Resident Evil 6. The world awaited the newest part of the greatest survival horror franchise. What we got was a mediocre third-person shooter that potentially sums up the survival horror genre; in decline.
Let’s begin at the beginning. Vast amounts of small-budget horror games were released in the early-mid 1990s, with Alone in the Dark being seen as the game that truly invented brought the genre to a wide audience. It wasn’t until Capcom coined the term ‘survival horror’ leading up to the release of Resident Evil in 1996, when these games became truly popular.
Survival horror reached the golden age after this point. Series like Resident Evil and Silent Hill reached their peak and brought a genre previously unseen in gaming.
After any huge rise comes a big fall, and this is the same with survival horror games. After Resident Evil 4, possibly the greatest game of the genre, there has been definite downfall in the quality and originality of these types of games.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Resident Evil 6 was a huge disappointment. Critics, but especially the users of the game gave it negative reviews. It was like Capcom, the game’s developer thought, ‘people will forgive us if take out the horror, but make the game 4 times as long, die-hard fans of the series will love that!’ It was at this point that it really struck me how low the genre has gotten. This franchise was the reason an entire genre gained commercial success and a cult following, so to see the latest in the series completely fail is down-hearting. Worst of all about this is Resi 6 isn’t actually a ‘survival horror’ game like it once was, with IGN placing it in the ‘Action’ genre.
A similar thing has happened with another ‘horror’ series. The first two Dead Space games which scared me and provided lots of thrills, were followed by Dead Space 3, which received positive reviews overall but was criticised for it’s more action-orientated gameplay. Even Silent Hill, one of the original competitors of Resident Evil, has fallen dramatically, with the last few of the series released only receiving mixed reviews compared to the original. It seems that the premise of things popping out at you on-screen going ‘boo’ has worn a bit thin after more than 10 years…
Of course there have been newer survival horror games that have come out, for example Dead Island, Saw and Deadly Premonition, the latter being regarded as one of the most divisive games of recent times, with some loving it but the same amount of people hating it. But all three of these have generally received far lower review score than the games of the ‘Golden Era’ of survival horror.
It’s remarkable how much of a correlation there is between recent horror games and movies of the same genre. Movies like Halloween, Friday 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Blair Witch Project have been replicated numerous times, just like series’ including Resident Evil and Silent in gaming terms, but eventually after a period of time these replicates become tiresome, lacking originality, and devoid of much horror at all. Like the games, they literally have a few ‘boo’ moments but nothing more.
What can save this genre from becoming a complete shambles? Only one thing it seems, independent video game developers. While everyone’s pretty much lost all hope that Capcom (Resident Evil) and Konami (Silent Hill) will take their games back to the golden era’s quality, unless a huge miracle occurs, which is quite unlikely with those series in the state they’re in, small name indie developers including Frictional Games and Parsec Productions have come to shine through the mess. Their games; Penumbra, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Slender: The Eight Pages, have all been given huge praise by critics and users alike, mainly due to their focus on minimalist horror. I personally haven’t played any of these games, but realising the state of big-budget horror games in recent months, I may reconsider and see whether the new breed of horror can live up to expectations. While they may not be as commercially successful or as well known as major franchises like Resident Evil, they should hopefully continue in maintaining the survival horror genre.
By Joseph Knight
Images courtesy of:
Resident Evil 6 – http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7156/6730468241_13902837dd_z.jpg
Dead Space – http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5015/5457761799_ae80b5a197.jpg
Dead Island – http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2697/5775917657_9edd3d255d.jpg
A Nightmare on Elm Street – http://images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-3752450569-hd.jpg
Timesplitters (1, 2 and Future Perfect)
Where to begin with Timesplitters? The franchise started all the way back in 2000 solely on the Playstation 2 as a mainly multi-player FPS. While it did feature a single-player mode with a unique and interesting plot, it was mainly the ‘Arcade’ mode that grabbed the gamer’s attention. The gameplay was fun, playing with another 3 players proved popular, and the graphics were different (in a good way) compared to other first-person shooters. Two sequels, Timesplitters 2, and Timesplitters followed this game: Future Perfect, which featured similar style of gameplay but each developed on the other. While the three games did have a relatively small fanbase, they are undoubtedly some of my favourites games for the PS2 and didn’t receive the applause that they deserved.
Red Faction
How to follow an FPS? That’s right, feature another! Red Faction is a series that is more commonly known as an adventure 3rd person shooter, with the last two games in the series, Guerrilla and Armageddon both featuring this style of gameplay, but it originally started out as an action-driven FPS. The outstanding feature of the original Red Faction was the revolutionary ‘Geo-Mod’ technology, who allowed destructible settings throughout the game. Not only this, but the game was just pure fun. Lots of guns, huge environments and the unlimited destruction made it a brilliant game. It did receive hugely positive reviews, with a critic score of 88/100 on Metacritic, but the original seems to have been forgotten over time. 12 years after it’s release and it still plays well and feels fresh compared to other over-produced which have come out recently.
DJ Hero
The spin-off of the highly successful by sadly finished Guitar Hero franchise, DJ Hero was the complete opposite, offering gamers the chance to play remixes on turntables rather than classic rock songs on guitar. What is special about DJ Hero is how exclusive it is. When it was released there were many guitar-orientated games in the market, but with DJ it was a completely new area of gaming. The pity about the game was that it didn’t sell near as many copies it was predicted to sell before it’s release, meaning after the sequel it came to an unfortunate end, despite receiving critical acclaim (critic score of 86/100 on Metacritic). But for me, even now 3 years later it is a hugely original game that deserved more attention when it came out.
Perfect Dark
Goldeneye 007 is repeatedly seen as the standout shooter on the Nintendo 64, but one that is often forgotten is the timeless Perfect Dark. Released at the beginning of the century, it used the engine from 007 but improved it in many ways. There were many highlights of Perfect Dark. First of all, it had optional high-resolution graphics (not the same HD we’re used to today) a better sound system than other games. Another key feature was the female heroin, only Samus Aran (Metroid) and Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) were the most prolific women in gaming. Many other parts of the game, including the Artificial Intelligence, level designs and difficulty of the game shone. While Perfect Dark did receive glowing reviews when it was released, it seems to have been forgotten in time and should be a game to be remembered for how ahead of it’s time it was.
Metroid Fusion
I’m sure many of you have heard of the Metroid franchise. Super Metroid on the SNES being one of the greatest games of all time and the several 3D releases on the Nintendo Gamecube, but there were two Metroid games released for the GameBoy, and Fusion is the first of these two. Fusion is probably the least known game in the entire series, but is one of my personal favourite handheld games ever. It brought an original storyline and a different twist on the usual Metroid formula. Yet it was a relatively unknown game that had a very small fanbase compared to the rest of the franchise. Despite unanimous praise (92/100 critic score on Metacritic), it has definitely been forgotten since it’s release.
By Joseph Knight
Images courtesy of:
Red Faction – http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/208/3/6/red_faction_poster_by_romansiii-d58v558.png
DJ Hero – http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3640/3588800773_cbe7b0c5ef.jpg
Metroid Fusion – http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2011/138/0/6/samus_aran_suits_wall_by_maleficent84-d3go2xq.jpg
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
The original Modern Warfare brought the Call of Duty franchise to the future with a fairly large bang, which had critics and fans alike amazed by the game’s single and multi-player features. The sequel that followed was a prime example of a game highly rated by critics but frowned-upon by gamers.
The reason? Familiarity. Playing Modern Warfare 2 was similar to playing an add-on pack on the original. The single-player campaign only contained 8 hours of gameplay, but worst of all was the multi-player. It featured maps layouts that were similar to those in the previous game and barely any new guns at all. Metacritic show the critics gave the game an average score of 94/100, whilst users gave it just 5.9/10, a clear difference.
Grand Theft Auto IV
Gradually as the Grand Theft Auto franchise got older it got better, with it’s un-doubtable peak at San Andreas, which many people regard as one of the greatest games of all time, and the best of the sixth generation of console gaming. Rockstar then followed this game with GTA IV, a game that promised a lot.
GTA IV wasn’t that it was necessarily a bad game, it was just that critics had set expectations so high of the game and it was bound to disappoint. The average rating on Metacritic by critics was 98/100, the highest of any game on the website, but people, including me, were underwhelmed, with the user score only being 7.6/10. Sure, the graphics and gameplay were better than the previous games in the series, but the lack of activities besides the story missions meant the game was fairly linear, despite it’s huge environment.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
Yes ok, this is the second Call of Duty I’ve mentioned in the list, but instead of Infinity Ward’s versions I’m including Treyarch’s doomed try at making a CoD spin-off. The first Black Ops brought the series to a completely new time period, the Cold War in the late 1960s.
Black Ops 2 received similar criticism to Modern Warfare 2 by users of the game, with it only getting a score of 4.7/10 by users on Metacritic. There were just far too few changes throughout the game. The single-player was slightly improved, due to the constant transitions between the 1980s and future plots and making the latter very… Well, futuristic. But the multi-player was all too similar, despite blantant attempts by Treyarch to make it different. It was like both Treyarch and Infinity Ward took tips from each other on how to make sequels of their games.
DmC – Devil May Cry
The original Devil May Cry became a huge hit in the early 2000s, and is known as the game that truly started the hack-and-slash genre of gaming. Four sequels later and DmC, the fifth in the franchise, comes out.
Critics lauded the game for it’s originality compared to the previous sequels, but the user’s views definitely contrasted with them. They complained that DmC was too different from the classic Devil May Cry style. The main criticism being the combat was dumbed down, the plot was poor and was full of dubstep music. Yet again another game which is over-rated by critics but many people find average at best, with only a user score of 4.1/10 on Metacritic.
Tetris
The final game in the list is nearly 30 years old, first appearing on arcade machines all around the world, it has become one of the most recognisable games ever. There have been countless remakes of the game on different consoles, but all have the same premise, piecing together the varying tiles to complete a line.
Whilst critics, and in fact many people do regard this as one of the greatest games ever made, there are those who completely disagree and instead regard it as one of the most over-rated games, and over-rated sequels ever. The main criticism? It’s simply boring. It’s more of a time-waster than anything else. There is nothing special about it. Finally, the various incarnations of the game on different consoles are exactly the same, with the graphics just polished up-to-date on every version. All of these are reasons people give for disliking Tetris. Is it the most over-rated game ever? That’s up to you to decide.
By Joseph Knight
Images courtesy of:
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs45/i/2009/155/7/4/Modern_Warfare_2_Wallpaper_by_V_o_E_C.png
Grand Theft Auto IV – http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3262/2575457790_2cea2efec9_z.jpg?zz=1
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 – http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/346/5/6/cod_black_ops_2_for_windows_8_oblytile_by_masakari666-d5nsxv8.png
Tetris – http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4056/4367445715_b149d8f4a2_z.jpg?zz=1
New High Score 
