Funny, I always thought Resident Evil was meant to be a story about bio-terrorism and genetic mutations, and horror was just the effect of that. That's probably why I'm not up in arms like everyone else when Resident Evil 4 and 5 wasn't "scary" enough.
But it's really hard to produce horror. You have to have the right sounds, the right music, the right balance of combat and non-combat (here's where everyone fails), and the right kind of fear. Tension and the feeling of dread are all good, but they're largely unsatisfying the longer you go on. Actual things are good to payoff the tension, but then that gives you something to fight, which means something to kill. And eventually, you're going to overpower that fear, thus removing it from the game, which makes it useless now. Removing the combat prevents players from fighting their fears, but it also means you can't make it dang near impossible to escape, or else the player loses momentum when he dies. Checkpointing is a horror game's biggest drawback.
Basically what I'm saying is everything needed to make a horror game good is almost the polar opposite of how video games are being made.
@laserbolts: Awww. Somebody hasn't tried Hardcore Mode in Dead Space 2. That'll make you fear Necromorphs again real quick.
Log in to comment