Personally, I felt that Revelations was worse than Resident Evil 6. Not only is it boring and overly melodramatic, it embodies Capcom's failure to understand what survival horror is. That game was survival horror through the ideas of people that didn't understand it. It was a filtered interpretation of what a horror Resident Evil game should be.
Also, fuck Jessica. What a terrible character (among others).
Lost In Nightmare is not a good comparison because it did not have the same design as the old resident evil games. There were no zombies or any killable enemies for that matter. It may have succeeded in capturing some of the atmosphere built by the environment, but the same would not have happened from combat. The original RE games had their combat intrinsicly tied to the character movement. The clumsy movement and pre-set camera angles that hid parts of the room were what injected tension in the player. Taking that away by adding behind-the-shoulder cameras and free aim would completely destroy that. That is why RE4 plays so differently from its predecessors.
Revelations tried to fuse the two types of gameplay together with mixed success. It worked, but I cannot say that I had that same classic RE feeling while playing the game.
Resident Evil Revelations was a classic RE game made by people who did not understand the formula as much as RE 6 was the same thing in regards a modern RE game. Although Revelations also had bad modern sections when playing as Chris, and they are what turned me off from the game. To me, RE6 is worse.
For me, the horror aspect came from lack of ammunition and the strength of the enemies. I think Revelations brought the behind the shoulder camera to this formula quite well. Instead of requiring clumsy manipulation of the limited controls to actually avoid enemies that you in no way have the resources to kill, they implemented a skill-based dodging system that was quite difficult and more sensible than awkward movements and baiting of enemies, and also had critical impact points on enemies that were dynamic and very difficult to hit (whereas headshots are easy in RE4+). I almost never hit critical targets in that game. It was usually less of a risk to just try and avoid the enemy--something that was always necessary in the oldschool games.
I think this could be applied to the original Resident Evil quite well. Don't make headshots insta-kills (2 or 3 shots at least), and also make the shambling animations of zombies a bit more jarring and random. Enemies such as dogs and crows would actually be more difficult to hit (in the fixed-camera angle games you just need to aim in their direction, when aiming behind the back you have to hit a narrow, running subject that's bouncing up and down). Enemies like hunters remain menacing.
Have the dodging system in place for getting past enemies you don't have resources to kill, and make the resource distribution the same as the original games. Healing items and bullets are very hard to come by. Gunshots have to be made with care, and it takes many bullets to take down enemies.
A lot of enemies and jump scare moments were still logically hidden around corners and behind obstacles. Would still be easy to create the tension of the original.
Really, for me, the thing that sucked the horror out of the franchise was a wealth of bullets and options to take out your enemies. They were not menacing or frightening. After you figured out how to kill an enemy you could always kill them again with ease. The zombies and other enemies were like toys. Shoot them once in the knee and then watch a crazy takedown animation. Revelations successfully toned all of this way down, and if they tried, I think they could easily refine that formula for RE1.
Not that any of this is ever going to happen :|
Yeah, they've already ruined the series, so why can't they retroactively go back and ruin its best games as well?
It would be pretty hard to screw up porting the exact same game but rendered in real time instead of pre-rendered. Not sure why everyone is thinking I said they have to put RE4 controls in the game. Not sure why everyone is thinking it wouldn't be possible to include two control schemes.
