Poll: How should combat be handled in Survival Horror Games

[G-Force]

Many times in survival horror games the issue of combat is not covered as newer games have removed the notion completely.

What do you think is the best combat system for Survival Horror.


As for examples

A: Amenesia and Slender
B: Resident Evil 1,2,3 and Silent Hill
C: Eternal Darkness
D: Dead Space (on harder difficulties) and Resident Evil 4

 

[DazZ.]

Mix of A and C.

Thoroughly enjoying Amnesia right now, and really liking the way I have to just hide but wouldn't object to having a smaller enemy to throw a chair at, so long as defeating it wasn't the only option.

Don't make combat frustrating by making it sluggish, if you're fighting the controls more so than the enemy it's just going to break immersion, which is terrible for a survival horror game.

 

[Shadowstar38]

Always make combat possible and keep the controls as tight as possible. The fun is going to be in using your skill to take down enemies that fuck you up if you dont buckle down.

I dont see any value in a "game" where you have to spend the entire time running away with no way to defend yourself.

 

[DazZ.]

I dont see any value in a "game" where you have to spend the entire time running away with no way to defend yourself.

Why is game in quotation marks?

 

[mParadox]

Survival horror demands that the person suffering through the ordeal be good at something. Hell, you can even make a military man the hero. So long as the horror affects his sanity, making it hell trying to aim and shoot.

Third person or first person. Works either way. <.<

 

[burningdragoon]

Are you implying that there is only one way to properly handle survival horror? That's a silly notion.

Depends on the game. I've found the early Resident Evils, the later Resident Evils, and Amnesia all pretty enjoyable. None of which are 100% better in every way regarding the controls than the others.

 

[MammothBlade]

I'm not too fond of the completely defenseless style most of the time. Nor on the other end of the scale, the well-armed soldier vs. hordes of enemies. No, give the player a gun but make it artful in its use. Revolvers and double-barrel shotguns work quite well as horror survival weapons. Small round capacity, slow reload speed. The player can defend themselves if they need to but they don't ever have the upper hand with machine guns or flamethrowers. It varies with enemy style too. Hordes of enemies aren't quite as intimidating as one or two tough enemies which are constantly hunting you down. The game should torment the player's fight or flight response, make them constantly on edge, terrified, and force them to run when they're outmatched.

Always make combat possible and keep the controls as tight as possible. The fun is going to be in using your skill to take down enemies that fuck you up if you dont buckle down.

I dont see any value in a "game" where you have to spend the entire time running away with no way to defend yourself.

Then again, often games don't make you run enough. There has got to be a situation where the player is compelled to run away and hide until the threat passes without being completely defenseless. The point in survival horror isn't always facing your enemies head on.

 

[Shadowstar38]

I dont see any value in a "game" where you have to spend the entire time running away with no way to defend yourself.

Why is game in quotation marks?

Well, if you're totally defenseless and have no way to get through the objective of the game, I question what exactly it is I'm being challenged at, and hesitate to call it a game.

 

[DazZ.]

Well, if you're totally defenseless and have no way to get through the objective of the game, I question what exactly it is I'm being challenged at, and hesitate to call it a game.

Stealth, the object of the game is to get by without being seen/killed.
Which in my opinion makes for much tenser, scarier gameplay.

Not everything needs to be violent!

 

[Shadowstar38]

Well, if you're totally defenseless and have no way to get through the objective of the game, I question what exactly it is I'm being challenged at, and hesitate to call it a game.

Stealth, the object of the game is to get by without being seen/killed. Which in my opinion makes for much tenser, scarier gameplay.

Not everything needs to be violent!

Well yeah. You're tasked with learning enemy routes and finding the best way to get to the next part without alerting anyone.

How does something like Amniesa work though?

 

[DazZ.]

Well yeah. You're tasked with learning enemy routes and finding the best way to get to the next part without alerting anyone.

How does something like Amniesa work though?

Amnesia isn't routes like Metal Gear/Splinter Cell, if you open a door and there's something on the other side you need to run, run into an area where you haven't lit up and barricade a door and cover in a hope it leaves you alone. At least that's one enemy, I'm only about 3 hours in. There's another one that follows you if you're in water so you have to make bridges with the stuff around you or ward it off with other flesh.

Enemies are fairly scarce, so when things do appear it's usually after a fairly big atmospheric build up and all the things combined make it terrifying. The feeling when you're ducked under your makeshift cover or in a wardrobe/whatever and can hear something sniffing around for you but not being able to see make it immensely tense. Being able to blast your way through the stuff would just make enemies an annoyance rather than something to fear.

Edit: I well advise giving the demo a go!

 

[Lilani]

Many times in survival horror games the issue of combat is not covered as newer games have removed the notion completely.

What do you think is the best combat system for Survival Horror.


As for examples

A: Amenesia and Slender
B: Resident Evil 1,2,3 and Silent Hill
C: Eternal Darkness
D: Dead Space (on harder difficulties) and Resident Evil 4

Iunno, it depends on the game. Like any other game mechanic, nothing is inherently right or wrong. The only right and wrong that exists is in the context of a specific game. Being helpless wouldn't have worked for Dead Space (since when is Resident Evil "survival horror?") and having a big gun and a space suit wouldn't have worked in Amnesia.

Well yeah. You're tasked with learning enemy routes and finding the best way to get to the next part without alerting anyone.

How does something like Amniesa work though?

With Amnesia, you have health and "sanity" level. If you get so hurt you will die, and if you get so scared your vision will be impaired and you might "black out" for a moment. You lose sanity and become scared by staying in pitch darkness and having encounters with monsters. There are potions to heal you and sanity you can replenish by either staying in some light for a while or completing a puzzle.

You stay away from monsters usually by hiding and sometimes by running. Toward the end things get a bit creative, you make distractions to lead monsters to other places and such. Monsters don't see you as well in the dark, but remember that you lose sanity in the dark, so sometimes you just have to grit and bare.

You also have some tools to help you out--a lamp, but it uses oil so you have to keep that stocked. And there are candles around that you can light with match boxes, which you also have a limited supply of (you pick each of these up along as you go, so it's a matter of budgeting your resources). You pick up random objects to put together and solve puzzles, find letters from yourself and others, things like that.

It's sort of hard to understand as a concept, though. The best way to understand Amnesia is to just play it. It's not that expensive and I think you can still get it in a Humble Bundle.

 

[Swyftstar]

I'd go with C seeing as how in most instances a person trying to survive a horror situation would not be a highly trained combat specialist. So make the controls tight but make the character realistically weak according to who they are in the world. Of course an actual military or police character would break this but I don't think those should be actual characters in a survival horror game anyway.

 

[SoranMBane]

Where's the "all of those approaches are completely valid and it simply depends on what sort of experience the devs want to create" option? Because none of those are more or less appropriate than the other. Which approach gets used just depends on whether the game is going for more of a purer survival horror experience, like Silent Hill and Amnesia, or more of an action horror one, like Dead Space and Resident Evil 4. But there is no way that combat "should" be handled, and to say that there is only one, single way that something should be done in games is just beyond silly to me. If you pushed me for my personal preference in this regard, I suppose I'd have to go with option D, because I actually do prefer action horror over survival horror, but for reasons completely unrelated to how "scary" the game is or isn't.

 

[TrevHead]

It depends on the game, Amnesia, System shock 2, Dead Space 1 & classic Resi Evil do it in different ways and I don't want there to be just one way doing things.

I love the recent Dtoid article on classic resi which mentions that a good survival horror puts limitations on the player. Even though Dead Space is action based it still limits the player in ammo and the fact you have to shoot the limbs off them which creates tension. Plus necromorphs that jump out of vents in a dimly lit spaceship are good for jump scares. Zombies however stopped been scary 20 years ago, hense the need to be more creative to create tention using funny camera angles, tank controls and ink ribbons (ie fear of death or the unknown)

Resi 6 isn't survival horror, it's just a co-op action game with zombies in it.

 

[The Floating Nose]

I thought Resident Evil fit more into the "D" category. I prefer B personnally. But Resident Evil and Silent Hill pretty much, in my opinion, is a combination of A,B and D categories. You CAN be defenseless (Sherry in RE2) if you are out of ammo and the zombies are in a very tight corridor.

The sluggish controls, they never bottered me. If a monster is behind you, the character hyas an auto aim feature so it never bottered me. Personnally, i don't think someone stopped playing because the controls were "too awful". It kinda made sense to me that the controls were slower because the game is kind of slow too.

And your character HAS the ressources to defend himself BUT the bullets are scarce so, sometimes you just have to bypass everybody. Because if you kill everything in sight you are completely dry during the boss fights (Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare).

I just loved the way the Survival Horror genre was before. To me, Left for Dead is NOT in any way a Survival Horror. Dead Space is barely one. I would love if the survival horror could just go back to it's roots. Im pretty sure that in today's industry, it would be considered fresh again. Because even in their Heyday, survival horrors were not massively produced.

 

[alphamalet]

Movement shouldn't be a struggle with the controller, but everything else should be extremely sluggish and cumbersome. After all, you aren't an action hero; you're a normal person trying to survive. You're not going to be able to pick up a fire axe and swing it at lightning speed.