As I have previously said, I generally divide up the different types of horror games into different categories, or "subgenres" if you prefer, based on their mechanics and by what means the player is given to reach the overall goal. Most of the Indie horror titles currently on the market fall under what I call the "Adventure Horror" category. This includes games like Outlast, NightCry and Amnesia The Dark Decent in which there is a heavy focus on discovering the story and getting around both enemies and other obtacles without the use of weapons of any kind. The developers self label these games as "Survival Horror", but really they are a completely different kind of horror entirely. I have and always will define true "Survival" horror by the guidlines that were set by the series that coined the term in the first place; Resident Evil.
Scarce ammo, resource management, a suphocating atmosphere, and a focus on immersing you completely in the world the game inhabits, making you feel vulnerable, but eventually providing you with the tools you need to overcome your fear and truly survival the horror. Games like Silent Hill, Dino Crisis, and the original Resident Evil trilogy embody these traits perfectly, keeping to the basics of the formula but each building upon it in their own unique ways. I have yet to see an Indie horror game that can truly stake a claim as a "Survival" horror game, but it seems as though all that is about to change with the upcoming release of a new challenger. I of course mean Camel101's classic in the making; Syndrome. In Syndrome players will be tasked with exploring the halls of a doomed starship trying to piece together the events that led to the environment being in it's current state. Meanwhile, your trust is twisted in two directions from the start as the protagonist engages in radio conversations with two very opposite characters, both with their own agendas that are not entirely clear. The gameplay goes back to the classic survival horror fashion of having to decide when to fight, and when to run for your life. With limited ammunition and enemies of varying ferocity and strength, you will no doubt often be asking yourself if it is worth it to draw your gun, or save your bullets for a more dangerous foe. Only time will tell for sure, but Syndrome is shaping up to be the first Indie horror game that can truly call itself "Survival Horror". Syndrome releases on both PS4 and Steam on September 29th of this year. Thanks for viewing Dark Corners Of The Earth, and remember, if you enjoyed this blog then please follow us on twitter and check back regularily for new posts!
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Anywhere you look, you will find hardly any middle ground on this subject. For the most part it's either hot or cold, fire or ice, and nowhere more so than the No Man's Sky steam community. The responce to Hello Game's failure to clearify and Sean Murray's numerous accounts of implying that player to player interaction was possible in the game (which, as it turns out is not possible at al) have been met with absolutely rediculous reactions. You have the people who think that this is armageddon, that we have been "scammed" and "lied to", who believe that deitys of every culture and every religion should smite Sean Murray where he stands, and then you have the people who are constantly trying to downplay everything that Sean Murray said and trying to sweep the situation under the preverbial rug in an attempt to help the game's reputation. Somewhere in the middle, you have the very few rational people who are like "yeah, that sucks, but that doesn't make it a bad game". Make no mistake, if you are one of those people, fire and ice will rain down to rip you a new one. If you are not there to praise the game and kiss it's butt, you're apparently a troll and if you are not there to bash the game and it's the developer alike, you're apparently a blind delusional fanboy.
The situation as a whole is completely rediculous any way you look at it, but I suppose if you look at it from the right angle it makes sense; fire and ice make Steam. Thanks for viewing Dark Corners Of The Earth, and remember, if you enjoyed this blog then please follow us on twitter and check back regularily for new posts!
Immediately upon release, red flags were going up across the board due to a serious error that gamers encountered when the game went live on monday night. The game wouldn't start. Buyers of the digital version of the game were greeted with a five minute loading screen, despite the fact that there were no patches or extra data to install, and a series of logos that would constantly freeze up only to get to a main menu screen that didn't work. Some users who managed to keep their sanity through the hair pullingly long process of restarting multiple times and were able to get into a game found themselves faced with several more issues. Crashes, extremely low frame rates [something many of Telltale's own games are known for], freezing and in some cases being unable to movie, helpless to watch as nearby enemies took notice of their presence and tore them apart.
While most people were able to fix the loading times and some of the frame rate issues by either rebuilding their database or reinstalling the game, many of these issues still persist and some of them are likely here to stay, such as the plethora of performance issues that seem to be unhelped by the game's astonishingly low draw distance which make it look more akin to an early silent hill game than one about zombies and survival. I refuse to believe that systems capable of running games like Fallout 4 and Metal Gear Solid 5 should run a game like 7 Days To Die so horribly, especially with the already lite graphics being watered down significantly from it's PC counterpart. The worst part about all of this is that, in the moments when the game was actually somewhat playable, me and my friends were genuinely enjoying ourselves; holding up in an abandoned military camp, coming across new areas, fortifying a home to hide from the seventh day feral hordes, etcetera. 7 Days To Die was brought to consoles in a sorry state, but it is not the game's fault, the issue lays with Telltale. A much better job could have been done porting this game to current gen systems, but Telltale Games were not right ones for the task. Thanks for viewing Dark Corners Of The Earth, and remember, if you enjoyed this blog then please follow us on twitter and check back regularily for new posts! Interview Courtesy Of Capcom-Unity
How are you feeling after the big announcement?
Kawata-san: It was a lot of work to get to this point, obviously. First of all, we’re super relieved that we’re able to talk about the game and show it to everyone. Now we’re just interested in knowing what everybody thinks and what the reaction is to the announcement we made yesterday. I’m looking forward to seeing that. What is your development history with the RE series? Kawata-san: I’m the producer on the game. I’ve worked on previous titles like Resident Evil 5 and [Resident Evil] Revelations. I’m going to try to use my history with the series to bring out the horror feeling out in this title. I want to bring a new kind of horror to players. Nakanishi-san: I’ve been on the series for quite a long time. It’s been a long history of taking on new challenges. Every time we have new hardware coming out we’re putting a new Resident Evil on it and doing something different with the series. Like Kawata-san said, we’re looking forward to doing something really new for everyone on the current generation of consoles. The full name of the game in the West is “Resident Evil 7 biohazard” and in Japan it’s “BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil”. Can you please explain this interesting new international naming convention? Kawata-san: Obviously you can tell we wanted to merge the two titles we’ve had. As fans may know, the game has been called Biohazard ever since the beginning in Japan, and it’s been called Resident Evil in the West. We really want to have the big, impactful feeling of the series being in one place right now, and having one future it’s heading towards. To do that, we brought the two titles together into one with Resident Evil 7 biohazard. It’s the opposite in Japan, it’s BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil. In your own words, what are the core differences between Resident Evil 7 and previous games in the series? Nakanishi-san: The demo, just to be clear, isn’t a slice of the game. We really want to focus on what concepts we want players to understand about the game with the demo, and that’s horror. This is a tonal preview of what to expect in the game, rather than a little bit of game content you’re getting in advance. In the 20 year history of Resident Evil, you know that the key pillars of the game are fear and horror, exploration of the environment, puzzle-solving elements, resource management, and combat against enemies. Those are all in this game, but we wanted to start off with the first two – horror and exploration – and get you experiencing those two pillars up front. If you’re thinking that because those other elements aren’t in the demo, that they won’t be in the game, that’s not the case. We’re focusing up front about the message of horror coming home in this demo. Looking back at the history of the series and thinking “How do we get people playing today to experience the same fear that they felt in 1996 with the first game? How do we bring that up to date and bring that emotion back?” That question and the answer is what led us to make the gameplay system as you see in the demo. Why did the team decide to shift RE7 into a first-person perspective? Kawata-san: Both myself and the director, Mr. Nakanishi, felt if we want people to experience horror and experience it in the most direct, visceral way possible, then literally putting yourself in the position of seeing what the character sees is the best way to do that and so it was our motivation for the first-person camera change. Nakanishi-san: Of course it’s a big change, so first we got a prototype working and we put first-person in place and we wanted to see if we could make Resident Evil work in first person. As soon as we had it up and running we were really confident that this was the way to move forward. We were really happy with the way that Resident Evil feels in first person. Resident Evil 7 is built from the ground up in Capcom’s new proprietary RE Engine. Can you share a little more about this? Nakanishi-san: Our artists, programmers, and the whole team are just all really fussy people. We all want to get exactly what we want out of game development. If you’re using a third-party engine or one created by another company, it feels like there are places that you have to reach to scratch an itch compared to when we design an engine ourselves. We want to know exactly how to find our way around an engine. We decided the only way to make the game with the highest quality possible was to make our own engine for it that was dedicated to making this amazing experience. It’s really a sign of the team’s dedication as artists to not only make a new game but a new engine as well. What character(s) do players control in this game? Kawata-san: Just to confirm – it isn’t an existing character whose eyes you’re seeing through. I think one of the places we got in the series up until now is you’re kind of playing these superhero characters. They’re fully equipped, powerful people who go into these survival horror situations but they’re ready for them. They can take it on. To bring the horror experience right to the player, we thought now that you’re in first person you’ll feel like you’re there. You can’t be looking through the perspective of a macho, hero character because that’s not you at home. Or maybe you are macho, I don’t know [laughs]. It’s sort of a powerless, ordinary person you’re playing as. We’re not really talking in too much detail about who they are right now, but they’re an ordinary person stuck in an extraordinary situation. I think that really brings the horror right to the fore. You wonder if this person you’re playing as – or you – will be able to cope with this situation. That’s a real feeling of helplessness that helps the horror stand out. If you try the demo that’s out on [PlayStation 4] for [PlayStation Plus subscribers], you’ll see. Is RE7 a reboot? Nakanishi-san: It’s not a reboot and we’re not throwing away the series’ canonical storyline. It’s the new numbered title in the series and it’s a sequel to the existing mainline series titles. After I say that and you try the demo, you may say “Really?”, because it looks nothing like any of that, but trust me. We need to have a bit of mystery in survival horror, so we’re trying to make you wonder when you play it how could this possibly be connected? That’s part of the appeal. Can you tell us more about the VHS aesthetic and found footage taps featured in the Resident Evil 7 Beginning Hour Teaser? Kawata-san: Things have gotten so digital in the modern era that we wanted to bring an analogue, grungy feel to this horror. If you’ve already played the demo then you’ve seen this VHS found footage motif going on. You play them on a big, old, cathode-ray TV. There are also going to be audio cassettes appearing in the game as well. That sort of thing has a certain atmosphere. Almost like it could be set anytime, could be the ‘80s, it could be now. RE7 is fully playable in PlayStation VR Mode. Tell us about the impact this has on the game. Kawata-san: I think VR is a really good match for horror. When we first got it implemented we were all so excited to try it out, put on the headset, and get into the horror experience. You have to try it out for yourself to figure out how immersive it is and how you feel like you’re right there in the room. Is the game content the same between PSVR and a regular playthrough? Nakanishi-san: Yes, the content is the same, but of course for VR we need to optimize the experience to make it comfortable and as immersive as possible. But the game itself is the same, whether you play in PSVR Mode or play it regularly. Is there ever a concern that the development team could make Resident Evil 7 too scary? Nakanishi-san: [Laughs] You take responsibility if you choose to play in PSVR Mode. Whether you think you’re ready for it or not is up to you to decide. We certainly did have feelings at some points where we thought it was possible to push it too far in VR with horror. Why did the development team decide to focus the setting of RE7 to a derelict plantation mansion? Kawata-san: Resident Evil 6 and recent entries in the series have had this massive, global scale to the horror and the threat, and we figured if we brought it down to a more intimate, personal scale of horror that would make it easier for players to experience the fear that we want them to experience. I hope that fans will enjoy this “bringing it back to basics” feeling we have where it’s just one person in one location with a lot of fear. By not having a huge, broad scale of environments it also lets us focus on the details. [The mansion] is this one place you are [exploring], so I think Capcom has some expertise in our DNA over the years of bringing one area to life, like in the original Resident Evil. By focusing on that I think we’re able to bring our expertise to bear on this really great, singular experience. That’s not to say that this house you can see in the Beginning Hour Teaser… the game isn’t set in a series of corridors in and around this opening area. Again, I can’t go into too much detail, but there’s a little bit more to it than that. Would you like to deliver a special message to the fans following the reveal of RE7? Nakanishi-san: I want to give a reassuring message. I’ve seen from initial reactions of what we’ve put out that people are getting the impression that we’ve taken Resident Evil and turned it into some sort of supernatural, occult, ghost story. I think you can look at the trailer or the demo and get that impression, but don’t worry, we haven’t just thrown out Resident Evil as it exists and turned it into a ghost story. It will all make sense in the end. I know it’s frustrating holding back on what we can show fans, but this is really the best way to let you enjoy the game to the fullest when it finally comes out. We just have a trailer and a demo at this moment, but watch this space in the coming months and we hope you look forward to the game. We’re going to do our best to make the best game we can. Kawata-san: I’ve been talking with the Capcom R&D group back in Japan, including my boss Mr. [Jun] Takeuchi – fans might know who that is [RE, RE 2, RE 5] – and we really want to be able to bring everything we can and all kinds of experiences to the Resident Evil series going forward. We hope you look forward to and enjoy what we’ve got in store for you with Resident Evil in the future. Also I just want to say one last message: There will be no Quick Time Events in Resident Evil 7 [laughs]. I know there are a lot of people who will be relieved to hear that. "Resident Evil 7: Biohazard" will be available on PS4, PC and Xbox One on January 24th 2017
The Adventure Horror genre is usually where the player is most vulnerable, having little to no way of fighting back and having to rely on hiding and/or avoiding enemy encounters. This genre often has the player exploring a desolate environment to search for clues/items to help progress through the story. Endings in this genre are rarely happy, most are ambiguous. Games in this genre include the Clock Tower series and games like Outlast and Amnesia.
The Survival Horror genre gives the player much more capability, usually providing a better means of confronting enemies (Guns, Melee Weapons) albeit with limited ammunition and supplies. This genre shares a lot of similarities between both Adventure Horror and Action Horror, combining exploration elements with changing environments and a higher number of enemies that the player is able to kill. Endings in this genre vary greatly. Games in this genre include Resident Evil 1,2,4,CV and the Silent Hill franchise. The Action Horror genre is usually where the player is most powerful, having multiple weapons and rarely being short on ammunition. This genre more or less only has elements of horror mixed into the formula and is more focused on delivering a heart-pounding action experience with a few scares peppered in. Players are usually urged along through the story at a quicker pace, going through multiple different environments with little exploration. Endings in this genre are almost always happy, save for a few considerably depressing examples (though, in horror, depressing is usually a good thing). Games in this genre include the Left 4 Dead franchise, Resident Evil 4,5,6,ORC and Dead Space 3. The Hybrid Horror genre is, for want of a better phrase, a mixed batch. These games often mix multiple elements of the three main and the result is extremely varied. Most people try to group them in with any of the main genres of horror, but the truth is that they don't definitely fit under in any one. Games in this genre include the RE Revelations spin-offs, Alien Isolation, Dead Space 1-2 and Clock Tower 3. The majority of the early Resident Evil games fall under the Survival Horror genre of horror games, excluding spin-off titles such as the Gun Survivor series and Resident Evil Gaiden (side-story) which fall under Action Horror. The majority of the modern Resident Evil games fall under the Action Horror genre of horror games, again, excluding spin-off titles such as the Revelations sub-series which falls under Hybrid Horror. So, where does Resident Evil 7 fit on this scale? At the moment it is not entirely clear. Obviously, we can rule out Action Horror as well as Adventure Horror since, the player is not a power house, but neither are they defenseless, as we have found out. Logically, this puts Resi 7 somewhere in the middle of those two genres, so surely it is simply survival horror, right? Well, perhaps not. True, it has the majority of the same mechanics as purely Survival Horror, but I feel personally that it is more likely that Resident Evil 7 will fall under the Hybrid Horror genre, mixing elements between Survival Horror and Adventure Horror, giving the player a limited means of fighting back, but retaining a vulnerable atmosphere and giving the player the option to avoid some encounters (as Masachika Kawada has said). The conclusion is; There is more than one genre of horror game, and the Resident Evil series as a whole has NEVER fit into just one. There are Survival Horror games, Action Horror games and even more Hybrid Horror games. This in mind, here is what I have to say to everyone; No matter what Resident Evil games you prefer, we should all give Resident Evil 7 a chance. The series as a whole has never committed to one single genre of horror, and it is extremely likely that, in the future, it will change again. Capcom has not abandoned anyone, they are trying to cater to completely different groups of fans with each game. Every time the series evolves or swaps genres, it attracts all-new players, and the issue with that is, moving forward, all fans of every game expect to be appeased and, usually, that simply is not possible. Resident Evil fans come in all types, but in the end, we are all Resident Evil fans, there are games in the series for every kind of horror fan whether you like claustrophobic hallways, heart-pounding action set pieces or somewhere inbetween. That, I think, is what makes Resident Evil such a great series. |
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