Shinji Mikami promises "an exciting new franchise, providing fans the perfect blend of horror and action". Before Amnesia: Dark Descent, the last games to be genuinely scary were probably... wow, I have to go way back... the early Silent Hill games, Fatal Frame, Forbidden Siren, Rule of Rose. Honorable mention to Siren: Blood Curse. These games focused more on creating a creepy atmosphere than blasting through hordes of enemies.

I am hoping this game gets the balance right. The more a game focuses on action, the less scary it becomes. Hopefully the horror will come from suspense, environment, story etc, and not just shooting things in dark corridors. The screenshots look promising. Please be scary! The last couple of Resident Evils have been nothing but shooters with a horror theme but were not scary in the slightest. Too much action, not enough horror.

That is a tricky balancing act in these games. The best ones do a really good job of building up that tension and creepy atmosphere. The problem, of course, is that action is almost by definition a release of tension. And I can't think of a more literal interpretation of "facing your fears" than shooting it in the face with a shotgun.

That is why I really enjoyed the early Silent Hill games so much (and Resident Evil 1, as well.) Partly because of the clunky combat mechanics, but it always felt like you could technically defeat every monster you encountered - it just wasn't worth the effort. And of course the survival in survival horror meant that you needed to be saving that ammunition and health items for bigger and scarier monsters down the line.

Silent Hill 3 especially (for me at least,) I became so conditioned to that static radio sound that every time I heard it I'd just run off down the hallway. The scariest stuff in my experiences was when I didn't even see what was chasing me. The atmosphere and tension could often build up enough that just the idea that I was being chased was enough of a scare.

I thought the original F.E.A.R. did a pretty decent job balancing the gun fight action with the horror aspects.

I found the combat in FEAR to be rather boring though, even with the AI being impressive. Every fight felt like I was facing the same four guys over and over and over again.
Anyway the horror in it was awesome though, I remember the blood ceiling being my favorite part, just creepy as hell atmosphere!

To this day I still remember the original ps 1 Resident evil scaring me, from the moment I walked into the hallway to see my first zombie eating a STARS member to almost jumping out of my skin when the zombie dogs burst in through the windows in that long corridor , to being scared [censored]less of the godamn hunters lol, hopefully The Evil Within will be going back to real survival horror and not taking the action packed route of nonsense like RE6 and the later Silent hill games.

I think its just how they do it... grab scissors and stab someone like 20 times with it, add some screams and blood and you might have a horror, so action could work with horror.. Btw. FEAR is horrible series. I think devs just svck at horror. Very interesting to see how this works out.

That's because they were actual clones in the story. XD I do know what you mean though, way back when I first played it, I hadn't played a wide variety of shooters, so I was more easily impressed back then lol. I just recall that one being pretty good with balancing the two, so that the horror parts weren't too frequent, and that ends up making them predictable. That was my issue with Doom 3, the first chunk of the game was great and pretty scary, but after a while it became really easy to figure out when and where the scares would come from.

I hope its more horror/survival than action.

We have MORE than enough of the games with the opposite...

There are also too many games that were once horror games, but are now action games. Like Deadspace. Please let this be scary, and actually stay a horror game...

It would be interesting to see smooth combat mechanics but in a way that makes it challenging to survive and defend yourself. Making enemies something you really want to avoid but not taking away the ability to defend yourself. There are not many horror games that have got this right and tend to become action games, its just getting the right balance. It would be awesome if they portrayed the players character realistically in terms of movement and wounds affect on the characters body, vision, sight and hearing and so on.

Too many kids these days want action, pew pew pew!

The market for deep psychological horror in videogames has been shrinking for years as the whole industry has caught COD disease. The game will most likely reflect this like resi 6 did. Still, i'll be hoping for a return to the genre's glory days with the release of this game, the screens to look menacing, but so did resi 6's...

I still remember Resident Evil 3 and how Nemesis always gave me nightmares, really good times, once I hear his name I feel screwed, I hope that the Safe Head guy is something similar.


I think The Evil Within can strike balance between action and survival, I mean if what we heard is true then they already did, having fewer ammo and equipment, having strong enemies that can kill you, I feel it is on the right direction.

I am glad I have the mean to defend myself, even if not permanently, sometimes taking out an enemy is a frighting experience, killing a Hunter was never an easy thing in RE3, sometimes I ran on low health just to see a hunter jumps and chops my head off, even having weapons didn't always mean instant win.

The action needs to be within the real of surviving the horror, that's why I love the genre, especially the titles that gives me the ability to fight, cause I am afraid, yet trying to fight and survive.

I remember playing Silent Hill 2 when I was 8 or 9 on my PS2 and being terrified.
In the beginning, when you'd walk to the four corners of the town and you'd see the blood on the road, i'd just turn off my console.
Man, I grew past all of my fears after growing a pair and playing through the game.

Later I bought Silent Hill 4 thinking if I could beat Silent Hill 2 it wouldn't be that bad.
Once I saw the first few ghosts that couldn't die, then I was genuinely terrified of a game again.

Oh, people have been decrying "kids these days" since we walked out of the caves! It's not like there was ever some sort of proto-videogame industry that included nothing but incredibly thought-provoking treatises on the meaning of life and strategy; and we've just been going downhill since then. There's always been action in games. CoD wasn't the start of something new at all. Five years before the first Call of Duty, people were saying the exact same thing about Quake, and Doom before that...

The "market" for deep psychological horror was always niche. For example, name me 3 that aren't Silent Hill. Resident Evil was a game about shooting zombies and jump scares from the beginning (not to say I have a problem with that.) Frankly, I don't see what's changed so much from Resident Evil 1 to Resident Evil 6 beyond tighter gameplay and less illogical puzzles.

This, all the way.
I was like 7-8yrs old when I played RE1 and I screamed l;ike a little girl when those dogs bursted through that window. Gave me nightmares for weeks.
I hope this "evil Inside" gives the same feeling of being terrified that RE1 did for me ( and Dead Space for that matter)

I never thought it was balance that threw the new games off or made them not as scary as the old games.... I think it's because in the old days of graphics things seemed scarier because you couldn't tell what the heck you were looking at. the lower res graphics left a lot of it up to your imagination. Heck, I remember feeling creeped out in games that weren't even supposed to be scary because in certain areas you were simply trying to comprehend what you were supposed to be seeing. "oh, it's a candle.. i thought It was a ghost."

Really? I was sold by Mikami's philosophy that balance was the key to survival horror. Most survival horror games become garbage in their third installment because the devs think they have to overcome their predecessors and implement non stop action and cinematic effects, which breaks the balance.

I just hope it's not overly reliant on quick time events. I don't want to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LrVou1Jo7w.

See, in those games I'm so busy swearing at the terrible gameplay that I'm too distracted to get into the atmosphere. A game has to play well so the "playing a game" part is completely transparent and you can get into the story, atmosphere, characters, etc.


Coming from someone who doesn't really like the survival horror genre at all:

Eternal Darkness
Fatal Frame

Couldn't think of a third, but like I said; I'm not a fan of the genre and never have been. I am seriously boggled that Eternal Darkness isn't on everyone's list of "Best Survival Horror Games Ever". It's not as gross-out as Silent Hill, but it's easily as scary and has some of the best storytelling and gameplay of any game in the genre. Plus it actually screws with you (the player) as your character slowly loses their sanity. Some of the stuff is funny, some is panic-inducing, and some is outright weird.

I hope the controlling won't be like in Resident Evil. I want a more smooth movement

Difference between Resident Evil 1 and 6 - Setting
Resident Evil 1 had you in an abandoned mansion cut off from any help. Resident Evil 5 for example, had you in Africa killing plagued Arfricans with a teammate by your side the entire time.
Resident Evil 1 had maybe a single explosion in the game and thats in the end? Resident Evil 5 has explosions everywhere.
So the setting has changed drastically and setting is a major ingredient in the whole mixing bowl of survival horror or any video game. Really, its sad modders can mod Half-Life 2 and make scarier levels then survival horror games have been able to crank out for the past few years.

Difference between RE1 (and 2/3 to a lesser extent) and the key to the survival horror theme was that if you went around blasting zombies willy-nilly you would soon run out of ammunition. You had to use your cunning and agility to work your way around them, at least in a major portion of the game. They also had some puzzles that didn't insult your intelligence.

Modern "Survival Horror" games have far too much ammunition and guns in them. Not difficult to survive when you're packing a shotgun/pulse rifle/plasma cutter with shedloads of ammo.

I'm pretty sure the tank controls of the early RE games are gone...I hope so anyway

There's also "Call Of Cthlhlu Dark Corners of the Earth," and Amensia the Dark descent.

That's not survival horror though, just horror

If the survival horror leads towards Condemned then im satisfied!


Anyone here who remembers the bear chase or the appartment building where you have to go through every appartment?

pls!!!