I've played a lot of games of pretty much every genre and style this gen. One look at my Steam, PSN or Live profiles should show that much. The problem is that I play games to be affected, and most games don't get any response out of me. It's mechanical, it's routine. For every legitimately engrossing story like The Last of Us or Red Dead Redemption, it feels like there's at least 70 "soldier guy is angry and must kill all the bad peoples" games surrounding it.
My big thing is that I really like characters. I love stories about people and I love to see them tested, at their best and at their worst. Games with strong, well-designed protagonists almost always keep my interest a hell of a lot more easily than games with "blank slate" heroes that I'm supposed to imagine myself as.
And while there are definitely a lot of games like that, it feels to me like more developers are interested in immersion than storytelling. And I think what I look for in gaming is the exact opposite of immersion.
You do realize that a lot of other people do not come to gaming for story telling, right? That's kind of the complete opposite of what many others in this thread are interested in.
Surely you've played stuff like To the Moon, Lone Survivor, Kentucky Route Zero, Limbo, Bastion, and Dust right? That's the kind of indie stuff that you would probably enjoy. They all do an excellent job telling their stories and offer interesting gameplay to go along with it.
I think you're massively overexagerating the number of "soldier guy is angry" games. Stop for a second and try to list them. There really aren't as many as you seem to think. Some of them happen to be VERY popular but that doesn't mean everyone is making that type of game. Hell, sometimes, you get stuff like Specs Ops The Line which actually kind of spits in the face of that type of scenario while looking rather typical on the surface.
I mean, we have Call of Duty every year, right? Battlefield, Killzone, Gears of War, Resistance, some Tom Clancy stuff maybe, Medal of Honor and perhaps a few attempts out there (like Hour of Victory or Army of Two). When you consider just how many games were made this generation and really look closely you'd see that there really aren't that many of those games out there. There's plenty of shooters but they aren't all these military focused games like you seem to think (especially as of late).
Heck, sometimes things come in packages you'd never expect. Bulletstorm, for instance, told a surprisingly fun story with great characters...which you'd never guess based on the advertisements. It's a shooter, it has angry men, yet it has a sense of fun and great characters along with supremely fun gameplay. I feel like you're getting tripped up by the popularity of Battlefield and Call of Duty and somehow surmising that there are more games of that type than there actually are.
PC survival horror games really don't do anything for me, sadly. Most of them are first person, and most of them rely on jump scares to create tension, whereas I prefer the more "creeping dread" style of horror, like Silent Hill. If there are any good SH-style horror games out on the PC, I might give them a look once my computer is alive again.
Dude, there is nothing like the older Silent Hill games. Those are special games and very few teams could pull that off.
However, I would argue that Amnesia is right up there with bringing the dread. In fact, there is no combat at all in Amnesia and, man, does it rely on creating dread. It is first person, however. What is your issue with that perspective anyways? It's just a different point of view.
