What Happened to Survival Horror

If there was a golden age for survival horrors, for me, it will always be PS1/PS2 era. In fact my favourite game series Resident Evil set the building blocks for survival horror games in this era. 1996, I remember vividly being hounded out the room as half the estate sat around my Step-Fathers PS1 with the copy of Resident Evil someone had bought. I heard grown men petrified but never got to experience it for myself until 1998 when I finally got my hands on a copy against my parents wishes. The gameplay of Resident Evil served as a template for the majority of successful survival horrors in the PS1/PS2 era.

Games like Clock Tower and Parasite Eve featured a more RPG style play which also proved popular, but not to the extent that Resident Evil had caused.

Swiftly followed by the release of Silent Hill, which managed to beat the Resident Evil scares, especially by atmosphere, survival horror games had become a staple genre.

PS2 saw the release of Project Zero and to this day I maintain this is the scariest game I have EVER played, if I had a pound for every time I screamed and threw the controller on the floor, I'd be rich. The Silent Hill and Resident Evil series still thrived during the glory days of the PS2 with the release of Silent Hill 2,3 and 4 and Code Veronica X. Some of the better Survival Horror games were continuing to come out of Japan such as Clock Tower 3 and Forbidden Siren.

I know what made these games the scariest of their genre; the tension, the atmosphere and the game play. Dodgy camera angles so you never know what's coming around the corner, limited ammo (if you managed to be equipped with more than a camera), terrifying 'bosses', backtracking and puzzle solving. The musical scores were just incredible. Cut scenes on stairs, heartbeat style control vibrations when opening doors, dodging your enemies because all you've got is a stupid knife. It makes me want to play thinking about all these amazing elements that contributed to the scare factors of the games.

So what went wrong? Why do I always fail to get a scare out of 'horror' games since this era?

For me it all went wrong with the release of Resident Evil 4 when the innovative new game play and style was applied. Don't get me wrong the game was incredible in it's own merits, but it wasn't the same. Something got lost in translation and it's never really came back for survival horror.

This proved to continue with the release of the XBOX 360. Alone in the Dark, F.E.A.R, Silent Hill Homecoming. None of these games got me terrified like they used to. I will stamp out the argument that I grew up by saying I continue to play the old survival horror games and, to this day, they have the same effect on me.

Left4Dead, Deadspace, Resident Evil 5, Bioshock, none of this was doing it for me. It had all become too focused on cinematic's with a lot to be desired in terms of fear.

Then I discovered a little 360 gem that brought it all back for me. Deadly Premonition. I will rate this game until the cows come home, I don't care about the PS2 standard graphics, I don't care about the dodgy camera angles, I don't care about the limited ammo, I don't care about the pedantic way you have to heal yourself, I don't care that each enemy looks the same, I don't care that I have to backtrack and solve puzzles, I don't care because it's everything I'd be searching for in a survival horror game. And not only that, it features the most intriguing characters and story-line to feature across any game on the 360.

To this day I am faced with disappointment with each 'survival horror' release, I can hope and pray that one day developers really will go back to it's roots but I won't hold my breath and until then I have my vast history of survival horror games to fill my needs.

I will give a small mention here to Condemned 2 which genuinely did make me scream and throw my control on the floor, if I say 'mannequins', you can figure out the rest.

Sorry!

Sorry I've been away for so long, my laptop was broken (very badly) and I couldn't afford the repair at the time. I'm borrowing a laptop and a webcam to get back on here and youtube and continue to blog and video my gaming ramblings because I miss it and I'd just started to take off! I've still been gaming daily, so I have no excuse for not doing any reviews in preparation, procrastinating is what I do best.