GamingUnion.net:
A conversation with a couple of friends recently brought up the topic of the horror genre in the video games industry, a genre that's become a bit of a personal joke, to say the least. We discussed how it feels like nothing new has been done in the last few years, and even the most visceral of experiences can easily be boiled down to a carnival ride: a few turns, some semi-predictable 'boo!' moments, and a lot of things jumping out at you. At the very worst, we have a series like Resident Evil, which has become an absolute far cry from what it used to be - even then, that wasn't very scary - and at best, we have the remnants of the Silent Hill series that is desperately attempting to relive its psychological glory days. Somewhere in between lay titles like Dead Space. It does a good job in promoting a few scares while at the same time staying close to the 'action shooter' genre that has taken an iron grip over the industry in the past few years. So where do fans of the horror genre have to go to get a decent scare? Apparently, like most things these days, the answer is the online Indie scene.
RESIDENT EVIL (1996) Original Cast Reunion & Interview with Linda - Rebecca Chambers, Charlie Kraslavsky, Greg Smith & Eric Pirius.
A fan-made Resident Evil short film has been released, and it tells the story of one of the original game's most terrifying and iconic diary entries.
Fantastic homage to a memorable part of the original. The authenticity to the source material is outstanding and blows away all of the pathetic Hollywood adaptations that we've had to endure as fans. The addition of Chris Redfield's original actor AND (separate) voice actor is fantastic! Heck, even the CGI was pretty good given the total budget of $55k to make this.
Yeah this seemed so much more like cannon to me. I’d watch more of it if / when it’s available.
Thank GOG for that!
I feel like they should have included the original games with the remakes they've been doing.
It's nice to know there are still some indie developers out there that are trying to keep this genre alive.
Dead Space was fun the first time, got some scares out of it. But after that it just became another third person shooter in really tight corridors with butt ugly enemies to shoot at.
Horror Games no longer exist. They just turn into action games like shooters.
Nowadays mainstream horror game's rely, in my opinion, too much on jump scares, as opposed to really engaging the player on a psychological level and exploiting kind of real fear's that people have.
We are given too much freedom, too much control of what we can often fight back with in these games. A big part of fear is feeling vulnerable and feeling desperate.
Hopefully some developer will realize this and revive what classic horror games used to do.
Amnesia is a beacon of hope! Support those developers! I pirated the game before it came out and loved it and then as soon as I saw it for sale on Steam, I bought it. I highly recommend that game (along with the Penumbra series, made by the same developers) to anyone who is looking for a seriously scary game. But I agree with this story in the sense that most 'horror' games just turn into regular shooters eventually.