Survival Horror Games as they should be: Are they coming back?

Many gamers, if not all of us at one time have played a survival horror game. Old school gamers such as myself can mention quite a few (From old PC to PS2) like the old Resident Evil and Silent hill sagas, old Alone in the dark games, Clock tower, Fatal Frame (my personal favorite), Rule of Rose, Siren, Deep Fear, Parasite Eve, Hunting Grounds and the list goes on. Newcomers can mention games like the new Alone in the Dark, The chapter based version of Siren, Dead Space, Silent Hill: Home Coming, Silent Hill origins, Escape from Bug island (It isn't so good but I had to mention it) and some others. In the past two years it seems as if the survival horror genre is starting to turn back to its roots and dismiss all that experimentation that focused on the action rather than suspense, helplessness and horror.

To be able to talk about this topic accurately we must ask ourselves, What do we expect of a survival horror game? My personal taste calls for the dark suspenseful atmosphere where you roam the place clueless, looking for answers as the storyline develops itself dropping you in dangerous situations where you must use your wits to survive. I like the "usually harmless normal person" approach, because it raises the fear factor up a notch. I rather play as a normal guy who finds himself trapped in a horrible experience (a great life threatening ordeal) than a soldier who has a vast knowledge of weapons and already has the physical training to endure the situation. I like to feel helpless, having to use (for example) a metal pipe to smash a monster to bits because I spent all my ammo or if the pipe doesn't work just run like hell. Resident Evil games always have characters with military training in them, but all of them seem more human and vulnerable enough (except for Resident Evil 5 where they are bad ass heroes).

Good character design is one of the things that seemed lost in time when developers starting changing the way they were doing these type of games. Another aspect that was wrongfully changed lies in the gameplay itself. Today's game storylines seem good but they are dragged down because of an incorrect gameplay implementation. Instead of a full plot driven environment with no pauses, the games feel like they are divided in stages (Some even do it on purpose as in Resident Evil 4 and 5). Lets stop for a moment and compare this to horror movies. In an horror movie you don't see the actors stopping the plot and saying "OK we survived the first part, lets see how good we did". You see the movie go from beginning to end with no pauses (if the movie was filmed and edited correctly of course). So why must survival horror games have pauses if they try to be a cinematic (as realistic as possible) experience? Aren't the pauses making the game look more linear and less real?

Cuuuuut! Ok people stage is over now! We regroup tomorrow on the cave to film the cave scenes ok? I want you all at 6am at the cave site, bad guys plz come already dressed in your costumes...

Dividing a game in stages is alright for action, platformers and other types of games where player immersion into the game world isn't an issue, but for survival horror it just ruins the experience. Take for example Resident Evil 2; You could go trough an entire scenario (remember Leon A, Claire B - Claire A, Leon B) without a single pause because all the ratings and evaluations on how well you played were made at the end of the game. Developers these days may put pauses because they want players to be able to backtrack at will to do silly fetch side quests, or go all the way back just to unlock a treasure box which has a useless item. Don't get me wrong, backtracking is good, all the good old survival horror games have it, but it is for story purposes, perfectly synchronized with the things you must do in order to get further and then and only then you may have a chance to collect other items and make side quests.

Now lets talk about Action vs Horror. When we say "survival horror" it means only one thing. "Survive THE horror". It doesn't mean survive the onslaught or survive the raid or even survive the horde. Now lets go deeper in the word "horror". Horror means getting scared, fear for your life, jump out of your seat moments, not knowing what awaits you at the next corner, but realizing that it won't be anything pretty, the atmosphere of nightmarish stuff, few or no things to defend yourself, that's horror. Action means a more "lightened" approach, the stress of battle, going against all odds, shoot and kill until you can take no more (or your HP drops to 0), lot of weapons and ammo to spend, been a hero, that's action. Now we compare both of these types of experience. Which one fills the space of a survival horror game more accurately? Horror right? Now why developers are trying to forcefully push action into survival horror even replacing the horror itself? The irony kills me.

Other aspects that hopefully will return:
-Return focus on slow but deadly and resistant creatures instead of fast weaker ones.
-Focus more on puzzles and plot and less on action sequences.
-Make more indoor maps than outdoor ones.
-Make a better use of music for setting the mood.
-Return to the weird camera angles instead of over the shoulder permanent view.
-Less or no quick time events (it is more frightening to get out of a situation having full control than having to smash buttons up).
-Once again play with the player's mind and keep them doubtful of what will happen but wanting to see more.
-Give bits and pieces of the plot throughout the game so the player can have his/her own ideas until he/she actually gets to a cutscene.

Now that we have seen all the aspects that were changed and we saw how good they used to be, we can rejoice knowing that old school survival horror is returning. Cursed Mountain and the new Silent Hill on Wii are good examples of how the genre is returning to its former glory. We can only hope to see new titles with the correct formula scaring the hell out of us gamers in the near future. When they do come, I will surely inform so be sure to come back anytime you like to Press A + B and Start.

Note: All the games cited in this article are good games (except Escape from Bug Island lol) I only criticized the changes on the survival horror genre perse. So I am no hater I just state the facts and hope to read your opinions on the subject (I appreciate a good argument).