By our very nature, we as people are drawn to the dark. We may not like to admit it, but our macabre instincts thirst for blood, as we find ourselves morbidly drawn to brutality and violence. It is no surprise that horror is such a popular genre, where we can explore our grim compulsion to view carnage and experience fear in the comfort of our own homes.
Fear is a powerful motivator, and an instinct that we like to keep well sharpened. Horror taps into a need to be scared, a need to keep one's "fight or flight" programming well-honed and finely tuned. Horror games are no different. Unlike movies, a survival horror places the player directly in the thick of the terror, directly in the eye of the storm, where fight our natural instincts are not only brought out, but actively required.
Be it Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark or Clock Tower, there are many frightening examples of interactive horror to choose from, where the primary goal is simply to get out of there alive. In general, they follow a set of distinct rules. While not 100% true in all cases, there are ten important golden rules that a survival horror ought to acknowledge if it wants to be truly terrifying.
From they who brought you the ten golden rules of online gaming, and the ten golden rules of Japanese RPGs, we now present to you the gory, the grim and the grotesque, with ten golden rules of survival horror.
1: Main protagonist must have zero fighting ability, even if a highly trained professional:
Jill Valentine is an elite member of the task force S.T.A.R.S, a strategic rescue unit highly trained to deal with all manner of dangerous activity. However, she cannot throw a punch to save her life. She can't jump, can barely run and isn't even very good with a gun. How she could even qualify as a bus conductor, let alone make Alpha Team for S.T.A.R.S, is an amazing feat, but it's a staple of survival horror -- absolutely useless heroes.
This doesn't mean that they don't instantly know how to hold and reload a hunting rifle if they find it lying around.
2: Characters must move like forklift trucks:
Survival horror is a unique genre, where bad game mechanics can be justified by claiming they make things scarier. It's just not a good horror game if the playable character doesn't move like an inebriated crab on a beach ball. It's not enough for somebody to enter a room, turn around and then leave. If you want to get back out the door you came in through, you need to run around the entirety of the room first, as ridiculously wide lift-truck swings are the only only way to turn -- it makes things scarier!
3: Despite a lack of ammunition, shotguns are just left lying around:
There's barely three bullets in the entire city, but there is always a shotgun just conveniently laying around for you to pick up. In survival horror, other people don't take their guns with them, probably because they used up the one box of shells they could find. You'd think people would keep their shotguns just in case, but not these people -- and that's why they are dead. Their loss is your gain, however, as you will always find a trusty shotgun less than an hour after you've found a pistol. Hooray!
4: People leave notes where anybody can read them, especially highly classified ones:
You're alone and isolated in a zombie infested city/demon ridden town, with limited escape options and little chance of rescue. What do you do? Grab a pen and start practicing your calligraphy! People trapped in the world of survival horror love to get their write on, and leave little notes of mostly useless information in ludicrous places. Perhaps the breakdown of society and its fascist litter laws have caused the populace to get drunk on power, littering with wanton abandon. Nobody will stop these paper trailing maniacs now!
The best notes are the highly classified documents that have just been left out for anybody to read. Granted, there's not much you can do with secret corporate knowledge when a crazed mutant is pulling your arms off, but that's not the point. An outbreak of flesh tearing monsters is NO excuse for a lack of professional conduct and correct filing.
5: Architects are clinically insane:
Can we truly be sure that Raccoon City's inhabitants were the victims of the T-Virus? My personal theory is that, rather than becoming infected by a biologically engineered disease, they were simply driven mad by years of having to use keys in the shape of helmets and pushing blocks around rooms just to open fucking doors.
It seems that most buildings in survival horror games were designed by schizophrenic lunatics who felt that it should take two hours to get from the kitchen to the bathroom, with a collected eighteen miles of backtracking in between. Why does a hotel need a working music box to open a door? How did the local council give that planning permission!? It doesn't matter, because it's part of why survival horror is awesome.
6: Nobody knows how to kick a door down:
Following on from the last entry, it seems that to be a survival horror character, you must have legs made of cheese and biscuits, because you can't kick open a door to literally save your life. You'd think nobody would mind if you just skip convention and bust into a room rather than perform some insane puzzle to find the key, but it seems that nobody is letting an onslaught of monstrous entities get in the way of being polite and respectful of other people's property.
This does work both ways, however. If you're being pursued by something that wants your flesh, simply close a door on it and there's a 90% chance it will be too polite to break it down. It won't even knock. It seems that if you want to survive any kind of mutant/ghost/zombie outbreak in your city, if you drag a door around with you, you will be invincible. Monsters can't handle that opening and closing shit, meng!
7: Last bosses must be utterly ridiculous:
8: You can't just have a simple fucking healthbar:
Health bars are quick and easy ways of seeing if you're in trouble, which is why we don't want them anywhere near our survival horrors. The very point of survival horror is to be as awkward, abstract and pretentious as possible, so health bars should be vague representations hidden on another screen. Do you see how this makes everything scarier!?
9: 90% of the dialog must be terrible:
Scary gameplay must be accompanied by scarily bad acting and/or a horrific script. The last thing you want to do is sympathize with anybody, lest it becomes difficult to maintain the inevitable erection you'll be sporting when they are promptly and brutally slain. This is a standard horror convention that gaming has adapted with great skill.
At this point I would like to offer a special round of applause for Forbidden Siren. Whoever decided to give distinctly Japanese characters a localized voice cast of substandard actors from England is an absolute genius. It made everything scarier!
10: Nobody ever just LEAVES!
You'd think the best way to survive a monster-laden incident would be to not get involved, but that's not enough for some people. There are times when a character might have the perfect avenue to escape -- and they don't. More likely, they'll take the route that gets them into even worse trouble. Hell, James Sunderland didn't even have to go to Silent Hill at all, let alone keep on walking deeper into town after realizing everyone was being eaten by monsters. I'd have turned my ass right round after the first demon I had to smash down, let alone the fiftieth.
But that's not what survival horror is about. Survival horror is about idiots doing stupid things while saying silly things, fighting ludicrous monsters, searching for keys, navigating improbably designed buildings, reading useless notes, picking up shotguns, turning around like a truck and fighting like a baby.
And that's why survival horror rules.
04/14/2008 11:59
Word. To. Your mother.
04/14/2008 11:59
04/14/2008 11:59
04/14/2008 12:01
(Bear in mind I love survival horror btw)
04/14/2008 12:01
04/14/2008 12:02
all of your reasons are exactly why I hate Survivor Horror games.
04/14/2008 12:03
04/14/2008 12:03
3 - A shotgun is heavy, if you keep carrying that thing around hoping to find ammo, good luck on getting tired and running slow from monsters.
6 - RE4 you can. :P
10 - While you're right James didn't need to go there, once in, he was trapped, he couldn't leave, all the roads where destroyed.
04/14/2008 12:06
- Fuck that girl, this shit is to dangerous to keep running after her, she's adopted anyway.
04/14/2008 12:07
04/14/2008 12:08
04/14/2008 12:10
04/14/2008 12:11
04/14/2008 12:14
04/14/2008 12:15
well done. soft AND tasty.
I hate when they decide to add a chapter in a game where you have to protect some stupid useless whore. But I guess if you can see up her skirt, it's not as bad.
04/14/2008 12:15
04/14/2008 12:20
04/14/2008 12:25
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04/14/2008 12:31
04/14/2008 12:34
How cool an unlockable Hadoken, would have come in handy, against the zombie horde. Think about that one, Capcom. You know it would be cool
But seriously, if you fucking well run out of ammo, you should them using said weapon to start clubbing shit to death, or use some old fashioned fisty cuffs. Why is this not so Capcom?
04/14/2008 12:35
IT DOES! They are spirits and cameras steal our soul!!!
That's why they invented digital cameras, those are harmless.
04/14/2008 12:36
i'm going to start playing the fatal frame series now, i bought Ff2 & 3 from gamequestdirect awhile ago but after finishing SH:0, i'm going to start
04/14/2008 12:37
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04/14/2008 12:49
04/14/2008 12:50
If I ever start a company this will be on motivational posters all over the office.
04/14/2008 13:01
04/14/2008 13:15
04/14/2008 13:16
BRAI.....ummm, i mean...STARS........STTTTAAAARRRRRSSSSSSSS
04/14/2008 13:24
(thing is i'm not posting the image in case it MAY be NSFW)
so here's the meat man..
04/14/2008 13:25
Awkward, fun, Awkward fun.
Nothing like POWER WAKING away from ZOMBIE DOGS!
04/14/2008 13:28
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04/14/2008 13:41
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04/14/2008 13:54
He was in contact with the government throughout the entire thing, yet not once did he get a fucking SWAT team or some military team to help the guy out.
04/14/2008 13:54
04/14/2008 13:59
Now way, no how.
-JD
04/14/2008 14:19
any time you are just chilling near a window, zombies/dinosaurs will always jump through said window and make you shit yourself
04/14/2008 14:19
04/14/2008 14:29
oh and you forgot how it takes damn near 1 full clip to kill a zombie. cause it makes things so realistically SCARY!
04/14/2008 14:50
Awesome lists, would read again!
04/14/2008 14:51
This should be #1.
04/14/2008 14:56
04/14/2008 16:18
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04/14/2008 17:32
04/14/2008 17:45
Gee, think that coulda been the point?
04/14/2008 18:54
04/14/2008 19:31
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04/14/2008 21:29
11. NO MATTER HOW ANNOY EVERYONE THINKS IT IS, ALWAYS HAVE A ZOMBIE DOG/BAT/ANNOYING THING TO ATTACK YOU, FORCING YOU TO LEARN YOUR GAME'S AWKWARD AND KETCHUP BOTTLE SLOW MELEE ATTACKS.. PERIOD.
Ug. RE1 was the first and only game that made the Zombie Dog scary.
04/14/2008 21:33
04/15/2008 00:05
cant tell you how many times i've been playing a Sur Horror game and have been told "you need to find the key that opens this door" What do i need a fucking key for!? i've got a grenade launcher and a RPG, I'll just blow the fucking door to hell and go inside. or better yet save my RPG and use the shotgun i found just lying around and shoot the lock off this crappy wooden door
04/15/2008 01:11
But seriously, if you fucking well run out of ammo, you should them using said weapon to start clubbing shit to death, or use some old fashioned fisty cuffs.
Damn straight. Why the hell can't I swing my shotgun like a baseball bat if I'm out of ammo? If a zombie is coming at my ass, and I'm standing there with an empty shotgun, you can damn well bet I'll be swinging for the bleachers, rather than standing there clicking the trigger over and over, or trying to do the slow-ass 18-wheeler turn around trying to get away.
At least Silent Hill Origins, which I'm currently in the process of playing through, lets you use your fists. But that's only because if you had to rely on that tire iron you just picked up, you'd be fucked because it's going to shatter after about two hits or so.
04/15/2008 01:15
04/15/2008 05:02
you sold RE4 because you couldn't control it?
I know it has it's slight problems, but dear god you must suck ass. all you need in RE4 is to cap those motherfuckers in the knees and boot em in the head, free kills!
04/15/2008 07:33
The character isn't so much as inept at fighting or the whole basic movement thing. It is simply that they are weighed down with a pistol, a shotgun or 2, an sub machine gun,some sort of sniper rifle, possibly a rocket launcher, massive amounts of ammo for it all, a jade mask, 3 animal head sculptures, 15 various health potions, a red orb, a blue orb, a broken music box and a medallion with the sun on one side and curious scratches on the back. And all of it concealed about their person in a manner that it appears that they are holding nothing. No wonder they are a bi sluggish.
04/15/2008 08:35
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04/15/2008 18:53
-r blood!
04/15/2008 19:32
And most survival horror titles are fairly clear on what your current status is - one can presume that when the color 'red' is being flashed behind your character, that's bad. RE's status labels of 'Fine', 'Caution', et al were also fairly obvious.
More modern titles also make the controller vibrate, have your character take a pose that reflects their wounded status. So even if there isn't exactly an explicit 'health bar', it's made pretty clear how your character is doing.
04/15/2008 19:37
04/15/2008 20:55
04/15/2008 21:04
Then, the next games tried to stick to this bad dialog, because of the nostalgia or "respect" to the genre people have.
04/15/2008 21:14
04/15/2008 22:02
Someone doesn't understand what the "Satire" tag means.
04/15/2008 22:43
04/15/2008 23:38
04/16/2008 02:03
ESPECIALLY all Resident Evils.
04/16/2008 02:48
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04/17/2008 03:19
Also, #4 makes me want to leave strange notes all over town.
Just finished Condemned 2 (PS3), fuckin' great!
04/17/2008 07:13
04/17/2008 12:41
04/17/2008 13:54
I just started Origins. Picked up a scalpel, it broke after a couple slashes. Okay, maybe it got bent, or dull...or it was a cheap scalpel and did indeed break. But a crowbar? You're telling me that something designed to pry open heavy shit is going to break after I smack a demon nurse with it?
C'mon...I'm all for realism, but some shit is just annoying.
04/17/2008 14:05
04/18/2008 01:23
04/18/2008 10:02
04/20/2008 03:13
...Are you kidding? Would it REALLY have been so hard to add one more "This door is locked" message?
04/20/2008 03:38
04/20/2008 10:09
04/20/2008 15:23
Can't wait for Alone In The Dark. Why isn't there a Bubba Ho-Tep game?
04/20/2008 17:38
04/20/2008 23:04
Hopefully, EA's Dead Space will change some of these facts.
Hilarious article~!
04/27/2008 13:09
Spend time getting a key and be allowed to barricade yourself in or fuck the key but be prepared for a bigger fight later.
Great read.
04/28/2008 02:09
ss