Survival Horror part 1

So, today I thought I'd talk about the decline about the survival horror genre of video games. Now I'm not gonna tell you the whole history of survival horror games, because that'd be just as fucking boring for me as it would for you. Instead I'm gonna tell you where most of these games go wrong nowadays, in my opinion. I'll mostly use the Dead Space-series and Alan Wake as the bad examples, as those are the "scary" games I most recently played. But don't get me wrong, I loved them all, they're just not particularly horrorly. Or survival-ly. Or scarily. They're just kind of third person shooterly.

Let's start with what makes something scary: The suspense. The constant anticipation that something bad is about to happen and when you least expect it, it happens. All it takes to achieve this effect is to have an eerie music playing softly in the background.

What Alan Wake does on the other hand, is to have no or little music playing at all. The suspenseful music is only there when you're fighting monsters, and this alone removes nearly all of the dread from the game. Because the moment this music stops playing, I know I'm safe. No other monster is going to pop up before I hear the song playing again. I never anticipate a monster hiding behind every door I open. I never feel that a monster can jump at me anytime. Now, you could argue that using these kind of sound queues could fool the viewer (or the gamer in this case) by having jump-out scare moments, because you think you know when to expect it. Alan Wake on the other doesn't even do that. The music starts, you kill monsters, the music stops. You're safe.

The other part where survival horror fail, is the survival part. Let's use the Resident Evil Remake as an example. It had clunky controls, the bad camera made sure you never really knew where you were aiming and you were always short on ammo. With the exception of ammo depletion, I don't think the former issues were intended, but they still added a lot to the game. It made you feel like you were struggling for survival. In Dead Space on the other hand, you're a 6 feet tall gorilla in an armor made of steel, wielding a weapon intended for cutting fucking space rocks.

The control is fluid with an over-the-shoulder camera view and damn near endless bullets. It makes for a better gameplay, but it doesn't make the game especially scary. Which I thought was intended.

For comparison, what would be more scary in real life: Fighting a zombie while being hungover, extremely near-sighted with a handgun loaded with only one clip or fighting said zombie while wearing an armor made out of Odin's giant balls of steel with a goddamn minigun? Unless you're totally batshit insane or american, my guess is that you chose the former part. Why? Because feeling vulnerable is always scarier than not feeling vulnerable. This is where Dead Space fails. It never, ever makes you feel vulnerable. Whereas in Resident Evil, you constantly feel vulnerable because of the awful controls.

The third and last thing I want to talk about is the jump-out scare moments - and let me tell you, I fucking hate these moments. This because I'm easily startled, but that doesn't make me easily scared. So when are the producers of Dead Space going to realize that "to startle" does not equal "scary"!?

To quote Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation (as the big fanboi of him I am): "I heard people praise how scary it is, but really all it does is startle, and that's not difficult. I was startled when a possum jumped into my window, but that doesn't make it the marsupial answer to Stanley Kubrick." But I will admit that sometimes jump-out scare moments can genuinely be scary. The first time a necromorph suddenly popped out a vent, I shit my pants, and left me dreading for the next time this might happen. But when you startle a person the same way over and over, it stops being scary and instead becomes annoying. And expected. And tedious. I lost count of how many times Dead Space tried to startle me, and after a while, I could predict when and where it would happen next.

For another real life comparison, if someone plays a clever prank on you in real life, you might laugh at it and congratulate the mastermind behind it. If he however tries the same prank on you again every day, for the rest of your life, you're probably plotting how to murder said friend within a week. Or better yet, let's compare it to two other games that used the jump-out-scare moment the right way: Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil. I can only remember one of these moments in each of these games, namely the bathtub-scene and the dogs-out-the-window-scene. They startled me, and left me playing the rest of these games anticipating the next time this would happen. Dreading the next time this would happen. But it never did. They still left a far deeper impression on me, than the million times Dead Space tried to startle me.

Now I could go on and on ranting about the flaws of survival horror of this generation - and I will - but for now, that's all I got to say. Stay tuned for part 2!

(PS. I probably should have proof-read this article, but I can't be arsed because fuck you.)