I wanted to take a moment to talk about something outside of reviews.  Normally I would stick to reviews, but I had a discussion with someone just the other day, and I found it a genuinely interesting topic.  Survival horror.  More specifically survival horror in current-gen (it can hardly be called next-gen anymore) gaming.

I’ve had a fair bit of experience with gaming in the past and survival horror is one of my favourite genres.  I always enjoyed the way they made me feel.  Tense, the atmosphere was filled with anxiety; “Will there be a monster around this corner?”, “Do I have a strong enough gun to be able to mow down the manakin before it gets to me?” “Is something going to jump out and bite my face off?”.  I love the sudden music changes that make you think something is coming, but seldom does.  I love the way your heart is constantly beating fast, ready in anticipation of what is to come, as usually it’s the quickest of shocks you need to be prepared for it.

Some game franchises that have mastered this art include Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame/Project Zero and Blood Siren.  Out of all of these, Fatal Frame/Project Zero (PS2 and XBOX) and the Silent Hill (Various) games stand out in my eyes as some of the scariest games ever.  A honourable nod to Condemned: Criminal Origins (Various) and Haunting Ground (PS2) for making me scream like a little sissy girl.

Fatal Frame/Project Zero (different names depending on your location) takes place in a old run down mansion, taking happy snaps with an old camera.  Every now and again, a non-aggressive ghost will re-enact their death suddenly and scare the pants off you.  If you’re unlucky, a woman with a broken neck or a man with really long arms will come and attack you.  It’s at this point you need to switch to “camera” mode, find the ghost, wait until it attacks and try to take a photo of it.  The game is genuinely scary, and often tries to trick you into thinking something is coming when it isn’t, and that’s a great tool for a scary game.  The cutscenes are scary too, because you know you have no control over them.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Z_WzLTyJA[/youtube]

Silent Hill uses similar tactics.  They both use a ridiculously small flashlight, capable of seeing next to nothing in a tiny radius in front of you.  Silent Hill uses an entire town filled with fog, where you’re mostly fighting with melee weapons.  There’s not a lot of enemies at all, but that only makes it that much scarier.  You’ll be hearing next to nothing except a bit of creepy music in the background, and suddenly you’ll hear a scream or sharp change in music that will scare you into the foetal position.  The game also moves between a light (a term used very loosely) and a Dark world.  The Dark world is awash with rusty walls, metal floors over gaping maws.  Nothing works, everything that was usable before (doors and objects) are sealed shut.  You’ll also find yourself commonly in a few places you never want to be in horror games:  A hospital, a school, or a cemetary.  Silent Hill goes there, and still manages to be scary as hell.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W67Ylszufw4[/youtube]

Now, you may think I digress, but I assure you all my talk is going somewhere important, I promise.  If you’ll notice, all of the games I mentioned are last generation.  In the current generation you have the following “scary” games.  Silent Hill: Homecoming, Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Dead Space.  That’s the main slice of them, although I would argue that Dead or Alive : X-2 is also a scary game.  That game gives me nightmares.

Firstly, on to the game that showed the most promise for me, Silent Hill: Homecoming.  I can’t say too much about this game as it hasn’t ACTUALLY hit Australian shores yet due to our lovely CB (Classification Board) and our lack of an R18+ games classification system.  So, Silent Hill: Homecoming had to go back into editing and take out scenes that were classifed too gory/adult, and the game got delayed.  None-the-less, I have more than done my homework; the game’s protagonist is a soldier returning from the war, the game moves from the focus on next to no enemies to the focus on a capable soldier.  I feel this takes away one of the games main strong points; the feeling of helplessness.  I’ll update more once it comes out here in a month.

Next is Condemned 2: Bloodshot.  This game is…odd.  Again, lost is the feeling of helplessness as your character just…seems viciously powerful.  The game is a vast improvement over the first, you can’t argue that; the crime scene investigations are more indepth, the game is a little more interesting, the story is absolutely ludicrous.  Some of the puzzles are not enjoyable, and whilst I am yet to play that part, I hear a chapter involving a bear is frustrating beyond belief.  I have not yet found this game to give me the shocks and scares I want.  The focus seems more on combat than it is on the atmosphere, so as a survival horror game, it falls sadly behind.

Resident Evil, as you can read in my review, is a further step than Resident Evil 4 from the “survival horror” genre, falling under a more action-esque sort of feel.  I would dearly love for an original Resident Evil sort of feel in a game, but it seems like the newer style of Resident Evil has become more popular.

Finally, Dead Space.  A game I have a lot of experience with.  When I picked up this game I was interested.  Space, dismemberment, guns.  Seemed like a fairly winning formula.  I had been watching trailers and teasers for a long time beforehand as was massively excited.  Unfortunately, the game gave me only one shock.  Read, shock, not scare.  Something unexpected happened in the final cutscene, and it shocked me.  The game focuses around stomping/shooting/beating limbs of enemies to kill them.  It’s a great game, don’t get me wrong.  But again, the focus is not on the atmosphere itself (although I do feel it is trying and is probably the best survival horror game of the current generation), but instead on the combat.  The puzzles are not puzzling, it’s simply a run-and-gun shooter split into chapters.  Oh, and the “surprise” can be seen coming a million miles away, but I’m not going to spoil.

So that’s my wrap up on current generation survival horror.  Whilst I am deeply yearning for a game that will be genuinely scary as I reminisce on earlier games that grew with me as a gamer that freaked me out, gave me nightmares, and continually had me checking over my shoulder whilst I was playing; I have not found a game in this generation that will do that to me.  Who knows though?  With todays announcement of a new Silent Hill title (Silent Hill: Shattered Memories [Wii]) and this month’s release of Cursed Mountain [Wii], maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised and have my undergarments thoroughly soiled in fear.