Survival Horror Standbys and favorites

[RoeTheSalmon]

Hey y'all, didn't see a dedicated Survival Horror thread on here, so I thought it'd be a good one to start. I've seen a couple offhand mentions of some great Survival Horror games on some of the boards, like Crow Country (great stuff) and for my own part, I could talk endlessly about them. They're a weird genre I never expected myslef to fall in love with, and now here I am literally putting together a video about my experience of making a hand drawn map for a randomized run through Resident Evil 3 being randomized via the excellent program BioRand, the 3.3.0 build for it just released last Friday. Here's a rough cut of the intro I recently put together. Firs time recording voiceover for a video essay like project, and it took a good chunk of time to find all the footage to put to it. It's not even a bad way to play the original versions of RE 1-3 on pc. I've actually already made a few BioRand videos myself.

Any particular ones you hold dear or want to talk about, good or bad? I feel like the genre's inherent clunkiness and difficulty is, at least to someone more experienced with the genre, part of it's charm, or at the very least an important aspect of the gameplay that informs it's design at a very fundamental level. James Sunderland is no combat expert, that's why the stick sucks. Not knowing what's around the corner adds an element of tension, that's why we have fixed camera angles in survival horror. So on and so forth. This post is already pretty long, so I'll spin off into another one for more specific game shout outs, but hey, let's talk Survival Horror!

[Serpentsaurus]

Oh-ho! A thread for me!

I think the first survival horror game I ever played was Resident Evil 2 for the N64. It's one of my favorite entries in the series, and it will always have a place in my heart.

REmake (Resident Evil 1 for the GameCube) remains a blood-splattered pinnacle of survival horror. My lovely wife Necrotext just finished her first playthrough of it on stream, as a matter of fact! Even after all these years it still manages to unnerve me.

A relatively recent entry in the genre that was my Game of the Year last year is Crow Country. The people behind that game made a perfect homage to the survival horror games of old--and also managed to make it incredibly intriguing and scary. I cannot recommend this one enough.

Dead Space 1 will always be one of my favorites. Very spooky and scary but also very bloody and fun!

I don't think any game has ever scared me as bad as Amnesia: The Dark Descent did when I played it for the first time. I don't know if that's a typical survival horror game, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

Soma is another first person survival horror game I found to be scary, but also deeply unnerving. I won't go into it here because I don't want to spoil it, but there's a lot going on in there and I ended up thinking about some aspects of it for years after I played it.

[RoeTheSalmon]

Oh-ho! A thread for me!

I think the first survival horror game I ever played was Resident Evil 2 for the N64. It's one of my favorite entries in the series, and it will always have a place in my heart.

REmake (Resident Evil 1 for the GameCube) remains a blood-splattered pinnacle of survival horror. My lovely wife Necrotext just finished her first playthrough of it on stream, as a matter of fact! Even after all these years it still manages to unnerve me.

A relatively recent entry in the genre that was my Game of the Year last year is Crow Country. The people behind that game made a perfect homage to the survival horror games of old--and also managed to make it incredibly intriguing and scary. I cannot recommend this one enough.

Dead Space 1 will always be one of my favorites. Very spooky and scary but also very bloody and fun!

I don't think any game has ever scared me as bad as Amnesia: The Dark Descent did when I played it for the first time. I don't know if that's a typical survival horror game, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

Soma is another first person survival horror game I found to be scary, but also deeply unnerving. I won't go into it here because I don't want to spoil it, but there's a lot going on in there and I ended up thinking about some aspects of it for years after I played it.

RE2 rocks, despite the majority of my RE time being in RE3 and RE1. Hell I've played more Deadly Silence than I have RE2, but I'm starting to get an appreciation for it through BioRand, of all things. RE3 is the one that has my heart as far as Survival Horror goes.

ReMake is a fantastic! I got to the point where I could run it in like 2 hours and some change at one point in time. Solid difficulty and a wonderful recreation/reinterpretation of the original hammy but lovable source material.

Crow country is underrated, and I actually recorded footage of myself playing it "poorly" to address friends of mine who are bad at survival horror in a video I'm working on, not as a dig, but rather as an acknowledgement that this genre is super weird and can be hard to approach for someone from outside of it. At one point I earnestly wanted to make a mini essay about the ladder in that game, but I won't say any more. I have an unfinished LP for it even, though I lost steam as far as editing it. Would be worth revisiting.

Amnesia I unfortunately have no experience with, but I think Soma is a fantastic game, in themes and environment. The most interesting part of that game is unfortunately also mad spoiler territory, but as a teaser, the word "Soma" itself is thematically appropriate for a whole host of reasons. The nectar of the gods/ Ambrosia, the Body, the concept of the self, these are all things connected to the word Soma itself, and they weave beautifully into the gameplay and story elements of Soma in a way that truly does explore a very different avenue of horror and personage. Great stuff!

Also I missed it, but Dead Space 1 is wild fun, and was like the spin off of Resident Evil 5 in my head. Good dash of psych horror, and the body horror monster stuff is neat to me too, but I have terminal TF brain and I'm into a lot of monstery creature designs, go figure.

You've got a good set of great games under your belt, and I'm glad your wife got through ReMake! I actually saw her on Enbyeon's Shinobi stream yesterday, too, she was a toothy Pirahnna plant. Keep enjoying Survival Horror, it's such a good genre.

[Enbyeon]

I'd say Resident Evil Remake is one of my favorite games of all time, but I love playing the original RE2, especially with a randomizer.

I've actually been on a bit of a survival horror binge lately, and would recommend people check out Crow Country and Sorry We're Closed. I think they both tackle "classic but new" in different ways and with a high quality bar.

In more of the mixed bag, I've been chipping away at "You Will Die Here Tonight," which I think is overall interesting but I'm not sure whether I entirely like it or not yet. It takes Resident Evil Gaiden gameplay and makes a pseudo-roguelite out of it where each new character keeps progression from the previous ones.

Also shoutouts to survival horror protag boots

[RoeTheSalmon]

I'd say Resident Evil Remake is one of my favorite games of all time, but I love playing the original RE2, especially with a randomizer.

I've actually been on a bit of a survival horror binge lately, and would recommend people check out Crow Country and Sorry We're Closed. I think they both tackle "classic but new" in different ways and with a high quality bar.

In more of the mixed bag, I've been chipping away at "You Will Die Here Tonight," which I think is overall interesting but I'm not sure whether I entirely like it or not yet. It takes Resident Evil Gaiden gameplay and makes a pseudo-roguelite out of it where each new character keeps progression from the previous ones.

Also shoutouts to survival horror protag boots

Sorry We're Closed is great! I actually ended up editing my playthrough into a series just to watch because I wanted to share it with folks, though I still have to finish it. It's been sitting in my head a lot lately because I've been wanting to replay it for a different ending so I could make a video about it and what it means, both in it's universe and outside of it, to love and be loved. Great characters, really interesting conflict, and a really visually appealing style that really makes me want to make more lo-poly models. It packs in some of that Silent Hill style psyche horror with the characters you meet, and I like that the celestials are no less capable of fault and folly as any other human. I'd say more, but spoilers, it was definitely a pleasant surprise to find.

Also I think I mentioned it before, but if you're running RE randomization, BioRand is a great program for it, though I'm guessing it's what you've been using if only because I don't know any other RE Randomizers off the top of my head. It's the main tool I used to get footage for my latest video project on making a map for a randomized game.

[Bridget Endeavor]

Original Resident Evil 2 remains one of my favorite games of all time. An absolutely stellar experience with frankly unmatched atmosphere. The sound design, especially the music, does such an immaculate job of setting the shifting vibes of every single screen in that game exactly where they need to be. The tension is never fully allowed to rest and even in completely safe areas the off-putting tone gives way to a creeping sensation of danger that prevents you from ever fully relaxing or letting your guard down. Other games have done this well, don't get me wrong, but I cannot think of anything that has nailed it quite so completely as RE2.

[heavyserpent]

Tremendous fan of the classic Resident Evil and Silent Hill games. They both rule for fairly different and complementary reasons - RE games have strong atmosphere and aesthetics, but their big strength is how tight they are mechanically, how interesting the ammo and inventory management are, especially when you push yourself to play efficiently and minimize backtracking (which is why the mini-speedrun challenges in all the classic games are a lot of fun).

SH is a lot lighter on a mechanical level, with the first two games especially totally eschewing ammo management and inventory space, but those games end up being more about their aesthetics and atmosphere instead, which are all immensely rich. The soundscapes and visuals are pitch-perfect, even in (or especially?) the more technically primitive first game - the lighting, the texture artwork, the use of darkness and fog are all masterful.

I actually played Silent Hill 4 for the first time last year despite having loved the first three games for decades. Does anyone have any particular feelings on that? I know it's a divisive entry but I really loved it. It clearly had less time or budget and that unfortunately shows in its lack of aesthetic polish compared to the first few entries, but I think it is the most interesting game in the series in terms of its gameplay concepts - it plays with a lot of RE-like ideas like "limited inventory space" and "the safe room" that SH had previously not gone into, and does so in really compelling and confident ways that even the RE games don't really breach.

This last year I have tried out a handful of indie genre entries, too - Crow Country, Alisa, and Signalis. All pretty cool games! I think in one way or another they don't totally match the classics but all of them were interesting takes on the PS1-era formulas, and Crow Country in particular had strong visuals and a pretty cool narrative.

[Lolo De Puzlo]

I'm not a huge fan of Survival Horror as a genre in terms of gameplay but I can't help being intrigued by the game Enemy Zero for the Saturn. It doesn't quite fit the mold as a survival horror as it's more on the adventure game side, but when you are out of the adventure game bits, the roaming around is some of the closest I've felt in a game to actually being terrified.



The main gist of the combat of the game is that (almost) all enemies are invisible and you need to rely on your sonar in order to locate your enemies. Your gun has extremely limited charges and you need to build up a charge on your attack so you need to be on your A-game with any enemy in order to not die. Also, depending on your difficulty, you not only have limited saves, but also limited loads.

There aren't many games like it and I think that's a shame.