This blog is inspired by a thread about The Last of Us and survival horror, link will be provided at the end... Now, as we all know the survival horror genre hasn't been strong this gen, there has been a few like Silent Hill: Downpour and Condemned 2: Bloodshot... Although with the recent release of Dead Space 3, considered by many a strong title, and it happens to put itself in the survival horror genre, so yay for us? Not quite, at least not from my perspective, if that classify as survival horror these days then the genre is truly in danger. I will not debate if the Dead Space games are good or bad, that's subjective, no I will try and debate about what it means to be a survival horror game.
Dead Space is often seen as this great alien inspired survival horror adventure, I was never sold on it because I'm not a big fan of jump-scares, it's like if that idiot friend some of us have which sometimes jumps out from behind a corner to scare us and then laughs when you twitch then would go on claiming to be a master off horror. Anyway, after Dead Space 2, the game I hear is the best one, became free on Psn Plus I gave it a go. I played it on normal, I always play games on that difficulty since I expect it to be the balanced middle ground, not too easy but not hard enough so I won't enjoy the experience. The game isn't very hard, I think, while the sense of desperately progressing is there, which should be in a survival horror game, I never felt very threatened, and that was the big issue. This is like a more action oriented RE4, uhm, RE5? The issue is that the game wants you to kill everything that crosses your path, therefore it also constantly provides you with the tools and ammo to do so, it must do that, otherwise the game fails on a very fundamental level.
As I walk around in the dark corridors in Dead Space 2, it becomes very obvious when enemies will appear, no, leap up towards me. What this does, is that the game becomes more like a shooting gallery rather than dynamically exploring the empty spaces within the environment. So basically, this game is about walking around, regularly being attacked by larger groups of monsters and shooting them down with the ammo the game provides you with. That my friends, isn't survival horror, what I would change to call it survival horror is give the player even less ammo and let the player avoid enemy encounters, let the player sneak around the monsters instead of forcing you to attack them. How are you ever supposed to be scared by an enemy that you know you can and must kill to proceed? Sure it can be stressful when multiple monsters are charging towards your position, but that doesn't make it horror, that makes it, eh... Stressful survival?
Okay, on that forum thread one person compared Dead Space to CoD, while I don't agree with that exactly it's hard to ignore the fact that they're in the same ballpark. Hear me out, does this sound familiar, proceed through many linear corridors, fight the enemy, pick up more ammo, proceed to set-piece, repeat... That formula doesn't make it CoD, no, but that very formula is the one of action games, not survival horror games. With this, I'm not saying Dead Space doesn't deserve any of the popularity and all it has, all I'm saying that it and all games like it shouldn't be called survival horror, even RE6 didn't classify itself as such. It's like calling Bioshock an RPG for having RPG elements, we don't, we call it an FPS with RPG elements, what would then be wrong with calling Dead Space an action game with survival horror elements? I'm not actually aware if the game is classified an action game officially though, that would make this point kinda invalid, feel free to correct me on this bit, too lazy to do the research here and now.
So that's my opinion on survival horror, and I wish there were more games that did it right... Make monsters something you want to avoid, not charge towards with a big rifle in hand, not saying that you can't make a survival horror game where you do have the option to use some force. I mentioned The Last of Us earlier, yes I'm a Naughty Dog fan but that doesn't change that that game really seems to pull of the right balance between action gameplay and the tense gameplay expected from a good survival horror. However that game don't focus on survival horror itself, and we don't know how well they pull it off in the final product but it definitely seems to be good survival horror elements in there. Watch gameplay from TLoU with the infected and you will know what I'm talking about, notice that he isn't running towards them shooting every monster in sight.
I want to finish off by taking a jab at Cliff Bleszinski for his recent statement about survival horror games not being worthwhile these days... How would he know? If we've learned anything with titles like Dishonored is that gamers are starving for different and fresh games. Gamers don't just want action shooters anymore, look at how well Journey did, awards and praised by fans, why? Because it was fresh and beautiful, I think a real survival horror game could do just as well or better if they simply put some effort into it. I hope these devs would dare to take some risks, dare step outside of their comfort zones and to dare bring back things we gamers love.
Thanks for reading (if you did)!
Link to thread: http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/the-last-of-us-the-first-true-survival-horror-game-for-this-gen.452883561/#post-470595063
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