The Essence of Nightmares
I'll admit straight away that I didn't grow up on horror. No sir, I grew up on
Pokemon,
Final Fantasy and (sometimes)
Mario. In fact, the horror genre was the one thing keeping me up at night. I never worried about the "bogeyman" in my closet, or demons under my bed; reading a four page article on the first
Silent Hill (when it was first released) in a PlayStation magazine was the sole provider of countless nightmares for a long,
long time.
Why do I like horror games now? It's something that I'll never truly be able to describe. There are a multitude of reasons, but I guess that...
I like to be scared. It's a weird statement, sure, but the rush of adrenaline from running away from monsters, and coming face-to-face with ghosts and other nasties is exhilarating.
I'm older now, and I like to think I've become
slightly more resilient to horror. That being said, I still find myself having to stare fear in the eye, pick up my Wiimote, and force myself to play games such as
Fatal Frame IV.
Silent Hill 2: King of Survival Horror
So I've lived through the PlayStation 1 and 2 eras. While the PlayStation 1 had a fair share of survival horror (
Silent Hill,
Resident Evil 1, 2, 3,
Alone in the Dark), I rank the PS2 as the pinnacle of survival horror perfection. Okay, so it's fair to say that I'm in love with
Silent Hill 2 (I'm sure you've noticed that by now), and frankly... no horror will ever live up to the oppressive, freaky and disturbing world of
Silent Hill. The very first
Silent Hill was pretty creepy for its time, but unfortunately it just hasn't aged well. On top of that, the storyline was rubbish -- something about a cult and old gods, resurrecting demons, and a really evil little girl. The problem was that I just didn't care enough. The main character, Harry Mason, was pretty lifeless and it was kind of hard to feel for him. Along came
Silent Hill 2, introducing a brand-new character and a storyline that was completely abstract from the original. Sure, it took place in the same town, but it was a different part of the town, with no crazy cults in sight. It made the town itself the enemy. You didn't know what you were fighting until you realized it was your own inner fears. The whole game was a psychological mind-screw.
So... Why is it that nine years since
Silent Hill 2 was released, nothing has toppled the game from it's survival horror throne? It's hard to pin down one reason, but I do think that ideas in the game industry have run a bit dry. Additionally, developers seem to think that change is good. Okay, so it
is good in certain circumstances, but haven't they ever heard of the phrase, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" In fact, looking at my stack of
Silent Hill games (I have multiple copies of every
Silent Hill game to date, shut up -- I'm not addicted), and while I enjoyed each and every one of them, I can nitpick at things wrong with every game after the second.
Silent Hill 3. The game took place outside of the town of Silent Hill for the most part. The atmosphere wasn't the same. In addition, it was the sequel to the first game, bringing back the silly story of cults, etc.
Silent Hill 4. While the story was interesting enough, fighting ghosts was kind of stupid. Also breakable weapons are just a big no-no.
Silent Hill: Homecoming. Too Americanized, you could dodge-roll and for some odd reason Pyramid Head was in it, which made no sense other than to please fans.
Silent Hill: Origins. Breakable weapons again. I finished the game without fighting a single enemy except when I was forced to. Also possessed over a hundred weapons, including microwave ovens, toasters and television sets. 'nuff said.
Silent Hill Shattered Memories. Alternate universe, doesn't count.
What Makes a Survival Horror Scary?
I'd like to bring your attention to survival horror game controls. You want to know what makes a survival horror tense and frightening? Take a good look at the controls. I know most people are quick to label the very original
Resident Evil and
Silent Hill control schemes as ancient and outdated, but do you really think that the games would have had the same level as tension if you could dodge-roll, flip around and sprint like a ninja? No, I didn't think so. The games were tense BECAUSE you moved like a tank; when you saw a wave of zombies or bunch of monsters coming toward you, there was something insanely scary about having the mobility of a brick in mud. Frankly,
Silent Hill: Homecoming lost a lot of it's scariness when you realized you could dodge-roll down the street.
Claustrophobic environments are also a huge factor in survival horror. A good example is in the image I have above.
Resident Evil (the originals, at least) had perfect small, cramped locations. It worked too; zombies were slow and couldn't do much on their own so what was the solution to make these enemies scarier? Easy, you'll have to combat multiple zombies in tight, narrow corridors.
Dead Space, one of the best survival horrors of this generation (despite having a little bit too much action for my liking) does install a sense of claustrophobia into players quite well. A long, narrow corridor with monsters waiting around every bend was as tense as it could get. Not to mention the creepy noises you hear around the lonely spaceship, devoid of (human) life, were unsettling.
Another personal favorite horror game of mine,
Fatal Frame IV for the Wii, did narrow corridors and tank-like controls extremely well, making it the only survival horror of this generation that has remained mostly unchanged from it's predecessors. Unfortunately, Nintendo decided against bringing the game outside of Japan. You can get an English-subtitle patch for free, but you'll have to import the game. I did a review of it
here, if you're interested.
Fear is probably the biggest factor in a survival horror. Yeah, it sounds obvious, right? Right. I'm not just talking about fear of obvious things such as monsters coming towards you, but also fear of the unknown. Easily one of the creepiest parts to the beginning of any game was the run to the town of Silent Hill at the start of Silent Hill 2. Not only is the fog is so thick you can't see anything, but you hear odd creepy noises and footsteps as if something is following you. It's hard to tell just from a video, playing it alone in the dark is the creepiest way to experience it, but check it out:
Why Are Survival Horror Games Devolving?
Short answer: action is mainstream. Survival horror is, unfortunately, a niche genre. While it has dedicated fans, action is naturally going to be the best seller. Take the
Resident Evil series as the best example in devolution: the first three games were what defined the survival horror genre, yet
Resi 4 was almost entirely action; ditching zombies for angry, infected Spaniards and putting more focus on run-and-gun.
Resi 5 is the final step in the devolution of the
Resident Evil series. Not only are zombies absent, but the game is also played at day-time, in the sun. I'm of the opinion that for a horror game to be scary it must either be entirely indoors, night time, or so foggy that you can't see any sunlight. As humans, we are all instinctively afraid of the dark as children. Naturally, sunlight is happy and good. See where I'm going with this?
Don't get me wrong though, I did enjoy
Resi 5, regardless of how the storyline got worse and worse as it progressed. Frankly, I wasn't a HUGE fan of the original
Resident Evil games, so I do believe that they needed to evolve. HOWEVER, evolving is taking a step-forward in genre, not a side step into a different one altogether.
I mentioned
Dead Space before. It's a fantastic game, really. Despite being a sci-fi survival horror, the sense of isolation was immense. Rather than play some super-soldier space marine, you play as an engineer. Sure, you do get bad-ass weapons later on, but to start with, you have an engineer's cutting tool.
Dead Space a good example of a series, which will eventually devolve into action entirely. Why?
Because Visceral games said it would. That's not to say
Dead Space 2 won't be a bad game, I have my copy pre-ordered, but what is disappointing is seeing another
Resi 4 to
Resi 5 case -- at least there's no happy sunshine in space, right?
So horror game fans, what are your thoughts on the direction the survival horror genre is taking? Are you content with horror games taking on the action sub-genre, or does your sense of nostalgia cause you, like me, to sit on your couch and play PS2 survival horror games over and over?
About The Author - Dom is a New Zealander, and an aspiring video game journalist. He works part-time at EBgames and studies full-time at University. He's mildly cynical about everything, but loves the video game industry as a whole, regardless of how much he enjoys tearing into it from time to time.
Or in real life hahaha