What is Survival Horror? – The Genre's History and Defining Characteristics

[litebrite]

I saw this video and thought it had a solid argument in defining the differences between Survival Horror and Action Horror. What do you think?

Plus this video didn't have many views despite it's quality so I thought it deserved more exposure.

 

[PanzerKraken]

Survival horror - "oh no, gotta run, gotta survive, only got 3 bullets"

Action horror - "maching gun go brrrr brrrr"

 

[Gordon's Tulpa]

Scarcity and anxiety, constantly.

 

[Lightning Count]

Resources scarcity.
Forcing players to choose carefully when to fight and when to run.
Atmosphere.
Sound design, being able to hear enemies but not always see them.

 

[Deleted member 17210]

I was hoping for more early genre history at the roots part of the video. Dynamix's Project: Firestart on the Commodore 64 in 1989 is a notable game that still gets overlooked.

 

[Jimnymebob]

Survival Horror:

Action Horror:

 

[Shodan14]

What people think: bad controls.

What it really is: Alien Isolation.

 

[Sanctuary]

Survival Horror:

Action Horror:

Click to shrink...

Pretty much. The idea that RE4 is what changed the series from "Survival Horror" into an "Action game" was always ridiculous, because the game had technically always been Action/Horror. The first game was even called Action/Adventure at release, because no one randomly decided to use the funky SV term. It's just that your ammo was more limited in the first game, and it had more of a haunted house vibe going, where the second game went full Dawn of the Dead + Terminator. I've always thought "Survival Horror" was pretty redundant anyway. You either survive, or you die (fail state) in the large majority of games anyway.

The first RE was largely based off of the first Alone in the Dark, and it was ever called a "Survival Horror" game until revisionist history came along. You had even less ways to protect yourself in those games than you did in RE also.

Edit: Video was good, although I didn't learn too much new information from it. It was concise though, and I do largely agree with his distinctions. Although in the case of RE2R, it ended up becoming more "Action" than even the original was with its annoying aiming and "molded" shambling zombies that you can't juke any longer like you could with the original first five games, so you were pretty much forced to kill many that you could have run past in the older titles. It also removed the limited saves unless you played on Hardcore.

I did chuckle however when the lead from Visceral said that they set out to make "Resident Evil in space", because I didn't know that was exactly what they were aiming for, only that initially Dead Space was supposed to be System Shock 3, but they liked RE4 so much that they decided to model much of their new game around it instead. During the initial buzz for the game, prior to launch, I would just think it really looked like it just wanted to be "RE in space", and that's pretty much what it turned out to be. By design. I also didn't expect it to be nearly as good as it was, and it just shattered my initial reaction to it. I was reminded of Callisto Protocol though, which I had entirely forgotten somehow. Wake me when that releases in 2024.

Also, I can't ever look at the cover of RE6 and not see what shouldn't be seen. 😲