I don't understand what the deal is with this on NeoGaf.
The title is "With Halloween a Month Away Let's talk about Survival horror games"
Are people really reading our sub discussion thinking, "Oh wow, they deviated a little bit, i'm mad now and plan to inform the mods." I think our discussion is fine. Everyone is so touchy and sensitive.
Yea, maybe. I've been hanging out in plenty of derailed threads recently so maybe I'm extra-touchy lol.
So, going back to it, I label RE4 Action Horror because unless you play on the highest difficulty setting, you rarely have to worry about actually surviving. It's mostly a creepy shooting gallery which is why the parts with the Regenerators stick out like a sore thumb but in a good way. The cool thing about Survival Horror, at least from my understanding, is that it makes you feel week. You maybe get some tools to scrape by but essentially you're ill-equipped for the situation at hand.
That's why in the old RE games, you would be sticking to every wall pressing X, X, X, X, X, X, X [There is a ripped up receipt on the table. Doesn't look interesting], X, X, X, etc. in hope of finding some ammo or that walk back down that corridor is not gonna go down well. With enemies dropping ammo and other goodies in RE4, that's less of an issue, though I'd still say it is one of the few Action Horror titles that manages to strike a good balance most of the time which, I think, is why it is so beloved especially now. I vividly remember people being furious around the time of release in response to the gameplay change. Only now with hindsight can we see how good we still had it, looking at how RE5 and 6 turned out specifically.
Something like Dead Space (1) absolutely thrives on the tension created by the strong atmosphere of constant dread. Jump scares are often brought up as a negative when talking about this game but I thought it worked fantastically. All those vents on the Ishimura, every one of them could possibly harbor the next grizzly Necromorph leaping at your face. It definitely was very much about tension and horroific scenes but at the same time you had an arsenal of awesome weapons with you. You could play this like a straight up shooter. The first one less so but the second and third games encouraged the usage of actual guns over the plasma cutter. Now this is a case where I commend the existence and usage of Achievements/Trophies, just like in Mirror's Edge. In the first game, they told you that it was viable to just stick to the plasma cutter throughout the whole game by tying an Achievement to it. Mirror's Edge did that with the No-Gun achievement which ultimately made the game way better.
The important distinction is the lack of empowerment through weapons or gadgets. The original Resident Evil games are criticized or made fun of for "Tank Controls (TM)" most of the time but I reject that attitude strongly. Constrained movement is what made them more tense affairs. More emphasis on staying alive. They caused your character to feel "paralyzed" (as silly as that may sound). The recent Mikami interview on IGN shed some light on this when he mentioned how he'd tell his team to make the player feel scared first and foremost. With RE4, that directive changed to "make the game fun" as a priority.
Don't know how to cap this off. I think I may have ranted on a bit more than I initially wanted to lol.
