We have a new article discussing the Survival of Survival Horror games. I am curious to what your thoughts are on the article? Also do the new controls in RE5 make it less of a Survival Horror and more of an action game? Here is the first two paragraphs of the article.
[i]
As Resident Evil 5 bears down upon us, a lot of people can’t help but comment on the ways that Resident Evil has evolved as a franchise. Resident Evil 5 marks the refinement and streamlining of the formula pioneered in RE 4. That game dropped the earlier installments’ slow pace, thick atmosphere, and bad combat and controls for a more action-oriented, fluid experience. RE 5 takes these new aspects to their logical conclusions, and features, smooth gameplay and high production values, but comparatively few genuinely scary moments, it would seem.


Regardless of whether you think that Resident Evil 5 trades in racist, blatantly offensive imagery and tropes (and it absolutely does), there’s no denying RE 5’s clout, nor can one discount the franchise’s new direction when it comes to this popularity. When it comes to pacing and combat, Resident Evil 5 is being compared to Dead Space, as opposed to its previous peers, Silent Hill, Clocktower, and Siren.[/i]

http://gametopius.com/index.php/video-games/features/458-survivalofsurvivalhorror

If you’re like me, you’re eagerly awaiting the forthcoming Prince of Persia DLC from Ubisoft. If you are me, you recently spoke with François Roughol, a level designer for the recent Prince of Persia, the soon-to-be released PoP DLC, and who is now a level designer on Assassin’s Creed 2. We talked about PoP’s reception, his part in designing the game, the decisions and reasoning behind the game’s levels and gameplay.


Thomas Cross: You were a level designer on Prince of Persia; what parts of the game did you work on, and what were your goals in these various areas?

François Roughol: I came in for the final year of production, right as we ended pre-production stage, to design and script five of the Ruined Citadel levels, and script 2 other levels in High Castle. Ruined Citadel, ended up being used for the E3 demo and therefore got to an almost finished stage faster than all others. Having finished most of the level design by then, the region also ended up being the test subject for many of the subsequent gameplay features we implemented. In the end, it was also the first region to contain light seeds, the compass system Elika uses to show you the way, and traps. (Traps were obviously thought of when designing the levels, but only implemented later on)....(more after the jump)