It seems to me that any game that has any kind of grotesqueness to it is automatically put into the category of survival horror. I can see that the progenitors of the survival horror genre could be called "survival" horror: viz. Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark. These game had a survival quality to them because of the lack of ammo throughout the game world and, at least in Resident Evil's case, the lack of save ribbons. The limitations of these games helped to keep the tension at a high point, but with more recent games we have started to move away from these conventions.

I have been playing Dead Space recently and while there has been a time or two that I have run out of ammo, it doesn't have the same quality of tension in it's environments. Part of the reason that I haven't felt very tense about ammo conservation is because the game is littered with stores where I can buy ammo. While I am only a few hours into the game, it seems to me that every enemy is dropping ammo or money which leads me to believe that I won't have too much trouble keeping some ammo around. Even the reviews that I have read for the game have stated that, while the player might run out of ammo once in a while, there is usually ammo in a different weapon or just around the corner.

It seems that the main horror in Dead Space is from the character models or just the monster closet appearance of the enemies. Not since Doom 3 has a game had so many nooks and crannies for these baddies to hang out in until they are ready for you to saunter by. The character models aren't particularly scary either. The way that the Necromorph's arms look like a pirate's peg legs is more comical than freighting.

I think that we should move towards removing the "survival" from survival horror. The genre appellation is an archaic title that we use more out of convenience than actual description. When a game is called "survival horror" fans tend to think to themselves, "Oh, it's like Resident Evil." Moving more towards other mediums classifications I think will help to make gaming more palatable to a wider audience.

It seems to me that any game that has any kind of grotesqueness to it is automatically put into the category of survival horror. I can see that the progenitors of the survival horror genre could be called "survival" horror: viz. Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark. These game had a survival quality to them because of the lack of ammo throughout the game world and, at least in Resident Evil's case, the lack of save ribbons. The limitations of these games helped to keep the tension at a high point, but with more recent games we have started to move away from these conventions.

I have been playing Dead Space recently and while there has been a time or two that I have run out of ammo, it doesn't have the same quality of tension in it's environments. Part of the reason that I haven't felt very tense about ammo conservation is because the game is littered with stores where I can buy ammo. While I am only a few hours into the game, it seems to me that every enemy is dropping ammo or money which leads me to believe that I won't have too much trouble keeping some ammo around. Even the reviews that I have read for the game have stated that, while the player might run out of ammo once in a while, there is usually ammo in a different weapon or just around the corner.

It seems that the main horror in Dead Space is from the character models or just the monster closet appearance of the enemies. Not since Doom 3 has a game had so many nooks and crannies for these baddies to hang out in until they are ready for you to saunter by. The character models aren't particularly scary either. The way that the Necromorph's arms look like a pirate's peg legs is more comical than freighting.

I think that we should move towards removing the "survival" from survival horror. The genre appellation is an archaic title that we use more out of convenience than actual description. When a game is called "survival horror" fans tend to think to themselves, "Oh, it's like Resident Evil." Moving more towards other mediums classifications I think will help to make gaming more palatable to a wider audience.

Do you turn cranks and put crests in doors? Not survival horror then.


I liked survival horror for the fictional possibilities and tropes of horror, more than the annoying mechanics. I like modern action-horror games for having the tropes without the interfering systems. There's nothing terrifying about inventory management.

OH GOD I CAN'T PICK UP THE EAST HALL KEY BECAUSE I ALREADY HAVE THE HELMET CREST!!

from my experience the defining characteristic of the survival horror genre was piss poor tank like controls.

it was this that added to the tension of games like RE and AITD, having to slowly rotate your character in the direction of the threat.

Play games on harder difficulties and then you will understand survival horror. Dead Space on impossible is defines survival horror.

@Baillie: I don't think that is a good fix myself. I have never been a player that likes excessive difficulty. If I am not having fun I will put the game down.

I love Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, but once I get to a point that starts to infuriate me I put it down. I have been playing that game on the hardest difficulty for 6 months because when I get annoyed I leave it alone for a month or so.

Personally, I think you have the wrong idea about survival horrors. At least to me, the reason they're called survival horrors is because the story involves you surviving in a horrifying enviroment. It has nothing to do with the difficulty of the game itself. Like someone else posted, it was really horrible controls that made old survival horror games difficult.

If you look at the basic concept of Dead Space, you're trapped on a ship full of "the stuff of nightmares" and have to try to get out alive, then yes it is a survival horror. Is it a hard game? No, not really, but it does have both the survival and horror aspects that qualifies it to be a survival horror.

I think it's about a feel, Dead space and Dead space 2 have that feel.

I think that the idea of survival horror was more or less just a marketing term for a particular style of horror game. There's nothing that really defines the feel of a survival horror title because the nature of horror varies from game to game or series to series.

Survival horror is a dead genre that requires more effort in the areas of pacing and balance that the average video game playing individual is willing to accept and the average developer is willing to put in.

For a game to be survival horror, it has to have scarce resources (survival) and elements that can be described as scary (horror). If it's lacking either of those things, it's not survival horror. Most games today, such as Dead Space (2), are action horror.

A buzzword created to get people to buy Resident Evil.

While I do enjoy gore-fests such as Dead Space and such, they don't come close to instilling a tangible sense of dread that my personal favorites do. I think this is mostly due to game designs that demand a certain amount of imaginative investment on the part of the player; what's not shown and what's inferred, etc. Ergo; it's much easier to design a game that caters to quick and dirty jump scares than focusing on a constant ratcheting of tension and atmosphere while hoping that the average gamer is willing to dedicate the attention and suspension of disbelief towards the experience.

As I said in another thread, Dead Space and other games like it are just standard third-person shooters with dark lighting and extra gore. Horror is all about mood, atmosphere, and as Grimhild pointed out, a sense of dread. It's impossible to have those things when the game is designed and paced in such a way that you're blasting and curb stomping enemies all the time.

Survival Horror is a marketing term coined up by Capcom in 1996 to describe their adventure game with horror elements, Resident Evil. Since then, people on the internet have confused it with an actual genre.

@big_jon said:

I think it's about a feel, Dead space and Dead space 2 have that feel.

Although I do agree playing the game on a harder level, this may make it for some. i think Dead Space, and Dead Space 2 played on at least the normal and the level of degree up still may have a different valid approach to ramping up both survival and horror. Enemies may be more potent and deadlier..at a certain point you just won't survive..depends on the AI programming, no? I'm also thinking back to a predecessor of this game, The Suffering. There was a weapon driven Survival-Horror..and a good one. I understand that there is a certain intensity , a stress you are supposed to feel. I think Dead Space, Dead Space 2 and The Suffering all shows that there is more than one path to it.

@T_Diamond said:

Personally, I think you have the wrong idea about survival horrors. At least to me, the reason they're called survival horrors is because the story involves you surviving in a horrifying enviroment. It has nothing to do with the difficulty of the game itself. Like someone else posted, it was really horrible controls that made old survival horror games difficult.

If you look at the basic concept of Dead Space, you're trapped on a ship full of "the stuff of nightmares" and have to try to get out alive, then yes it is a survival horror. Is it a hard game? No, not really, but it does have both the survival and horror aspects that qualifies it to be a survival horror.

I just think that the term survival horror isn't the best, especially if games want to move into a more mainstream audience. I think just calling these games horror would be sufficient enough.

My original point was that survival was meant to be a term to make the consumer understand that these games were difficult and the consumer would get a lot of use out of them. Many people played these games in a very old school kind of way; i.e. speed runs, knife runs, no memory card runs, etc. I don't think that our modern horror games have that same hardcore edge to them. Games like Dead Space are more story driven games.

@SoldierG654342 said:

Most games today, such as Dead Space (2), are action horror.

Exactly!

Dead Space 2 on Zealot or Hardcore is survival horror. Dead Space 2 on normal is not.

Maybe Dead Space 3 will involve putting hawk and eagle crests in space doors. And a key sitting next to a giant bee nest. And Barry gives you acid rounds two hours before you even find the fucking grenade launcher.

For me a sense of feeling completely cut-off from everything was a big part of survival horror, it's why the original Resident Evil was so great, even playing it today, you feel so isolated in that mansion, you cannot go outside, you're cut off from your team, you have no way of communicating with anyone. You are forced to make you way through this crazy mansion filled with zombies and monsters with limited supplies, I always loved that aspect of old survival horror games.

Playing RE4HD also reminds me of that a lot and why I liked this game so much more than RE5, you just feel alone, even though you have Ashley with you, once again you're cut off and isolated, the only way forward is to progress through hellish environments filled with a different kind of monster than before.

I don't think survival horror should disappear though, I think it's a much tougher genre to pull off due to how technology has progressed. If RE1 came out today for instance, it would be completely arbitrary in the controls department, which was a large reason why combat was so tense because of the limited movement. If you had the movement of say RE5 or Dead Space, the tension would have to be created in different ways, so for example, you ran out of ammo. If the situation were real what would stop a person grabbing a wrench or breaking off a table leg to use as a club similar to the way you do in Condemned.

Survival horror is a genre that needs to adapt, not disappear.

When I think Survival Horror, I think Fatal Frame and the earlier Silent Hill games. Fatal Frame, mostly. You're doing yourself a disservice if you write it off by assuming it's anything close to the Resident Evil style puzzling crap.

Since the highest profile survival horror games were Resident Evils, people claim every feature of those games are part of the genre. I think the key to survival horror is that it isn't about killing every enemy. You don't kill the dogs that jump through the window, it's a huge waste of ammo for no loot. Because you had such limited ammo, running and dodging were key. But any horror game where you had to make tactical decision about who to fight and when would qualify in my book.

Survival horror proved to be horrrific at surviving as a genre.

Dead Space is a tank against children, it's neither especially survivor-ish nor is it horrible. Dark and gross, but after 30 minutes you kind of learn to expect the random loud noise of yet another not so horrible enemy.

I've always disagreed with people who call Dead Space a horror game, or even a scary game in general. Now, to get this out of the way, I really like Dead Space (and Dead Space 2 is alright as well). As an action game, it stands among the best, with interesting weapons and a fun and unique gimmick to the combat that makes you think. The enemies encourage the use of a variety of weapons, which leads to interesting combat scenarios, and the upgrade system gives you a tangible sense of progress.

As a horror game, Dead Space falls flat on its face plate. At first, the Ishimura seems scary; it's quiet and dark, oh noes. But there isn't much wrong with the ship, really. It sort of seems like it hit some space turbulence and some suitcases fell out of the storage racks. The environment is very bland, consisting of metal corridor after metal corridor, filled with vents for enemies to pop out of. It lacks a certain sense of change.

There's also the issue of tension, which Dead Space makes almost no attempt to create. Within the first half hour of the game, you see the ground littered with corpses, you see someone beat their skull open on a wall, and another person slice their neck open with a scalpel, and then the necromorphs are all up in your grill. You know exactly what you're fighting, how to kill it and when they'll appear at all times. Vents? Gonna be some dudes! Oh, this room has a high ceiling, there's gonna be some demon babies. Coupled with the remarkably competent combat, there's no sense of fear or danger. The only time there's any tension in this game is at the very beginning, and when you embark on to the eerily silent and ruined army ship.

As it is, and as is my experience with Dead Space 2 thus far, the emphasis is on the combat. It seems like the developers are afraid to let the setting speak for itself, which is the key in a horror game. Right now, and unless something changes for Dead Space 3, the franchise is a wonderful, challenging action game with jump scares and flashlights. Dead Space is not horror. A jump scare is not horror.

P.S. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is really good. Give that a whirl.

1) Survival horror sort of has two definitions. There's the puzzle heavy, bad controls definition of the horror, and scarcity management definition. A horror themed FPS isn't survival horror if you have easily regenerating health and copious amounts of ammo. Survival horror means you have to be careful with what you have and think ahead. It also means there's a good chance you might run out of supplies. This would happen in a normal shooter but it's more random chance than something designed on purpose. Doesn't mean you will though. The first time I played Dead Space I was short all the time. The second time, I was a lot better and had stuff to sell back to the store all the time. Same with the REmake. Once you learn to point the shotgun up towards a zombie's face, you'll have a lot of extra ammo.

2) Your monster closet comparison is somewhat unfair. Doom 3 had a couple LITERAL closets with monsters in them. Dead Space had guys coming out of vents sometimes. Vents make sense. Space ships have lots of small spaces for stuff to come through.

@sopachuco13: I think the point you're missing is that survival horror games are a genre not a type. Genre is not based on gameplay (usually), but rather story. What you're thinking of is survival type games, where your struggling just to survive. Is it a survival type game? No I don't think so. However, for genre, Dead Space (not Dead Space 2) is in the genre of survival horror, because of the points I made before.

I think the idea of survival horror and game play both factor into a survival horror game. And yeah i would call dead space a survival horror game, yes its more of a action focused one but the rules still apply. The problem is that a more mainstream survival horror game will be much easier than a niche or more pure survival horror game. The more mainstream SH games don't want a gamer to feel like they got stuck because the have no heath or ammo for a upcoming fight.

Most times a main stream survivor horror game you would have to play on a harder setting to get a challenge if you are a vet of the genre. Many will say its a dieing genre but its because it has big barriers for a lot of gamers. One being too scared to play, another being getting stuck like a said before. but i would say dead space is the best we have had in awhile when it comes to a more mainstream horror game.

@JTB123 said:

If RE1 came out today for instance, it would be completely arbitrary in the controls department, which was a large reason why combat was so tense because of the limited movement. If you had the movement of say RE5 or Dead Space, the tension would have to be created in different ways, so for example, you ran out of ammo.

...

Survival horror is a genre that needs to adapt, not disappear.

This is a really good point. I think that if RE1 came out today it would be dead upon arrival. I know that there are many people who would disagree with us, but that control scheme just doesn't work anymore.

On your final point, I think that survival horror has been engulfed. I think most people want more action style horror games: i.e. Condemned, Dead Space, Doom/Rage, etc. I think that old school style masochistic games just aren't as popular as they used to be; sure Super Meat Boy sold a lot, but how many people finished it.

@The_Nubster said:

There's also the issue of tension, which Dead Space makes almost no attempt to create. Within the first half hour of the game, you see the ground littered with corpses, you see someone beat their skull open on a wall, and another person slice their neck open with a scalpel, and then the necromorphs are all up in your grill. You know exactly what you're fighting, how to kill it and when they'll appear at all times. Vents? Gonna be some dudes! Oh, this room has a high ceiling, there's gonna be some demon babies. Coupled with the remarkably competent combat, there's no sense of fear or danger. The only time there's any tension in this game is at the very beginning, and when you embark on to the eerily silent and ruined army ship.

As it is, and as is my experience with Dead Space 2 thus far, the emphasis is on the combat. It seems like the developers are afraid to let the setting speak for itself, which is the key in a horror game. Right now, and unless something changes for Dead Space 3, the franchise is a wonderful, challenging action game with jump scares and flashlights. Dead Space is not horror. A jump scare is not horror.

P.S. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is really good. Give that a whirl.

All of the things that you outlined are part of the horror genre. You might be desensitized to it, or the game may not present those tropes very well, but they are all tropes of the horror genre. Friday the 13th is a horror movie; nobody would deny that but we know what we are faced with for most of that series.

I'm not saying that I was scared at any time during Dead Space, but it does have a lot of horror tropes which would make it a horror game. The only game that I would say has ever really scared me was was Fatal Frame. I had to turn that game off ever 30 or 40 minutes. That game is fucked!

P.S. I really do want to check out Amnesia.

@sopachuco13: You mention Friday the 13th, which is interesting since there is tension and helplessness. At least early in the series, the killer is not even on screen for the first fifteen minutes or so (which is a lot, considering films are generally 90 minutes, not 10-15 hours), and there are numerous false alarms, causing characters to become jittery and worried. On the other hand, Dead Space shoves gore and violence down your throat at every single moment it can, leaving nothing to the imagination. Secondly, the characters in most horror movies are powerless to fight against the murderer, totally without options until the very final confrontation in which they come out terribly hurt and mentally damaged. In Dead Space, ammo is plentiful and your weapons are powerful, and you are told early on, explicitly, how to effectively survive (which is by removing the limbs). In typical horror movies and games, combat is not the emphasis by a long shot, and that's why I mentioned Amnesia. There is absolutely zero combat and maybe one or two times where you're required to even be in the same room as an enemy; the rest is purely atmosphere and exploration, which is directly opposed to Dead Space's swarm of enemies and constant action.

Dead Space tries its darndest to be a horror game, but it's closer to gore-porn than horror. I am of the stance, firmly, that Dead Space cannot be called a horror game, by and large.

It's where you survive horrors.