gunsmoke on 7/1/2013 at 17:46
Quote Posted by icemann
When someone says survival horror to me, what springs to mind is Alone in the Dark, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and System Shock. Though for others I'm sure it may be more varied.
Well, yeah, but the problem is games like Resident Evil 5/6 get labelled as SurHor now too... Hell, I heard someone call DooM 3 survival horror.
Anybody remember that game(Project: Zero) Fatal Frame? Damn, the 2nd FF and the 1st (Forbidden)Siren game were intense! THOSE were a nightmare and Siren was the epitome of SurHor.
june gloom on 7/1/2013 at 21:08
Fucking hoopleheaded cocksuckers need to learn that surhor has specific characteristics. It's not just some label you can slap on just anything remotely scary.
I've had to break it down for 242 a million times so I'll just copy and paste from the last time. With some of the exasperation taken out of course.
Scarce resources. Ammo and health are difficult to come by, and you need to make every shot count.
Inventory management. You can only carry so much, so you have to know what to bring while leaving some room for new, important items.
Difficult combat. Your enemies are difficult to bring down.
Strong horror theme. Duh. Note that this is NOT meant to be subjective, i.e. how scary an individual player finds it. It refers more to scary situations with scary monsters in a way that increases tension. Alone this doesn't qualify; but it's absolutely essential in conjunction with the others.
Noticeable lack of NPCs. It's just you and the monsters for most of the game.
Puzzle-solving. Not every surhor has this, but it's in enough of them that it's worthy of mention.
Individualized enemy encounters. You're often facing no more than a few monsters at a time.
Here are some things that survival horror is NOT defined by:
How scary the individual player finds it. Resident Evil isn't scary like Silent Hill, but it's still survival horror. Fatal Frame put me to sleep. It's still survival horror. Doom 3 had scary bits. It's not survival horror.
Country of origin. Japan made good survival horrors back in the day, yes, but the entire Japanese games industry is in decline, and a decent survival horror in the classic mode coming out of Japan is very, very rare, nowadays, in part because they tend to be more action-focused now.
henke on 7/1/2013 at 21:34
So does it have to meet every one of those points, or just most? Is Amnesia survival horror? Pretty sure it hits all of the points except for the combat which was impossible instead of difficult.
ZylonBane on 7/1/2013 at 21:49
"1103127"???
june gloom on 7/1/2013 at 22:09
Quote Posted by henke
So does it have to meet every one of those points, or just most? Is Amnesia survival horror? Pretty sure it hits all of the points except for the combat which was impossible instead of difficult.
Amnesia counts, yes, as does Clock Tower. There's going to be exceptions to everything, but at least most of the notes have to be hit.
The Suffering for example is an edge case -- it hits many of those notes, but you're often facing multiple enemies at once and the gameplay operates on standard shooter mechanics. Stalker is another edge case -- resource management and small-scale, but intense, battles are the norm, the setting is gloomy and sometimes disturbing, sometimes outright terrifying, but the game is essentially a milsim with mutants and there's lots of people around.
icemann on 8/1/2013 at 03:58
Quote Posted by gunsmoke
Well, yeah, but the problem is games like Resident Evil 5/6 get labelled as SurHor now too... Hell, I heard someone call DooM 3 survival horror.
The second that Resident Evil ditched zombies and switched to talking people with parasites it stopped being survival horror to me.
june gloom on 8/1/2013 at 04:23
That's 'cuz it ain't survival horror. It doesn't hit enough of the characteristics I listed.
Phatose on 8/1/2013 at 04:34
Out of curiosity, can you think of any games that meet your criteria where the difficult combat is due to the enemies being tough, and not due to the player being weak or otherwise severely limited? Both Silent Hill and Resident Evil were difficulty largely due to the fact the players controlled like tanks.
june gloom on 8/1/2013 at 08:05
Edge case The Suffering. It's very easy to die.
Afraid of Monsters and Cry of Fear are two other examples. Sure, they're first person, but fighting enemies safely is difficult, especially if you're trying to do what you're supposed to do and be conservative with your ammo.
Sulphur on 8/1/2013 at 08:11
I don't see why inventory tetris needs to be part of the definition, really. I suppose you could add it as a corollary to scarce resources - it's just an abstracted idea for limited carrying capacity, and that's been used in plenty of other genres.
