@Warrozo: Excuse me, but by Silent Hill/Resident evil like puzzles. Do you mean the sort of puzzles that have a really, and I do mean, really weird way of figuring them out?
By this. I mean, are there blue/red/yellow skulls that if you don't put in the right place, the floor becomes electrified ala RE series? Or some weird as hell riddle that involves hunting for tokens of a lady and old man and some dude, and putting them in what you believe are the right spots so you can move a desk to the side ala Silent hill 2?
I do have problems with both of those and I hope you can understand where I am coming from here. I understand that you guys have been designing this for a while by the well made look of the game.
But think about how a real person would react to the same situation. A real person would not solve a puzzle in a zombie infested place just to open a bookshelf! In real life we would have broken down the book case and went right through! Or solving a riddle to get past a certain point, most people would instead break through a wall to get to somewhere than waste time going around a haunted place where monsters are everywhere! It doesn't seem logical at all.
Or in a famous case, Amnesia, why can't you fight back at least a little. There are some statues with swords/axes on them. Most people would've ripped that thing right off and would've carried even a prop weapon if it can make you feel somewhat safe from nightmare fuel that game makes you go through! Even if you do have weapons, it does make sense if the main character doesn't know how to use them. But that still does not excuse tank controls.
In my opinions, most horror games are destroyed by two things, it is not the jump scares or jumping the shark moments either. It has to be the controls and the story the game has.
One thing I hate to see in indie games is the focus being completely gameplay based with no actual effort in the story at all. I buy most of my games because they have a story to them! I know many gamers do! While the gameplay control is another part which a lot of old school horror games should have learned before they are made, You can still make a scary game even if it has good controls!
Lets look at Alan Wake, great controls and they make sense! One thing I did like was how he did get tired from running all the time and I think that is one thing horror games should do! Like, put a fat balding man with bad eyesight as the main character of the game and just have him be severely outmatched by what he faces! In speed, strength, stamina, and eyesight! Those can be hampered to create a sense of dread within you by making the main character much weaker compared to everything he sees! Not the controls, that is just a really cheap attempt at creating scares IMO. Do real people move like the characters in the resident evil games? Or do the move more like Alan Wake?
Damn... was not meaning to write that much about these subjects. But I hope you can see why many gamers don't actually like a lot of survival horror games out there. Most of it is based on things no sane human being would do. However there are some which are based on human sanity that make total sense. Looking back on it, Stephen Kings The Mist movie was excellent and showed that many people had sanity and didn't really try to be stupid like most B-class movies/games. It was still a very frightening movie because of what the characters were dealing with was beyond their very scope of reason!
That is true horror right there! Not of this silent hill/resident evil stuff that only creates fear by force instead of polish. All of this is IMO of course. Take what you will from it.
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