GameCentral’s horror-themed weekend continues with the argument that survival horror can and should be a part of the big budget retail business.

Deadly Premonition – the future of horror?

The recent Reader’s Feature by Molmoran has inspired me to get off my creative butt and share with you my own thoughts on where horror can go next in games. Whilst I certainly agree that niche, downloadable games are a good avenue I still believe that horror has a place in big retail releases. After all, horror is big business in other media like films, television and literature – why not gaming?

There is of course no reason why not, the audience for horror remains – we haven’t gone anywhere. But the old way of doing survival horror? Finding keys to doors, solving ludicrous puzzles and putting up with awful controls? Those days are over. We have Resident Evil 4 to thank for that. It was a Super Mario 64 moment for survival horror, being so good that it practically destroyed its own genre.



Far too often games developers don’t learn the right lessons from the competition. With Mario, people thought an effective platformer was to be a mere ‘collect-a-thon’. The right lesson of course is to provide players with an effective game space that they will want to explore and which rewards exploration.


With Resident Evil 4, people just saw the gunplay. Resident Evil 4 is not a shooter. It has more in common with Metroid and Zelda than it does Halo. Granted, the adventure elements may be basic in Resident Evil 4 – they always were – but they were still strong enough to distinguish it from dedicated shooters.

The right lesson to take from Resident Evil 4 is that it branched out. It tried new things. Combat was important, sure but it only needed to be fair. And it was. That’s not something you could say of past Resident Evils. One game that did learn this lesson was, weirdly enough, Deadly Premonition.

Yes, it was ropey and rough around the edges, but it branched out by merging with another genre – the open world sandbox game. This experimentation breathed life into what has felt like a stale genre for years. Not that there isn’t room for improvement, but the idea of survival horror mixed with Grand Theft Auto has huge potential.

So does survival horror married to the role-playing game. And to be more specific, the Western style of role-player. I personally have no more tolerance for random or turn-based battles. They are a useless, joyless relic of a bygone age when you didn’t have the horsepower available to design something better.

Now, in a way, Dark Souls has already done this. It is definitely creepy, there are some role-playing elements and the combat is fair and satisfying. I would like to see stronger role-playing elements – better defined character evolution, more choices, etc. Being too tough or too easy could be an issue, but then horror has always struggled there.

But why the need for all of this anyway? Well, the two genres mentioned above already have the ideal pacing for an effective horror but more importantly these two genres are still profitable. Traditional survival horror just won’t make money as a major retail release these days. We all have to accept it.



Nor do Resident Evil and Silent Hill need to be more like Call Of Duty to get noticed. Being more like either Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto may well please everybody, Joe Public and Joe from Accounting alike. Or not. And on that thoroughly nasty thought I shall bid you good night and pleasant dreams….

Or nightmares!!! Bwahahahaha!

By reader DMR

The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. As always, email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk.