps and the sounds of tearing meat. Thanks, Yamaoka, now those images are in my head forever!
The power of all horror resides chiefly in suggestion and ambiguity. There's absolutely nothing you can show outright that'd be capable of topping some of the things people can do to themselves with their own imagination.
System Shock 2 definitely has a lot of traits, like almost never having enough supplies to get by on.
Haunting Ground was also an intense game. Not much replay value, but it had good moments.
This is how I've always felt
I've never thought that stings were any good at all. They're a cheap trick used to make you jump out of your seat at the best of moments and sit there bored out of your mind at worst. The horror genre of games and movies is filled with predictable, boring, poorly executed stings that always manage to sound a moment or two before the actual scare happens, and with the buildup, it becomes completely predictable and rote long before the actual moment arrives
The best scary moments in games, I think, are when the game is fucking with you. When you're reading something and the text randomly changes and flashes between the normal words and words encouraging you to kill, or when you're walking through a corridor in an apartment building, everything's dead silent, and all of a sudden a door in front of you opens. Not suddenly, slowly, and without a sound beyond a light creaking. That is effective, that is scary.
Hell, I think there's a moment in Silent Hill 2 where you walk into a room, nothing is there, and then you use the door and it says it's locked. You try it again and it's still locked. And you run around the tiny room freaking the fuck out trying to find a key or a way out and just waiting for something to jump out and rape you to death, and then you try the door again and it opens just fine
Shit like that drives me up the wall in the best possible way
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
From what I know, that's what happens in Nanashi no Game, which is basically a detective story about a Nintendo DS RPG that kills people somehow. You have to occasionally play the game as part of the story.
Only with more subtlety, I'd imagine.
It is a genre that was basically created a certain way because of technical limitations, and now that there are far fewer, we are seeing a shift in the way they are handled and having bits of other genres spliced in there.
I like Resident Evil 4 and 5 way more than any of the other RE games because it was actually fun to play, while still being scary. They have the atmosphere, but have a decline in jump scares. They make up for it with the camera, which makes you feel like you're right there and makes dying scary and more visceral rather than feeling like you're watching it on a screen.
I think the tank controls and limited ammo do help make those games scary. I thought Dead Space looked fun, but I didn't get the same feeling of dread from it that I do from the RE games.
Silent Hill is scary, but I don't think they're that fun to play. They're more of games I like to watch other people play and not have to do the wandering and running over and over again.
is the game constantly scaring and/or creeping you the fuck out?
If you have said yes to both those questions, congratulations, you are playing a survival horror game!
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Another game that I thought did a very good job with atmosphere was Doom 3. I'm not talking about the monster closets because everyone knows you get used to them and you actually start turning around before the walls open up because they become so predictable. I'm talking about how everything in the facility is falling apart and you really feel like you're almost entirely alone and the only other living people are on the other side of the base from you. There's moments of pure silence only broken up by the hiss of nearby machinery that really creep you out, and I absolutely loved the audio logs for making me feel like I'm all alone in the universe's biggest shithole. Hearing those people talk about how awful this place was even before the shit hit the fan and then realizing they're not even alive anymore really helped make the atmosphere scary as hell for me. I honestly did not want to be in that place anymore and I wanted the hell out.
Anyways, want to know the single best survival horror moment in RE?
Playing ReMake after playing RE for years.
They changed some scares just enough to really frighten you. You think, oh, wait a tick, why didn't I get jumped right there, and then it happens two seconds later.
Or Crimson Heads in general.
Or even better, running away from crimson heads, going through a door, and having them bust it down.
That game knew how to do a jump scare.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
I didn't find that at all scary when I played through it, because I was too busy thinking how it was the bastard child of Doom and System Shock and as good as neither.
Which incidentally brings me to a good point: For those of a more stalwart constitution, you basically have to consent to be scared. There's nothing really inherently dreadful about RE4, but OTOH, if you put yourself in the right mindset it can be scary. The game has to work at it as well, but horror is a collaborative effort between the author and the reader.
Forbidden Siren - well. I was playing it in a pitch-black room with a friend. Tense as hell. And then one of us knocked the controller, sending the game into static that put the fear of God into us
On a side note, I also find it interesting that 2 of the 3 big name founders of the genre, Silent Hill & Alone in the Dark, have so completely lost their way.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Rich Cook.
PSN ID - WildSpoon
If you are on the minority, then I am too, because I for one wish RE would go back to his old survival ways.
Resident Evil 2, now that's a perfect survival horror game. It had everything.
I would go so far as to say that all of the big name founders of this genre have lost their way. Yes, Resident Evil included. While the control scheme improved for RE4 (yet, didn't improve at all for RE5) the series has lost whatever it was that made it scary. In both RE4 and RE5, I never felt any hint of horror.
However, in Dead Space, I was fucking shitting my pants on a regular basis. I really think that the evolution or in some cases de-evolution of the survival horror genre really is a great indicator of how Western developers are overtaking the East in terms of giving gamers what they want.
Japanese devs generally seem very set in their ways and it's really showing in this generation. They seem to be taking very few risks. Next gen graphics with last gen gameplay is really wearing thin.
I disagree. RE was always the most action oriented of the old horror game series so RE4 felt like a natural evolution of that focus to me. Can't speak for RE5 since I haven't gotten it yet (although I hope to do so soon). As for the never feeling horror in RE4 comment, that might just be a result of experience; I know my friends who were new to the horror genre found RE4 absolutely terrifying.
EDIT: Horror is one of the most subjective of all emotions. I know many people find the Fatal Frame series to be one of the scariest series around, but I find it pretty tame. Ghosts just don't scare me, I guess.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
What does that leave? The Siren remake was a great entry into the genre, but outside of sequels to more action oriented titles (RE, Dead Space), what do we have on the horizon. I get the feeling that "low action" horror titles just aren't profitable anymore.
Speaking of System Shock 2 and other survival horror games, I'll tell you what my biggest goal is - finding diaries. Who doesn't remember "Itchy. Scratch." from the first Resident Evil? Those polygonal zombies and wet nurses in System Shock 2 aren't scary alone; it takes audio logs from crew scared shitless to really make them freaky. I think I finished Doom 3 just to find all the audio logs and listen to the woe afflicting the station. On top of that, graffiti in survival horror games is a kind of diary. Protagonists received a few freaky warnings written in blood on the walls in the first three Silent Hill games.
Diary entries really, really spice up the survival horror genre and are essential, in my mind. Finding a letter in a game from another genre like, say, Max Payne, has a harder time rattling your nerves.
It's actually, "Itchy. Tasty." :P
For me, it's not about bullets or weapons or being virtual he-men. It's about sensory deprivation of the player. Silent Hill 2, Fatal Frame 1 and 2, and the medical pavilion of Bioshock do this very well. The fog in SH2 and Bioshock really close you in, despite being in a large space or even outside. The static from the radio really drowns out any other kind of sound and actually makes it difficult to hear ambient noises.
In Fatal Frame, the camera angles are really what gets me. Not being able to control what you see, and just catching the slightest glimpse in the corner that something is happening. Or the camera changing and you suddenly see something that has been there the whole time, you just couldn't see it from the previous way you were looking.
In all of these, it's the hint that something is there just out of sight. You hear footsteps or laughing or breathing, but you don't know from where and from what. Fear of the unknown is scary. The normal zombies in SH2 aren't scary. They're wearing thongs and army boots. As soon as you see them, they get a healthy dose of a board with a nail in it, and you are on your way. But before you know where they are or what's coming or how many are around you? Those are the true moments of fear that make Survival Horror work in a game.
This is one thing that Dead Space did so well. There were a lot of monsters that didn't interact with you. They'd scamper out of sight instead of rushing you. Or stare down at your from a hole in the ceiling... but not before a piano CLANG or violin SCREECH that makes your heart jump into your throat.
The sound engineers for that game were either geniuses or watched one too many horror flicks.
If there's one thing Dead Space has done for the genre, I think, is prove that you can have a very action oriented focus and actually produce a game that's still terrifying. I don't think it had ever been done so well before. It had always seemed like an either-or sort of thing.
But Dead Space didn't have extremely limited ammo or weak weapons or poor controls. It was a perfectly playable "fun" game. Based on genre tropes, there was then no reason for it to be scary in the least. It has taken an important step towards showing that atmosphere is of the utmost importance, then. You can build tension. You can unnerve players. And you can do that while they're carrying an arsenal of powerful weapons and crates and crates of ammo.
Honestly, I greatly enjoy the move away from fixed cameras and terrible controls. They don't mean anything. So much can be accomplished without them.