Now, if you read my Resident Evil 6 review, you'll know that I am a die hard horror game fan. I've played every Resident Evil or Silent Hill game you could think of. But, I think that the horror genre, in video games, has been watered down like hell.
I remember the first time I encountered a zombie in the first Resi game, the music and the dodgey cutscene of the zombie turning it's head was scary as hell. Whereas, Resi 6 just puts you there with a machine gun mowing down walking corpses. I'm not just going to talk about that series here, although Resident Evil is a big name in the horror genre.
Let's talk about why this has happened. In recent years, horror games have managed to grab a much bigger demographic than they used to have.The companies created these games would have created the games in these ways to reach a much wider audience. This goes especially with the evolution of the Resident Evil series.
This series has drifted much closer to the third person shooter genre of games rather than horror. This is ok for a wide demographic but, for horror fans, this is slightly upsetting. The originals had a really unique way to play, with wide shot camera angles and dodgey controls that added to the horror.
These mechanics and viewpoints were taken more by the Silent Hill series. Now Silent Hill is probably the only series that kept to the original idea on horror. Silent Hill cannot really lend itself to the Gears of War-esque direction that Resi took itself because of the universe that Silent Hill is based in. Silent Hill plays on the mind of the protagonist, so you can never really go in just shooting monster's in the face. So Silent Hill needed to keep to it's origins.
MODERN HORROR GAMES
We'll move on to some more modern IP's that actually manage to terrify a player. Dead Space is a great horror series, especially the original.With the silent protagonist of Isaac Clarke wandering around a derelict space ship being jumped on by massively strange and creepy space-zombie-mutant type things, we are shown true horror in the science fiction flying-through-space type era.
Dead Space 2 did a little bit more of the running and gunning ideal that Resi went for, but it still managed to keep the horror in the series at the same time. However, Isaac Clarke is no longer silent and has a crazy personality. Ok, Dead Space is good and all, but let's talk about Amnesia.
Amnesia brings back the idea of true terror in a video game. Daniel, the protagonist, has no special skills or special attributes about him. He has amnesia, obviously by the title, and works his way through a creepy and strange mansion whilst being chased by mutilated/mutated creatures that appear from nowhere and annihilate you.The scariest thing about this game is the fact that you cannot defend yourself against these creatures, unless some strange coding bug kills the monster for you.
There are a lot more examples of games bringing pure terror to the masses, but they are all I'm going to talk about. However, I will say that a lot of people are saying that horror is dead in modern gaming but, I just gave you 2 examples of games which scare the living shit out of anyone who plays them.
Horror has not died in modern gaming, it's just that the main series in this genre have taken a back seat to other IP's that do what the originals did, but much much better.
This was really just a rant that I decided to write on almost 20 hours with no sleep so make sure you don't take this incredibly seriously. This is just my thoughts on modern horror gaming.
Silent Hill image belongs to Konami
Dead Space image belongs to EA Games
Amnesia image belongs to Frictional Games
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