Fear can't kill you. But...

[Arameus]

But good God, boredom just may have a shot.

When Resident Evil for the Sony PlayStation was new and receiving such accolades, I had the briefest of flirtations with it before giving it up. This was for several reasons that have nothing to do with the game itself, including:

-I was young and therefore dumb, and just couldn't hack it.
-I did not, in fact, own the game. Nor a PlayStation.
-Parents tend to object to such content when you haven't yet achieved a double-digit age.

So, I went back to enjoying my 64 and great times were had by all, except me because my brother hogged it constantly. And the SNES when we had that. And the PlayStation once we got one. And the PS2. And the Xbox, and any PC game we ever owned...

Shoot, I was talking about... something. *crickets* Oh, RE. Yeah. So, years pass and I discover the survival horror genre. Well, that's a lie. I discovered Silent Hill. 2. And good times were had by all. Except the washing machine, which I always suspected bore a resigned but smoldering dislike for sodden trousers. (Do you find anthropomorphizing the appliances helps stave off the crushing loneliness? No, I don't either. *weeps*)

I gotta tell you, I have a hell of a time with Silent Hill, despite its (numerous staggering) flaws. I've played them all except for 0rigins, which I can't seem to find anywhere (not that I'm looking that hard considering its reputation), and have come away thoroughly impressed nearly every time. I like to think I gauge them all with my usual practiced criticism, but I've gotta say: ever since I fell out of love with Final Fantasy, it's probably the only series I honestly fear myself flying into flat-out fanboy frenzy over, which is a very real concern considering I had completed Homecoming all of three days after deciding never to buy it.

So, fast forward a few years. I got a nice, comfy job in a call center that leaves me with plenty of downtime to berate and be berated by a nice fellow who happens to also be very into video games, with the occasional interjection by two other folks between us that game as well. It's a lucky arrangment, and good times are had by all. Except everyone else on our row, who have come to hate our constant chatter.

One day we get on the subject of survival horror, and he goes on and on about Resident Evil, and I go on and on about Silent Hill. Now, rewind a bit: In the end times of the last console generation, I had picked up Resident Evil 4 for the PlayStation 2. It came very, very highly reccomended and did not disappoint. Had a blast with it, and will admit to anyone that the gameplay is so well-built and highly polished that it's probably one of the greatest games for the PS2 and of the entire generation, and definitely takes the gameplay cake over any of Silent Hill's iterations, which have always suffered in the mechanics department. So, as a game, it pwns, as my acquaintance would say. But as a survival horror game? Despite its mastery of its concrete elements, I regarded and will always regard RE4 as a very thrilling third-person shooter, not a survival horror game, because the inclusion of the undead isn't enough to plant it in that category. The game never failed to keep my eyes peeled, and never let my adrenaline drop to healthy levels

But aside from a few shock scares (He came out of the oven!! HE CAME OUT OF THE F***IN' OVEN, MAN!!!), the game never made me feel frightened, or, perhaps more appropriately, horrified. In fact, the game actually seems to falter so badly in this area that it actually becomes one of its strengths unintentionally, making you feel like a total badass when the repulsive abomination meant to terrorize you just makes you grit your teeth in a grin as you remark to yourself, "Poor thing; it doesn't know I upgraded my magnum."

Past that, though, some of the touches intended as creepy came off as as humorous. If you look at the cows at the farm, for instance, you can see by their eyes that they, too, bear the Plagas. Think about that. Zombie cows. ZOMBIE COWS! It's GENIUS! We'll take them on the road and charge progressively more and more for admission as they mutate further! I don't fault the game for any of this, though, because regardless of what it was intended as, or what it was expected to be, the game is a titan because of what it is, external considerations be damned.

So, good times where had by all. Except Leon, who must for the rest of his life deal with random people trying to get Brendon Fraser's autograph from him, truly a fate worse than infection.

I pointed out these things to my coworker, and he seemed (a bit too) prepared for my remark about the fright factor. I had heard that 4 had taken a much more action-oriented direction with the series, and that the previous iterations were far more closely in line with the genre. That is to say, they'll make you sully your trousers and speak in tongues. He told me the same thing, and heartily recommended the earlier titles. Seemed like he enjoys that style of game more.

Now, about Silent Hill. I hold this to be one of the finest series I've ever played. Sure, the camera sucks, and the combat could use some livening up, and the controls need tightening, but... I was going somewhere with all that...

Ah, yes. Atmosphere. I have never played a series that so consistently and skillfully rises above it's material considerations and becomes something so much greater than the the sum of its parts. All of them have this quality of masterfully and quickly immersing the player in its twisted mythos and leaving them there to be watched. And the other thing that impresses me is that the series never fails to will itself into new territory, as each iteration attempts to defy its previous iteration's method of telling a story. Each one is similar to the others on a surface level, but has unique voice and personality, such that even The Room, probably the most physically deficient of the series, gave one of the most inventive and ruthlessly haunting experiences of the series.

To put it in perspective, Silent Hill 4: The Room has put a stuffed pink rabbit on the short list of Most Terrifying Things Ever. No, not a possesed stuffed pink rabbit. No, not a stuffed pink rabbit that attacks you when your back is turned. A stuffed pink rabbit. A normal one. One that just sits there. Stock still. And stares. And smiles. And points. And accuses. And knows. Glassy eyes meeting your own through the darkness. Teeth in the palpable murk, smiling to mock your futility and wailing that silent, hollow indictment of your failure. Zombies? Demons? Dark Gods? They bow to this thing.

It's a perfect example of Silent Hill's matchless ability to create not frightening things, not frightening goings-on, but a truly oppressive and horrifying world, which by the very weight of its presence overshadows every little thing you see and do. So, obviously, good times are had by all. Except everyone in Toluca County, the poor dumb bastards.

(Parenthetical paragraph: I can't actually make this claim for Homecoming, not because it fails to do so, but because of rodents. No, not rats in the game or anything like that. There are squirrels in my house. They live in the walls. I cannot fairly make any judgment of this game's fright factor because the entire time I played it, there were scratching and clawing noises coming from every direction. The fourth wall in that game isn't the TV screen. It's walnut paneling. And it lives.)

So something of a trade was put together. I, who had never experience the 'true' Resident Evil and its legendary, genre-founding majesty would receive his Gamecube and the remastered classic, along with Resident Evil 0. And he, who had hardly so much as heard of Silent Hill, would receive one of my most cherished games, Silent Hill 2, far and away the best of the series in my opinion.

And, you know, good times were had by none. We each hate the game we borrowed. He's bringing back my game soon, having 'just never gotten into it,' and I am bringing Resident Evil and its prequel back to him soon, because, to describe it with my trademark loquaciousness, it SUCKS and is DUMB. Well, I guess that's hardly fair. It's very likely that the game, unchanged but for its graphics, simply hasn't aged well over the many years. Whereas RE4 played masterfully in a way people suggest was unintended or unpure, the original fails in exactly the areas it is intended to exemplify. A survival horror game must contain two elements, and must do them well. They are:

-Survival
-Horror

Fascinating stuff, I know. So, how does it fare in the first area? About as well as Jill's poor jugular vein, I find. You have two ways of surviving. The first is to blow down every zombie you see and clear the mansion. That'll show the mean ole' Umbrella who wears the beret, eh? No, because killing everything will result in squandering all your ammo and being left high and dry with your useless melee weapon, quickly running out of healing items trying to take anything in melee or just having to rely on running away. And you only have very finite means of desecrating the corpses, which will only come back later stronger, faster, and particularly miffed at you later in the game if left unmolested.

So, rather than fighting, which is utterly pointless, you usually and up trying to run from everything. Mistake. Running away, of course, is the second method of staying alive and fails harder than the first because as much of a weak and dangerous delay tactic fighting is, running away requires you to skillfully and reliably navigate tight spaces with a quality of character control so incontrovertibly sluggish, unresponsive, and muddy it makes Tomb Raider look like Ace Combat. (This is a remake only issue, but the Gamecube doesn't exactly have the best controller ever made. I know Nintendo's got to try to be different, but a few seconds playtesting might have helped.)

That's made even more unforgivably unreliable by the game's unpredictable and ever-changing camera, which when there are no enemies about provides the most cinematic view available but in combat usually acts as an ever-present and all-powerful antagonist that makes the already unfair gameplay into a perfect storm of poor design choices ensuring you are killed by an enemy you couldn't even see until it already attacked you once, compelling you to fall back to a place where you can blindly fire at it, unaware of when or if it will lunge from off-screen to deliver the second blow, which, when your character dies after two hits on Normal, is somewhat upsetting. I'd go as far as to say that the camera is a far more sublte and devious villain than that backstabbing cliche Wesker could ever be. zOMG liek spoiler alert hurhurhur!!1!1

So, we're left with horror. This one's much quicker to address: no. No, it isn't scary in the least little bit. It did the exact same things that RE4, the so-called 'pariah,' did to scare you: rely on the enemies' innate freakishness and overpoweredness to make you fear them, and throw in some cheap shock scares to punctuate the baseline terror that that supposedly creates. But zombies aren't scary, or at least they aren't anymore. They're ridiculous, lumbering, cliches moaning and holding their arms out a la Frankenstein's monster and, like Steven Seagal movies, act as a completely unintentional parody of themselves. And, also like Steven Seagal, the game doesn't seem to realize this.

Now, see, the mechanics aspect I can just chalk up to the game's vintage. I can forgive most games almost endlessly for doing the best they could with their era's constraints. But no one could possibly have taken this game's concept of 'horror' seriously in this or any time period. Since the game is so blissfully unaware of its own incompetence, it treats itself with utmost reverence, which would come across as chilling has the game succeded at horror, but just comes across as extremely pretentious and self-important in light of the facts.

With the baseline of horror taken away, the shock scares just become insulting and angering, as if the game is beginning to realize it's not cutting it and starts sneaking up behind you and clapping its hands in your ears to compensate. 'My fears are in the darkness?' Yes, Capcom they are! My fear is that I'll have to play this boring, tedious section a third time when your broken game kills me again. My fear is that I have wasted hours of my life to humor my friend's delusion. My fear is that people can with a straight face disdain the masterwork that is RE4 and refer to this as the golden age of horror.

The 'purists' can suck toes; I can see now that Resident Evil 4's style of play does not take a bold step away from the series' roots, but, for the first time, takes a bold step toward them. Resident Evil 4 accomplishes what every game in the series has been tripping over itself trying to accomplish. Every concept I experienced in the original (and in the prequel, which I played but am not discussing due to finding it identical to the original) is present in 4 and vice versa: the stock and space management, the style of 'horror' they shoot for, the enemies, the familiar plot, the characters, every element that RE had always shot for is present with all their lofty targets struck dead-on, just with all the rotting, grimy detritus stripped away from the gameplay and hung about the monsters and environments where it belongs. I dream of a day when Silent Hill can claim such a heretic among its ranks!

I don't really know what to make of it. Differ'nt strokes fer differ'nt fokes, I guess. Of course, I haven't yet really dragged the long and short of my co-worker's opinion of Silent Hill out of him, and I guess that's the other half to this story. I'm beginning to suspect, however, that this may have all been an elaborate trick of his, and that when he felt such a powerful distaste for my game he convinced me to partake in the ultimate shame of not only playing an awful game, but of playing it on the Gamecube. But the joke's on him because, having already bought and beaten Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, I fhave already accepted my irrevocable status as a filthy, filthy whore and do not have any lower to fall. HA. HA. HA.

[Brother Oni]

Since you seem to like survival horror and Silent Hill, have you tried any of the Fatal Frame series?

[Jibar]

And another reccomendation, but try Resi 4 on the Wii.
It's hard to find any game as finely tuned as that.
However, another good review from you, and I assure you that Resident Evil, in all its forms, can be terrifying when you have too many nervous disorders. But of course, Resi 4 had new sexy Leon so I could hold myself together.
Ahem. Anyway...

[First Speaker]

I'd say that Dwarf Fortress is a fairly good survival horror game.

[MammonAzrael]

Also, give Dead Space a try. It's closer to RE4 in that it's more of a third person action game with survial horror elements, but it's still freakin' awesome. I highly recommend it.

[Arameus]

And another reccomendation, but try Resi 4 on the Wii.
It's hard to find any game as finely tuned as that.
However, another good review from you, and I assure you that Resident Evil, in all its forms, can be terrifying when you have too many nervous disorders. But of course, Resi 4 had new sexy Leon so I could hold myself together.
Ahem. Anyway...

I've reviewed other things? What have I reviewed? :smallconfused: I... seem to be less aware of myself than I should be; my reviews are so verbose I probably should remember them a bit better. However, I'm pleased as pandas to hear my other alleged craftsmanship is enjoyed. :smallredface:

And I'm sorry Jibar, but I think Leon is gay. He shut down Ashley so hard he had to have been making a point about something. Although, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure she had to have been raped at least twice in the game and God knows what kind of unnamed afflictions you can pick up from those dirty West Europe peasants and their enslaving parasite infection. Looking more closely, Leon had probably totally already thought of that by the time she invited him into her skirt, and getting into it more critically, I don't think I would have done anything differently. After all, that death ray chair may kill Plagas, but no one ever tested it's effectiveness on VD judging by the decided lack of fine Ganada hookers. (EDIT: Or, indeed, Jill Valentine, hurhurhurhurhur!!11!!1)

But if it's any consolation, Jibar, I heard that Dr. Salvador is a real sweetheart deep down, and a real looker underneath the burlap. And he's a doctor, honey. A doctor!

Dead Space is definitely something that interests me. But I have an innate mistrust of games that exhibit such levels of gore. Exploding heads and XTREEM disembowelments just don't creep me out, and doesn't make a game genuinely scarier any more than saying something louder makes it more true. That out of the way, Dead Space really looks a lot deeper than just Saw on a derelict spacecraft. I think it has a good shot at weaving that genuine, atmospheric horror that sets the pros apart from the pretenders.

And, yes, I have played Fatal Frame. If seeing a silhouette of Japan makes you simultaneously self-righteously opinionated and strangely aroused, you'll love it. If you have free will and a soul, however, it's depressingly terrible and screams 'cult classic.'

Two survival horror titles I really want to play though are Clock Tower and Eternal Darkness, the former of which I hear is great but have never seen and the latter of which I had played just enough of to be damn impressed.

[Brother Oni]

And, yes, I have played Fatal Frame. If seeing a silhouette of Japan makes you simultaneously self-righteously opinionated and strangely aroused, you'll love it. If you have free will and a soul, however, it's depressingly terrible and screams 'cult classic.'


If you didn't like it, you didn't like it. No need to get sarcastic and insulting.



Two survival horror titles I really want to play though are Clock Tower and Eternal Darkness, the former of which I hear is great but have never seen and the latter of which I had played just enough of to be damn impressed.

Clock Tower depends on which iteration of the game you get. The early ones, while having more in the line of what you're after, suffer from a horrible control system.
I found that Clock Tower 4 had an atmosphere similar to that of later RE games, so while it's tense, interesting gameplay, it's not very scary.

Eternal Darkness is a fun game and is creepy in a Lovecraftian 'fear of the unknown' sense. The game 'glitches' resulting from low sanity are great, but gameplay differs slightly with each play-through due to the weaknesses of whichever Elder God you had Pious Augustus choose.

[Poison_Fish]

I can highly suggest eternal darkness. Especially playing at 2 in the morning.

[Arameus]

I really want Eternal Darkness. I played throuhgh sections of it at a friends house on Gamecube, and the game, in addition to being so innovative and frightening, is actually really fun, which is... actually sort of rare for a horror game. It seems like the main drawback to horror games is that if you're not being scared, you're bored to tears. Most of them handle like crap once you get down to it (Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, Parasite Eve, Dino Crisis (but not DC2!), RE's not counting 4), and center around roaming dark, murky environments at a snails pace fetching keys or solving riddles. But Eternal Darkness and RE4 are some of the very few horror titles that I think could actually stand on its own even if it didn't scare you in the least because it delivers that good, "Hells Yeah!" fun as a strong base for the abstract principles that make a successful horror title. Playing through RE4 using the Tommy Gun exclusively and still having a major blast is probably proof of this, because then not only do you have a game sans scary you have agame sans tension entirely. I'm pretty sure they released ED for the PS2, but I'm having a tough time finding it.

I could have swore there were only two Clock Tower games, but I guess that shows just how little I've actually heard about the series, which is strange considering the almost obsessive dedication with which I attempt to be at least aware of game series. Actually, the only thing I've actually heard about them, come to think about it, is that they are really great. This... worries me, actually; when a title is fairly obscure but gets painted as Messianic by the fans it does manage to gather, 99% of the time it turns out to be something that exhibits at every corner just why it isn't raking in the recognition, like Fatal Frame or Rez or Xenogears or Waterworld. (Sorry, Kevin Costner. We still love you, but it needed saying.)

The other 1% of ht time, it's a title by Tim Schafer, the man chosen by the faceless international game developer cabal to accept the eldritch curse of eternal whipping-child status in return for the rest of the industry being nearly guaranteed success when a game retreading plot and gameplay concepts from the mid Eighties gets (re)released. But these last three paragraphs are really actually matters for... *counts on fingers* at least three different threads, so feel free to ignore this tangent entirely, especially if your closet holds a shrine to Rez, Xenogears, or Fatal Frame. Or Tim Schafer. Or Kevin Costner.

But if you have a shrine to Waterworld, get help.

[doliest]

Although dead rising is by no means horror in most cases, I would call it a survival game in every sense of the word. I enjoyed the fact that not even completing the plot I could still beat the game although with a day left over it can get boring...anyway the game can scare you at times with the weirdness of some of the enemies such as Mr.Crazy Clown.

[Jibar]

I'm pretty sure they released ED for the PS2, but I'm having a tough time finding it.

Eternal Darkness was going to be a N64 exclusive originally, but then generation upped. They then upped as well to make it a Gamecube exclusive.

I don't know, but I think the whole series was going to be Nintendo exclusive... until Too Human came along. :smallsigh:

[RPGuru1331]

They made more Eternal Darkness games?

Please to be sharing of the information. ED was pretty much concentrated awesome.

[Arameus]

Crap, I guess you're right about the Gamecube exclusive. No ED for me. :smallsigh:

Now, Dead Rising is an interesting one to be sure. On the surface, it borders on zany because of its rampant over-the-topness, such that it can come off as what happens when Resident Evil and State of Emergency get drunk in the broom closet at the industry party. But the actual plot is pretty dark when you actually get into it.

Beyond that, though, I think Dead Rising is one of the few games to get zombies right, not because other series aren't aware of how zombies should be but because of simple inertia. Zombies are like ticks, I guess. Finding a zombie in your home is like finding a tick on you when you shower, just on a larger scale. Horse ticks. North Dakota horse ticks, even. Zombies are slow, stupid, weak, and driven primarily by simple instincts. A 1-Star challenge; if I find a zombie in my downstairs den, all I have to do is calmly walk outside, up the hill to the shed, grab the woodcutting axe, back down to the den at a leisurely stroll maybe taking some practice swings, and then strut calmly up to where it's still staggering about in a circle, moaning, only vaguely aware of something slightly warmer in the area, and bisect the smelly bastard in one swing. Done. And I'm level.... 6, 7 at most. Like I said: ND horse tick, except maybe even a bit better because they're easier to spot and I could so totally brag about doing that.

But imagine you find a tick on you, and then another, and another, and then you realize they're coming in from under the door by the hundreds and before you can even choke out a scream they've covered your body entirely. That's the true horror value of the zombie: an innumerable, mindless, indefatigable horde that does not know anything but that they must feed on the warmth of your body. And no matter how many of those ticks you manage to squish under your thumb, it's like picking chips off a glacier. The screen fades out. You Are Dead. That's horror. And that's what Dead Rising did, by God, and that deserves a round of applause.

Now, as I said earlier, games have to be forgiven for the limitations of their technologies. If a game of an earlier generation featured zombies, it simply couldn't handle such a concept. Swarms of enemies simply weren't an option, so zombies were by technological necessity dangerous individually to give you a reason to fear them. And I guess it worked well enough until you realize that a monster that has spent the last minute and a half lumbering its way over to you, with barely the strength or coordination to keep itself erect, much less walk in a straight line, somehow manifests the speed and reflexes of Ralph Macchio and the strength of... of... of Ralph Macchio once it gets within arms' reach. I mean, if it has the strength of five men and the mental and physical quickness to outwit and outmaneuver a S.W.A.T. stand-in in single combat, why wasn't the entire Midwest infected in a matter of hours?

But as the tech improved, this became more and more possible. To stick within one series, the zombies I describe above are the standard zombies from RE1, if you couldn't already tell. Now compare those to the zombies in RE4. By RE4, the technology had improved to the point where it wasn't an issue to send them at you by the dozen and that's exactly what they did. Singly, the Ganados were nothing to really worry about. They still retained a glimmer of intelligence, but were by then so zoned out that all you really had to do was to put some distance between the two of you and cap its head as it lumbered closer at a snail's pace. Now, Ganados are actually somewhat justified in having human strength because their physical integrity isn't compromised by the Plagas, and may even be improved somewhat. I was fuzzy on that. Each one is typically no more dangerous than whatever farm implement they had on them at the time, and so they end up being the ideal base zombie: slow, dumb, and weak.

But then they come at you eight at a time with TNT and no regard for personal safety. You'd think the shotgun blast that just took three of them out would drive some sense in the others and make them run, but by the time you realize they haven't stopped lumbering onward, the three you got have already been replaced and thensome. Then it hits you. Your back's against the wall. My God, I'm trapped. You keep firing, and they keep going down like flies, but in the distance you can see more and more pour out of every doorway and, as you pull the trigger hear the chamber just hollowly click and click and click, the encroaching swarm finally crosses some invisible line and falls upon you en masse. The screen fades out. You Are Dead. And the only thing you can hear is your own quick breath. And once that happened to me, I thought, "Damn. They nailed it."

Dead Rising, of course, takes this to the logical extreme. Zombies are tick-weak, as they should be, but literally fill the entire mall with just li'l ole' you to stand in their way. Obviously, in this scenario, your character realizes that defense is simply a matter of offense, the bigger and more outlandish the better. And that really makes a lot of sense to me. Why use a knife when I've got an axe, and why in God's name use an axe when I have a lawnmower? Now, I use Dead Rising as an example of a correct zombie principle, but only for principle. I haven't played it myself, and therefore can't give any estimate as to how well the execution is in reality. But, according to critics and fans alike, they're on to something pretty grand. I'd pick it up, but I was already going to buy Dead Space and that would mean that three of my then-seven games would be Survival Horror titles, and I like to maintain a bit more variety than that.

I still don't have decent FPS game; I've got Call of Duty 4, which is incredible, but I've also got Rainbow Six Vegas 2, which for me fills the niche that CoD4 fills in practice better than it does. CoD4 is brilliant on its own merits, but for me is a good bit farther on the realistic side of things than most FPS games, far enough to get away from the whole action-hero, made-of-diamond type gameplay that FPS's are famous for but not far enough away to really be considered tactical or realistic. In essence, it ends up situated halfway between games like Rainbow Six and SOCOM and games like Gears of War and Halo without really delivering the experience (or, in my case, the fun) of either extreme.

[Demented]

My impression was Dead Rising is more slash-em-up horror than survival horror, while Dead Space, on the other hand, is Alien, not Dawn of the Dead.

Have you checked Left 4 Dead?

[SurlySeraph]

And I'm sorry Jibar, but I think Leon is gay. He shut down Ashley so hard he had to have been making a point about something.

1. Statuatory rape = bad
2. Statuatory rape when you're a government agent = really bad
3. Statuatory rape of the president's daughter when you're a government agent = extremely bad

It's a choice between sex with a semi-attractive girl and keeping his job and staying out of prison and not getting shot by the Secret Service. Leon really made the only rational decision there.

[FMArthur]

I was honestly scared by the Resident Evil remake. Maybe it's because my bar hadn't been raised high enough, or maybe because a friend and I spent a night beating it on Hard Mode, where you don't have enough health, ammo, and zombie-free space to play it like a normal game. The difficulty in surviving made up quite a bit of the horror, for me. But it's not as good as RE3 at it, in my opinion.

Resident Evil 3 was perhaps even less forgiving and simultaneously more rewarding, thanks to all of the clever ways you had to come up with to mix ammo to be able to at the very least, fend off the large quantities of zombies, zombie animals, and brutal mutants. Killing things you don't have to is a mistake though, because you are being hunted by an 8-foot tall super-mutant (called Nemesis) who carries a rocket launcher, can run faster than you, can disable you with his grapples and punches, has an instant-death move, and can only be KOed after you've pumped most of the game's ammo into him. He also breaks RE's previously unbroken rule about creatures not following you into other rooms. Basically, if you can't exploit this guy's weaknesses after studying his attacks for a long time, he will kill you. Then, after you've got that down, and killed him in an epic confrontation, he reappears covered in tentacles with more health, more reach, and more damaging attacks without any of the previous weaknesses.

Come to think of it, I played that one in Hard, too. Maybe the lesson you should've learned instead of "Resident Evil sucks" is "don't play Resident Evil in Wuss Mode or it's not scary". A survival horror game with no fear of death (RE4, I'm looking at you) always fails at being a survival game and by extension a survival horror game. It's not survival/horror, it's survival horror, as in it's a type of horror and the difficulty in surviving is the one of the only contributing factors to how scary it is. I honestly think that RE games shouldn't even have Easy and Normal Modes. Go replay it in Get Serious Mode. I think RE1 requires you to unlock it, so your time wasn't totally wasted.

[FMArthur]

1. Statuatory rape = bad
2. Statuatory rape when you're a government agent = really bad
3. Statuatory rape of the president's daughter when you're a government agent = extremely bad

It's a choice between sex with a semi-attractive girl and keeping his job and staying out of prison and not getting shot by the Secret Service. Leon really made the only rational decision there.

I thought she was like 20? Still too young for Leon, but not enough to be considered rape. He'd still be dragged out somewhere and shot because she's the president's daughter, but otherwise he'd be okay.

[warty goblin]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl falls completely into the scarifying camp for me. Even the combat against normal people is super intense, because they can kill you so fast, sometimes quite literally before you have time to sight your gun (and if you play like I do with the reticule off, good luck trying to hit something without iron sights). Plus the game is dark, and has some really well done shadows. I vividly remember shooting half a clip of my precious assault rifle ammo down a hallway at what turned out to be splotch on a wall behind a burning barrel. It just looked like a bandit.

And then you get the not human things. One time I was coming back through an area I had already cleared out, specifically the area under the railroad bridge in the Fringe, which had been full of soldiers, whom I had killed. I recieved something of a start to see the bodies were moving, which I wrote off as a physics glitch. That was when the mutant pig things that had been eating the bodies jumped me. Thank heavens I had my gun out, and even then, if I'd had one less clip of ammo, I'dve died. And the underground sections, oh heavens the underground sections. Nothings says terror like invisible zombies with face tentacles to make Chthulhu proud jumping out of nowhere and clawing at you, to say nothing of the ones that make your brain hemorage.

[Neon Knight]

Amadeus Arameus, Dead Rising is the anti-thesis of what you describe. It is not survival horror in any sense of the word. You can be pelted with a million zombies and easily emerge victorious, with little to no threat of you dying. You can supplex and kung fu zombies into oblivion, place traffic cones and novelty masks on their heads and laugh as they wander about blindly, loot fallen cops and tourists for hunting knives and fully loaded 1911s, and steal a bloody .50 caliber machine gun off the back of a jeep and shoot it from the hip, butchering zombies by the dozens without even trying. You will kill a zombie with a clothes hanger not because you must, but because you can, and using the sledgehammer and katana is too easy. You can burn zombie's faces off with a red hot frying pan with a simple button press, allowing you to kill entire crowds without a scratch (you're invulnerable while the animation is playing.)

You fight an insane clown dual wielding small chainsaws, for heck's sake! And when you kill him you can use the chainsaws! Dead Rising isn't Dawn of the Dead, it's Dynasty Warriors meets Home Alone.

[Cuddly]

Amadeus Arameus, Dead Rising is the anti-thesis of what you describe. It is not survival horror in any sense of the word. You can be pelted with a million zombies and easily emerge victorious, with little to no threat of you dying. You can supplex and kung fu zombies into oblivion, place traffic cones and novelty masks on their heads and laugh as they wander about blindly, loot fallen cops and tourists for hunting knives and fully loaded 1911s, and steal a bloody .50 caliber machine gun off the back of a jeep and shoot it from the hip, butchering zombies by the dozens without even trying. You will kill a zombie with a clothes hanger not because you must, but because you can, and using the sledgehammer and katana is too easy. You can burn zombie's faces off with a red hot frying pan with a simple button press, allowing you to kill entire crowds without a scratch (you're invulnerable while the animation is playing.)

You fight an insane clown dual wielding small chainsaws, for heck's sake! And when you kill him you can use the chainsaws! Dead Rising isn't Dawn of the Dead, it's Dynasty Warriors meets Home Alone.

Well said.

My first introduction to zombies was RE2, in fifth grade. It certainly gets survival horror down, as far as the zombie genre goes. It seems to me the OP has little to no familiarity with the zombie genre, and doesn't quite understand the beauty of playing through a spaghetti zombie flick.

RE2 was very hard. That's what I liked most about it. RE4 is extremely easy. It doesn't contain any of that survival element that made RE3 almost impossible to play on hard mode. When you blast through all your enemies with an upgraded shotgun you built buy selling that weird dude eggs, fish, and relics you loot from the Church, the only 'survival' element is whether or not your trigger finger is twitchy enough or not. Not that RE4 wasn't an incredible game. Certainly how I'd like to imagine myself fighting through a zombie infection, anyway.

As for Silent Hill, I can't say. I've only played part of one where you're trapped in room and drink soy milk.

I've heard good things about 1 & 2.

As far as genres go, they're only related in the most general of terms. Japanese ghosts and American style monsters are different beasts, with a different set of premises.

[Arameus]

I was honestly scared by the Resident Evil remake. Maybe it's because my bar hadn't been raised high enough, or maybe because a friend and I spent a night beating it on Hard Mode, where you don't have enough health, ammo, and zombie-free space to play it like a normal game. The difficulty in surviving made up quite a bit of the horror, for me. But it's not as good as RE3 at it, in my opinion.

Resident Evil 3 was perhaps even less forgiving and simultaneously more rewarding, thanks to all of the clever ways you had to come up with to mix ammo to be able to at the very least, fend off the large quantities of zombies, zombie animals, and brutal mutants. Killing things you don't have to is a mistake though, because you are being hunted by an 8-foot tall super-mutant (called Nemesis) who carries a rocket launcher, can run faster than you, can disable you with his grapples and punches, has an instant-death move, and can only be KOed after you've pumped most of the game's ammo into him. He also breaks RE's previously unbroken rule about creatures not following you into other rooms. Basically, if you can't exploit this guy's weaknesses after studying his attacks for a long time, he will kill you. Then, after you've got that down, and killed him in an epic confrontation, he reappears covered in tentacles with more health, more reach, and more damaging attacks without any of the previous weaknesses.

Come to think of it, I played that one in Hard, too. Maybe the lesson you should've learned instead of "Resident Evil sucks" is "don't play Resident Evil in Wuss Mode or it's not scary". A survival horror game with no fear of death (RE4, I'm looking at you) always fails at being a survival game and by extension a survival horror game. It's not survival/horror, it's survival horror, as in it's a type of horror and the difficulty in surviving is the one of the only contributing factors to how scary it is. I honestly think that RE games shouldn't even have Easy and Normal Modes. Go replay it in Get Serious Mode. I think RE1 requires you to unlock it, so your time wasn't totally wasted.

Ummm.... You do realize that I played the remake on Hard, right? As it had already been unlocked on my friend's memory card? With no prior knowledge of things like Crimson Heads or the easy methods to killing all the bosses? I briefly checked out easy and normal after getting to some partiucularly difficult parts, to gauge the differences between survivability in each mode by letting the first zombie maul me. RE0 was the one I played on normal, since he hadn't any saves for 0 on that card. I don't recall playing either game on the mysterious 'wuss mode' setting.

And no, there is no rule about not being followed into different rooms and never has been. One of the zombies breaking out of the east stairwell into that U-shaped hall is the earliest one I can think of, and a good example of the kind of cheesy shock scares they resort to.

Now, here's the thing I think you either missed or purposely ignored: having an eight-foot mutant chase and kill you in real life is scary stuff. When it happens in a game, it's boring. You seem to have made this alarmingly-weak connection between 'extremely frustrating' and 'scary.' Having a game tip the odds heavily against you does not make it any scarier, and the inclusion of zombies does nothing to alter this simple principle.

Metal Gear requires of you all the same qualitites that a survival horror title does: wit, skill, quick thinking, and item/situation management. And European Extreme on MGS2 is far, far more taxing than any Resident Evil game on any difficulty, and yet I can't think of any point throughout that controller-breaking experience that I could call scary, except having to hear that psycho Rose drone on about her own instability. I mean, damn.

Now I can hear the obvious protestation, "MGS isn't intended to be scary," but intention and execution rarely go hand in hand in video games. RE is intended to be scary, when it is in fact a very poor third-person shooter with mediocre puzzle elements. Making your character as frail as a Christmas ornament and deliberately depriving them of things they need to succeed isn't scary any more than if they did that in any other genre of game, like action-adventure or FPS or RPG, something I can confirm to be true because it is, in fact, common practice. Just throwing in zombies does not a work of horror make; it's the difference between a book with great grammar and a book with voice.


Amadeus Arameus, Dead Rising is the anti-thesis of what you describe. It is not survival horror in any sense of the word. You can be pelted with a million zombies and easily emerge victorious, with little to no threat of you dying. You can supplex and kung fu zombies into oblivion, place traffic cones and novelty masks on their heads and laugh as they wander about blindly, loot fallen cops and tourists for hunting knives and fully loaded 1911s, and steal a bloody .50 caliber machine gun off the back of a jeep and shoot it from the hip, butchering zombies by the dozens without even trying. You will kill a zombie with a clothes hanger not because you must, but because you can, and using the sledgehammer and katana is too easy. You can burn zombie's faces off with a red hot frying pan with a simple button press, allowing you to kill entire crowds without a scratch (you're invulnerable while the animation is playing.)

You fight an insane clown dual wielding small chainsaws, for heck's sake! And when you kill him you can use the chainsaws! Dead Rising isn't Dawn of the Dead, it's Dynasty Warriors meets Home Alone.

Confusing me with Mozart? Awww, a fellow after me own heart.

I'm glad you noticed these things about Dead Rising; I thought they were important, too, so I pointed them out, using words I guess are ambiguous in hindsight such as 'zany' and 'outlandish.' The only thing I conjectured was dark about the game were some of the later plot elements; I heard it had sort of a downer ending in which the zombies break out and infect the whole world or something.

Despite the fact that we are, however, in total agreement on Dead Rising, I think I need to point out again that I have not played the game and cannot make any assumption about the game that isn;t solely assumption. The only thing I really conjectured about it in regards to its relation to Survival Horror in general was its unique (and much more appropriate) treatment of zombies and that whole 'endless swarm' thing they tend to do, something you could (and I did) learn merely from screenshots.


Well said.

My first introduction to zombies was RE2, in fifth grade. It certainly gets survival horror down, as far as the zombie genre goes. It seems to me the OP has little to no familiarity with the zombie genre, and doesn't quite understand the beauty of playing through a spaghetti zombie flick.

RE2 was very hard. That's what I liked most about it. RE4 is extremely easy. It doesn't contain any of that survival element that made RE3 almost impossible to play on hard mode. When you blast through all your enemies with an upgraded shotgun you built buy selling that weird dude eggs, fish, and relics you loot from the Church, the only 'survival' element is whether or not your trigger finger is twitchy enough or not. Not that RE4 wasn't an incredible game. Certainly how I'd like to imagine myself fighting through a zombie infection, anyway.

As for Silent Hill, I can't say. I've only played part of one where you're trapped in room and drink soy milk.

I've heard good things about 1 & 2.

As far as genres go, they're only related in the most general of terms. Japanese ghosts and American style monsters are different beasts, with a different set of premises.

Ah, first a 'you're playing it wrong,' now a 'you don't get it.' Two of my favorite cop-outs.

I really don't understand being chidden on this point because I did, after all, hake the time to write that whole thing about how no part of Resident Evil 4 is scary and that it makes you feel like a badass action hero. Looks like you also missed me saying the exact same about Dead Rising. Granted, I complimented both titles heavily on their much-evolved view of the zombie swarm, as compared to earlier games' poor treatment of the creature, but unless I'm losing my mind I really do think I went out of my way to make it clear that neither game really had me hiding behind the loveseat.

Note another person confusing difficulty and horror content. Must be an epidemic. My favorite part, though, is when you describe the earlier RE's as video game versions of 'spaghetti zombie flicks.'

History lesson: 'Spaghetti' comes from the classic 'spaghetti Western' genre, but has come to mean film that is mass-produced very cheaply by people of very limited talent. They are generally ackowledged by everyone except (and rarely including) their creators to be completely devoid of any cinematic quality, and it is also widely accepted that the fun of viewing such films does not and cannot come from watching it as a serious work of media but by taking every one of the countless opportunities such a film presents to mock and deride the film's lavishly poor quality, and at wondering how such an abominable work of 'media' could have been thought by anyone involved to be less than cripplingly shameful.

Now, tell me, fans of Resident Evil, is this what the game is to you? Is it? If it is, I admit fully to missing the point, albeit only after being misled by the misinformed saps who came before me, calling it the father of survival horror games and the genre's flagship franchise. Cast upon me your sarcasm, your jeers, and your spite, if the enjoyment and emotion you get from Resident Evil is derived from doing likewise to the game a la Mystery Science Theater. I would honestly welcome such a low-laying if only because it gave me the reassurance of knowing that no one in their right mind actually thought anything positive about the series. Just do that for me, and all will be forgiven.

As to Silent Hill, though, you're right about 1 and 2; they probably offer the best mix of gameplay and horror, with 2 being by far the series' unofficial ambassador. 3 attempted some tiny adjustments to gameplay at the expense of the horror, which made it interesting but a bit boring. I appreciated 3 more for its contribution to the canon and for its protagonist, Heather, whose voice acting is some of the best the series had offered to that point, and who was a genuinely interesting person.

I don't really know how to classify Silent Hill 4: The Room. I think that's the one you played. The horror and presentation are just about the best the series has ever offered. Even 2, my favorite, can't really stand toe-to-toe in these areas. I always thought of Pyramid Head as the pinnacle of ambiguously-motivated unstoppable pursuers from a different world, but then there was Walter Sullivan, who starts off pretty odd and then becomes one of the most iconically creepy characters I've ever born witness to. But the gameplay to 4 is almost as horrifying as all that, too, being far and away the worst in a series the Achilles' Heel of which has always been gameplay, and it ends up leaving me wondering at how much the game as a whole lacks. Ah, what could have been...

The good news is that if you're curious all three of the PS2 offerings are cheap and highly-available due to the slew of trade-ins that ushered out last-gen's consoles, so it'd really be no trouble to pick it up used at GameStop. Hell, if you don't like it or only wanted it from sheer curiosity in the first place, you can always take it back within thirty days for store credit; I do that all the time.

(Edit: The 'Spaghetti Western' genre actually produced a lot of great films; I don't mean to deny that with my description of what 'spaghetti' came to mean as it became a sort of 'template' word for cheap, crappy movies made by foreigners, nobodies and has-beens.)

[Brother Oni]

I don't really know how to classify Silent Hill 4: The Room. I think that's the one you played. The horror and presentation are just about the best the series has ever offered. Even 2, my favorite, can't really stand toe-to-toe in these areas. I always thought of Pyramid Head as the pinnacle of ambiguously-motivated unstoppable pursuers from a different world, but then there was Walter Sullivan, who starts off pretty odd and then becomes one of the most iconically creepy characters I've ever born witness to. But the gameplay to 4 is almost as horrifying as all that, too, being far and away the worst in a series the Achilles' Heel of which has always been gameplay, and it ends up leaving me wondering at how much the game as a whole lacks. Ah, what could have been...


I'd like to point out that Silent Hill 4 wasn't originally planned to be part of the Silent Hill franchise. Konami had misgivings about the sell-ability of a new horror franchise and decided to shoe-horn it into Silent Hill, which is why it doesn't seem very connected.

I had the same irritations with the gameplay with 4 as you seem to have, but in the end it was the first person bit inside the apartment that led me to give it up (I get motion sick whenever I play FP perspective games).


They made more Eternal Darkness games?

Please to be sharing of the information. ED was pretty much concentrated awesome.

According to wikipedia, another game in the series (not a direct sequel, but set in the same universe) may be on the cards.

[Atreyu the Masked LLama]

I'd like to point out that Silent Hill 4 wasn't originally planned to be part of the Silent Hill franchise. Konami had misgivings about the sell-ability of a new horror franchise and decided to shoe-horn it into Silent Hill, which is why it doesn't seem very connected.
.
I didn't know that. That explains quite a bit. Thank you. I do look forward to playing it, but it has to wait in line behind Shadow Hearts and probably X-Men Legends 2.

[busterswd]

Excellent horror sequences (not necessarily games):

The first 2 hours of Doom 3. Surprisingly intense, then the rest of the game plateaus and the monsters you fight become more nuisances than OH CRAP MY PANTS moments.

Half Life 2, the Ravenholm segment. The sound effects are stellar, the pacing is great.

I actually enjoyed The Suffering for a while, but never finished it.

Also chalk me down as another person who takes offense at the "you must be a Japanese fanboy to love Fatal Frame." It is, however, the type of game that is more fun to watch than it is to control, I will give you that.

[Cuddly]

Ah, first a 'you're playing it wrong,' now a 'you don't get it.' Two of my favorite cop-outs.

But you don't get it. That's cool. We got it. kthx.


I really don't understand being chidden on this point because I did, after all, hake the time to write that whole thing about how no part of Resident Evil 4 is scary and that it makes you feel like a badass action hero. Looks like you also missed me saying the exact same about Dead Rising. Granted, I complimented both titles heavily on their much-evolved view of the zombie swarm, as compared to earlier games' poor treatment of the creature, but unless I'm losing my mind I really do think I went out of my way to make it clear that neither game really had me hiding behind the loveseat.

RE4 & it's predecessors are very different games. You said that, I said that... we disagree how?


Note another person confusing difficulty and horror content. Must be an epidemic. My favorite part, though, is when you describe the earlier RE's as video game versions of 'spaghetti zombie flicks.'


History lesson: 'Spaghetti' comes from the classic 'spaghetti Western' genre, but has come to mean film that is mass-produced very cheaply by people of very limited talent. They are generally ackowledged by everyone except (and rarely including) their creators to be completely devoid of any cinematic quality, and it is also widely accepted that the fun of viewing such films does not and cannot come from watching it as a serious work of media but by taking every one of the countless opportunities such a film presents to mock and deride the film's lavishly poor quality, and at wondering how such an abominable work of 'media' could have been thought by anyone involved to be less than cripplingly shameful.

Very good. Though in this particular case, for those of you unfamiliar with the zombie genre (which is almost entirely composed of exploitation films), a spaghetti zombie film would be one made by Italians. The big three directors in this particular subgenre are Fulci, Mattei and Lenzi (though he did more with cannibals that zombies I believe). Note that virtually all pre-mellinnial zombie movies are exploitation films (a few notable exceptions exist, mainly Romero's [though still very much exploitation] and the Night of the Living Dead series in the early 80s). I believe the resurgence of popularity of zombie cinema is partially related to the Resident Evil games. Every kid in the late nineties were familiar with shambling, undead cannibals on their consoles, and by the time they hit their teens, were ready to shell out a lot of cash at the box office for it.


Now, tell me, fans of Resident Evil, is this what the game is to you? Is it? If it is, I admit fully to missing the point, albeit only after being misled by the misinformed saps who came before me, calling it the father of survival horror games and the genre's flagship franchise. Cast upon me your sarcasm, your jeers, and your spite, if the enjoyment and emotion you get from Resident Evil is derived from doing likewise to the game a la Mystery Science Theater. I would honestly welcome such a low-laying if only because it gave me the reassurance of knowing that no one in their right mind actually thought anything positive about the series. Just do that for me, and all will be forgiven.

The dialogue is RE1&2, and what I can remember of 3, for that matter, was horrible The voice acting terrible. Hilariously terrible. But then you've already demonstrated your inability to understand why the games are scary. You, of course, are returning to a game that's 12 years old and ho-humming it. But I don't think you would have really gotten it 12 years ago, either. If you don't find brain eating mutants and the undead scary, then, well, I guess you don't. Right?


I don't really know how to classify Silent Hill 4: The Room.

Let me help you.
Boring.
It was boring as hell.


(Edit: The 'Spaghetti Western' genre actually produced a lot of great films; I don't mean to deny that with my description of what 'spaghetti' came to mean as it became a sort of 'template' word for cheap, crappy movies made by foreigners, nobodies and has-beens.)

Yeah. You don't get it. That's ok.

Just don't be so quick to write off what you don't understand.

Did you know Jackson, of LotR fame, made a zombie film in the late 80s? Called Braindead (Dead Alive in the US). Total exploitation film. Goriest film in movie history. The infamous lawnmower scene has fake blood pumped at something like 5 gallons/second.

Shaft was another exploitation film (technically "blaxploitation"), as were Lone Wolf & Cub and of course, Romero's films. The influence the genre has had is enormous. Tarantino is probably the most unabashed fan of the genre, as far as big Hollywood names go.

[late for dinner]

Barbie's Wild Horse Adventure is not a survivor game, but boy is it scary?