So what makes a survival horror game "good"?

[Sarge034]

I've been thinking about this a lot and finally decided to poll the community. I heard something rather disturbing in one of the escapist expo clips (I believe it was the one with Jim Sterling, Yahtzee, and TotalBiscuit). They started talking about Dead Space and how they knew a guy in a wheelchair was gonna attack them on the way back because the quest marker had them backtrack past that point. One of them then made the offhand remark to just bring back the tanky move or shoot control scheme.

So before I state my opinions, what do you think makes a "good" survival horror game?

I believe any game that tries to make itself harder by limiting the camera or the control scheme is cheap at best and a failure at worst.

- The game should limit resources so that you can kill all the enemies if you use skill, ie RE4 on pro mode. Shoot them in the leg and knife until you can't knife any more.

- The game should utilize large groups of reasonable enemies in place of unrealistically sturdy opponents. IE 50+ zombies on screen at one headshot a piece as opposed to 10 zombies at 5+ headshots a piece. I'm lookin at you RE6. >.>

- The game should have the proper ambiance, and no. Corridors with no light and just a flashlight don't count because...

- Jump scares should not be the only form of horror utilized.

- The game should be in first person. I'm just not afraid something is sneaking up on me when I can see it without turning around.

- Lastly, if there is a co-op option it should dramatically increase the number of enemies to rebalance the game equation. I do enjoy me some co-op survival horror but the games don't cope with the extra firepower and the teamwork, which is a force multiplier.

 

[alphamalet]

Well, let's see:

A game whose gameplay does NOT revolve around twitchy reflex-based actions. If the core mechanic of the game is something you would find in an action game (i.e. persistent shooting), then you simply aren't playing a survival horror game. The gameplay should be slow and methodical, relying on a player's intuition and puzzle-solving skills.

A game that understands that there is a huge difference between startling someone and scaring them. Startling is easy to do, and can be accomplished by cheap jump scares that take little to no creativity to execute. Hell, if the cutest cat in the world jumped on your lap when you weren't expecting it, you might jump yourself, but that doesn't mean that the cat or the act it performed was horrific. Horror done well is horror that incites paranoia in the player. The player should be scare of what isn't on the screen, not what is.

Survival horror takes place when someone is acutely aware of a crushing sense of isolation, loneliness and hopelessness. This atmosphere can't be built in a co-operative or multiplayer environment. It just can't. Developers! Stop trying to interject multiplayer into these games!

The protagonist must be vulnerable. They should not be some commando badass. They must have limited resources, and have limited means of surviving the bleak situation they are thrust into.

- The game should be in first person. I'm just not afraid something is sneaking up on me when I can see it without turning around.

This statement is a very telling one. It makes me think that you are new to the genre, or have not dived into the genre greats that help build survival horror to what it is. Games like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame are often considered the pinnacles of the genre, and both of those games rely heavily or entirely on a third-person perspective (and they're scary as hell too). Games like Amnesia are great, don't get me wrong, but survival horror from a first-person perspective is more of a recent trend, and to ignore games that aren't would be ignoring what built the genre.

 

[LAGG]

Just play Resident Evil Remake on the Mountain Climbing difficulty (which is the Normal difficulty of the game), the answer for this question is in there.

 

[SKBPinkie]

I've talked to people about this, and it seems to come down to terrible controls and bad / mediocre combat.

I don't mean that to sound snarky, cause I understand why these factors help towards making a game scary and tense, but more often than not, they also ruin the immersion for me. I mean, if I'm constantly being reminded that I'm playing a game, I'm not going to be immersed, let alone scared.

Then again, I think games like silent hill shattered memories and amnesia work great because they avoid this problem by removing combat altogether. I've always thought that shattered memories is one of the only truly terrifying games I've played.

 

[josemlopes]

Well, let's see:



Survival horror takes place when someone is acutely aware of a crushing sense of isolation, loneliness and hopelessness. This atmosphere can't be built in a co-operative or multiplayer environment. It just can't. Developers! Stop trying to interject multiplayer into these games!

Actually I disagree, I think that for now it hasnt been very well tried but I believe that its possible to do it right, the game must be designed with it in mind though. In this video you get the idea that it is certainly possible, and as a bonus the dev is playing as an enemy (the guy with the dark eyes). The guys playing do like to jerk around but even they arent all that comfortable here. The fact that they can get seperated and have no idea where the other player is also an important thing.

Another key thing about co-op (and this is for all games, even Borderlands) is that you must choose who you play with, you cant bring some random dude and expect to have a good time, find someone that actually wants to play a tense horror game. A lot of people complain that the co-op in Borderlands sucks because other player steal their loot and dont really help each other but thats their fault, I played it in co-op with a friend and it was great since we always stick together and shared everything.

- The game should be in first person. I'm just not afraid something is sneaking up on me when I can see it without turning around.

This statement is a very telling one. It makes me think that you are new to the genre, or have not dived into the genre greats that help build survival horror to what it is. Games like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame are often considered the pinnacles of the genre, and both of those games rely heavily or entirely on a third-person perspective (and they're scary as hell too). Games like Amnesia are great, don't get me wrong, but survival horror from a first-person perspective is more of a recent trend, and to ignore games that aren't would be ignoring what built the genre.

In here I kind of agree because to be honest the perspective is just a design choise that then is used accordingly, there are some great things you can pull off with a first person perspective and there are great things that you can pull off in a third person perspective. In the end it doesnt really matter that much.

Future survival horror games could do with immersing us in a normal, safe environment more, so that the shocks and scares have more impact. Getting us to feel genuinely safe before unleashing a scare is half of the battle, and few games do that IMO.

Its funny that you say that, Hitman Contracts has a mission that involves an hotel where a crime has been committed (you dont even need to go there to complete the mission), everything is normal but when you go to the corridor where the crime scene is located the game really gets a creepy vibe and the scary part (even though not all that scary) does feel a lot more intense because of how out of place it feels, its like you werent supposed to be there and you found out some terrible secret.


OT: The key element in my opinion is to make the players brain work, there can be weapons but they cant be used in a traditional sense as in you get a shotgun so now you can blast a monster in the face if you want to, that shotgun has to be important not just for killing but also as a tool to make the player think about his options on how he is going to use that tool (maybe break a door, blow up a trap, save it for a bigger enemy, use it for melee, strap a flashlight into it). That shotgun also needs to take space in your inventory and force you to probably drop some other usefull tools making you think for the rest of the game if you made the right decision

If you give the player those many options and force him to think about what is going on in the game it will be a lot easier to immerse him in it, thats why STALKER does a good job with the horror parts since you really have no idea if all your previous choices made you prepared for what is coming up next.


All in all you cant just be worried about when is the next monster going to show up.

 

[krazykidd]

You know what i realised, that for the longest while i had no idea what immersion was simply because i'm always immersed in my games . Once i start playing a game , i end up "being" the character on screen . Whether the controls are bad , the story is bad, the characters are bad or the graphics are bad , none of that ruins my immersion. I guess i'm just not difficult when it comes to games.

To make a survival horror game good , in my opinion, the game must focus on survival first and horror second. For survival we need :

-bleek atmosphere. The feeling of gloom and doom . Being in a situation you feel would be impossible to get out of and everything is against you.

-limited resorces. Limiting healing items and combat items .Every battle must count, do you want to use your last healing item? Or do you tough it out? Do you use the shotgun with 4 slugs? Do you run? Do you use your hammer? Will you survive the encounter or will it use too much of your resources?

Save points. Nothing is a threat if you can save anywhere . This is not to make the game harder, this is to make you feel threatened.

Hide someitems/exploration. Hide the resources the players need, don't just put them somewhere he would find them by accident . The player should be rewarded for scavenging, exploring , risking death.

Then comes horror:

-Atmosphere
-gore ( not too much)
-sound/music/lack thereof.
-horrific enemies
- non-existant threat of enemies. Making us think there is danger when there isn't can be scarier than actual enemies. This leads to paranoia.

 

[Evonisia]

Survival Horror should be built on slow gameplay. You can run if you want but don't expect it to get you anywhere fast.

Of course, having a subtle atmosphere and little things to build the world help (like say a note from somebody saying that they're going after somebody because it has killed his friends, and if the note is still there when found then he has perished).

Make it so monsters can always appear so regardless of whether they're there or not you find yourself checking every corner just in case.

I think cutscenes should only be used after sections, and they're only to be used for character development or to introduce a major plot point which couldn't happen in gameplay. Characters should be limited to cutscenes and very rarely should be shown in gameplay to give the sense of isolation, oppression and loneliness.

The enemies should not look or act relate able, monsters should look like monsters, not Humans with surgery accidents (see Condemned and Silent Hill Downpour). With the exception of Zombies from Resident Evil and the Spaniards from RE4 I just don't see the horror of Humans unless they're really done well.

Save points, death has to mean something. The threat of death is diminished when you can just do the encounter again, you need to be able to tell the consequence of falling victim to the horror.

Puzzles help, too, because it makes it seem like the world itself is trying to stop you from progressing which helps build atmosphere, the world and the sense of oppression.

 

[Exhuminator]

Here is a good site with lots of theory concerning the nature of this thread:

http://www.dreamdawn.com/sh/key_view.php?key=Game%20Design

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

- The game should limit resources so that you can kill all the enemies if you use skill, ie RE4 on pro mode. Shoot them in the leg and knife until you can't knife any more.

- The game should utilize large groups of reasonable enemies in place of unrealistically sturdy opponents. IE 50+ zombies on screen at one headshot a piece as opposed to 10 zombies at 5+ headshots a piece. I'm lookin at you RE6. >.>

In total disagreement here, since that would simply make it a monster-themed action game and not a survival game. As far as I'm concerned, if you even have the capability to fight, then you shouldn't have nearly enough resources to deal with every threat with violence and enemies should be few and far between with each individual monster representing a life-or-death struggle. Having 50 enemies that I can drop with one shot turns them into target practice, not something to be afraid of.

That isn't to say that being cornered by a metric fuckton of enemies can't be tense as hell, but those should be situations in which you either have to merely survive or run the fuck away. If you can kill 50+ monsters at once then, clearly, you are far more powerful than the monsters and have no reason to fear them.

However, I agree that using a crappy camera/controls is a cheap move. It's all well and good making your character poor at fighting, but they should still be responsive.

 

[Lawnmooer]

What makes a "Good" survival horror game?

Well, there's a few things that I feel is necessary for a good one:

- Scarcity of resources. Having enough ammo to supply an entire war and enough healing items to cure every ailment of mankind is not scary, no matter what you're up against. It comes to the point where tension is achieved in Dark Souls early on by having limited Estus Flasks (Though Rite of Kindling + abundance of Humanity soon gets rid of that) is far more effective than "Horror" games like RE5...

- No reliance on jump scares. Seriously, how do games still not understand this. Sure a few every now and then are great and can introduce a new danger to look out for, but if in Dead Space I can see where they're going to put a jump scare from a mile off it loses all of it's impact.

- Make combat not impossible to do (As we can't all be perfect at stealth, especially not in a survival horror) but make it undesirable to participate, for example it could tie in with limited resources (Health/Ammo/Weapon degradation etc)but it could also include stuff like alerting other enemies causing them to make their way to you (So could make a part further on more difficult to avoid fighting)

- No escort quests and no annoying "Carry this big heavy thing while bad things chase you". These aren't scary they're just frustrating to deal with.

Of course, I also think that other things can make a survival horror game better but aren't necessary - Things like puzzles which when done well can add tension as well as force a player out of their comfort zone in order to complete it (So no hiding away from everything in a corner or something)

 

[Ashadowpie]

for one thing, the monsters or "scary" things should never be fully scene. once you know whats after you its not as scary anymore. imagination is your worst enemy after all.

being a weaker character is usually another good one at making a game scary. you cant just mow shit down right when you see it coming across the room. but the game should be easy enough that you dont die in 2 hits (Silent hill Homecoming was scary as fuck but i raged at how stupidly hard it was)

music is good too and honestly lack of music is even better. imagine walking into a dark room and the music, background noises suddenly stop and you know theres somthing in the room. thats creepy as hell.

being chased by something unknown. enough said.


i dont actually treat jump scares as "scary game/movie material" because you can be comfortably at home in broad day light and someone can jump scare you. you wernt scared, not in a creepy place, someone just popped outta knowhere. it doesnt count.

 

[piinyouri]

For me, simply suspense.

If I never fall into a groove of any sort, then it's doing something right, and a good mastery of suspense will easily do that for me.

 

[Alssadar]

- non-existant threat of enemies. Making us think there is danger when there isn't can be scarier than actual enemies. This leads to paranoia.

This is an excellent form of horror. The internal torture of fear that doesn't want us to progress, when, in reality, there was nothing to fear. Our imaginations create the fear. From a design perspective, it's my favorite kind of horror.
In STALKER SoC, there's this one lab with a few Bloodsuckers inside of it. Now, Bloodsuckers can go invisible, and then pop up behind you, and kill you in two hits. But, to make it fair, they have a roar that they do, to alert you that they are nearby.
But in this lab, the roars sound like they're coming from any direction. Stuck with traveling through narrow tunnels with faint lighting, I was rather paralyzed with advancing through the corridors with their branching paths, and the wide, dark rooms that linked through them. I stood in the door way, shotgun ready (which still took 3/4 hits to kill one at close range), and had to force myself forward. Sprinting through the lab, mentally screaming "COME AT MY, YOU UGLY MOTHERS!", I was stunned as the first room held no bloodsuckers. Pent up fear turning into anger, I started running through the lab, just trying to find the suckers, eventually killing 2.
And then I couldn't find where I needed to go. And I had read on the Wiki that there were 3 bloodsuckers in the lab.
By god, those were some of the more horrifying 15 minutes I have experienced in a game. And, looking back, it was such a great experience, such is why I remember it.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Emphasis on survival, of course. Resident Evil 1-3, although horrible games, had a great survival aspect, and a good focus on horror and suspense. And that's why it has a fan base. The game that RE was based on is called Sweet Home, and it takes the survival up to insane levels.

Another thing is, well, horror. If it's left mysterious, yet always there, and constantly a threat, then it falls into Silent Hill 2's horror: Suspense, symbolicism, and letting the player create bizzare theories about the monsters, where they come from, and why they are what they are.

These are the reasons why Dead Space isn't actually horror, the Siren games have a good framework but awful execution, and why many consider the genre "dead" - because not many games fit those two bills.

 

[Vladdie93]

I've been thinking about this a lot and finally decided to poll the community. I heard something rather disturbing in one of the escapist expo clips (I believe it was the one with Jim Sterling, Yahtzee, and TotalBiscuit). They started talking about Dead Space and how they knew a guy in a wheelchair was gonna attack them on the way back because the quest marker had them backtrack past that point. One of them then made the offhand remark to just bring back the tanky move or shoot control scheme.

So before I state my opinions, what do you think makes a "good" survival horror game?

I believe any game that tries to make itself harder by limiting the camera or the control scheme is cheap at best and a failure at worst.

- The game should limit resources so that you can kill all the enemies if you use skill, ie RE4 on pro mode. Shoot them in the leg and knife until you can't knife any more.

- The game should utilize large groups of reasonable enemies in place of unrealistically sturdy opponents. IE 50+ zombies on screen at one headshot a piece as opposed to 10 zombies at 5+ headshots a piece. I'm lookin at you RE6. >.>

- The game should have the proper ambiance, and no. Corridors with no light and just a flashlight don't count because...

- Jump scares should not be the only form of horror utilized.

- The game should be in first person. I'm just not afraid something is sneaking up on me when I can see it without turning around.

- Lastly, if there is a co-op option it should dramatically increase the number of enemies to rebalance the game equation. I do enjoy me some co-op survival horror but the games don't cope with the extra firepower and the teamwork, which is a force multiplier.

I understand some of your reasons, but they don't really delve into what makes a good horror game rather than what happens with modern horror games that aren't scary.
I'd like to look at what makes things scary in particular, and why they are scary. Focusing on that should help everyone understand what needs to be done to keep survival horror alive.

I'm going to use RE4 as a reference to all of my personal thoughts on what makes a good scary game, because I think it's the game that's done the best job at it. (With maybe some leans on Dead Space (guilty pleasure).

1) Lack of predictability: It's important to know that there's not an absolute pattern to what happens. Sometimes you'll get regular people infected with La Plaga, every now and again chainsaw man makes an appearance,the fish in the lake that you have to harpoon. the Gigante you have to shoot and knife the back vine with, Immediately after the good dog helps you you find two that want to rip your throat out, a "never-ending" amount of zombies in a small corridor. In the sewers you fought bugs that could turn invisible for short periods and fly.
See, what RE4 did that was ingenious was it would only give you a small taste of what was to be expected. Letters and notes would mention what these things are, (and in the fish' sake you saw just a blur of what it was), making your mind paranoid as to when you had to overcome. However, it wasn't a predictable pattern. You didn't know when you'd have to face more Gigantes or chainsaw man. It wasn't something you could 100% calculate. The environment also gave you a really good inability to plan and predict, because most of it was completely new things. It wasn't all just jump-scares and "no really I'm dead" situations, because that is too predictable. When you get the pattern, you aren't scared.
The giant fish in the lake was scarier because it didn't immediately come and attack you the second you hit the boat. You had to keep moving in the water without knowing when it would strike. If the game had just done a cutscene of you in the boat or just did a rail shooter part for the boat, it wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining.

2) Anticipation: This might sound surprising, but the build-up to something powerful is more exciting than the powerful act itself. That's because in that build-up your mind has so many ways it can imagine the event. Anticipation for something to happen gives the player the ability to assume the worst in every situation, and (if done well), the actual event they have to face may be even scarier or more powerful than they imagined. However, just having a bunch of monsters isn't scary. It's having a sort of build up to them. However, it's not something you can show by showing what the event is 100%. Imagine if in RE4 the lake monster had a perfect picture in one of the letters and a scale for humans. People would know what to expect, giving them no anticipation. This works with predictability pretty well.

3) Being overwhelmed by something powerful: This really works, and I've seen it done in RE4, Silent Hill 2, and Dead Space. This follows the previous point. This occurs when there's an overlooming presence of something much more powerful: Something you can't just keep head-shotting to beat. This would be the Regenerators in Dead Space that you couldn't kill but you had to avoid in tight spaces, or the scene in Silent Hill 2 where you are in a tight room with Pyramid head until the alarm goes off, or even when you have El Gigante or the numerous zombies that keep coming in the small house. It's that feeling of overwhelming power of the thing you may have to deal with. For big bosses, this can be done by building them up with bigger people than you talking about how strong it is, or having the enemy taunt you with notes until you have to face it. In some cases, this could even be Silent Hill, the town in SH2. It's a very big and overwhelming entity that seems to envelope everyone and leads people to see completely different things.

4) Fight or flight: This is very big, because it can go both ways. Sometimes you want to fight, but because of your inability to do so you have to run away. Other times, being forced to confront those things that terrified you so much (like the lake monster in RE4) and the mind tricks people can play on themselves on what they expect can be more powerful than what they actually face. Typically one way of doing it is by giving the player a typical standard for what they would do (hiding from Pyramid man or trying to fight the Regenerator) and force them to do the opposite. Make them confront Pyramid man in a small space and just barely avoid his attacks and run from Regenerator man because your shots don't do anything to him.
HOWEVER, don't just have them do the opposite. There are some times when you need to give them just running away from something massive, or having them fight something. It sets up that lack of predictability when they eventually do have to confront it or run away. There needs to be an even mix to make sure it doesn't become a pattern of just facing it all or not.
(And also, please make sure the player knows whether or not they have to fight or flight.)


Those are some of the basics in my mind. If you guys think I missed something, please let me know.

 

[HardkorSB]

First of all, a lot more stealth should be implemented into horror games.
In horror movies, when the killer/monster finds you, you're usually dead. You can slow him down or knock him out for a moment but sooner or later he will be after you again. Your main options are run and don't stop or hide and hope whatever is chasing you won't find you.
I remember some older games like Clock Tower doing it well.
In most so called horror games, you can kill a platoon of enemies with little problem.

It's good when there's something that follows you throughout the game, a "main enemy" of sorts.
Something like William Birkin and that cyborg in a green trench coat in Resident Evil 2, Nemesis in Resident Evil 3 or the dude with the scissors in Clock Tower.

I like when there's some sort of mystery which you must unravel.
A lot of horror movies, especially slashers, often depend on a good mystery.

Visual aesthetics and sound effects are very important. The Silent Hill games are a perfect example of that.

Last thing I'll mention are the mind fuck moments. Like this one: