Survival horror: Failed to survive?

I remember the good ol' days, where RPGs were new and scary, platformers reigned supreme, and survival horrors roamed free. Then a big meteor entered 1st-person view and T-bagged the land, ushering in a brutal ice age where anything that did not involve friggin' huge guns and exploding faces was pushed around and left out in the harsh cold. But luckily, the tundra is beginning to thaw. The mighty Wooly Shooters are still around, and some of the "lesser creatures" have adapted to the new world by evolving things like RPG element horns, multiplayer pack instincts, and thick rolls of what scientists are calling "DLC blubber." But sadly, some of the odd reptiles were completely wiped out, one of which being the Survival Horror Desert Gecko.

Historical biologists cite the Gecko as having many various traits that allowed it to startle its prey and distract its attackers long enough to run away. However, it is believed that these tricks were eventually adapted to, and nothing was fooled by it anymore, allowing it to be preyed upon to the point of extinction. It's a truly sad tale that I will delve into at great lengths, so join me after the jump where I get tired of this animal analogy!

Survival horror games were unique in a variety of ways. These points have since been adapted into many different games, but so far, no one game has recently been made that successfully combines all of them together. They were marked by immersive environments that really put you into the feel of the game, challenging gameplay that emphasized moderation, planning ahead, and making quick-on-your-feet decisions, and truly scary events and surprises. (Now I really only have extensive experience with the Resident Evil games, so the bulk of my examples will be from it, but a lot of this applies to other games, like Silent Hill, Clock Tower, and even games like Dino Crisis.) Resident Evil 1 did this perfectly by putting you into a truly scary environment infested with enemies that took a lot to bring down and were capable of killing you in just a few hits. This constantly put you on edge and made you make snap decisions on if it would be better to fight or run. Limited items made you think about what you were doing, and making certain decisions greatly impacted your play experience. Smart thinking was rewarded by being able to live, and bad decisions would lead to punishment in various forms, like choking to death on a poison cloud or having to fight the Tyrant with your knife. It all worked together flawlessly to really put you into the game, making it feel realistic. The goal here was not to win, but to escape and survive. All your decisions are not made with the idea of killing things, but instead on how you can stay alive.

RE 2, 3, and Code: Veronica may have more emphasis on combat and just blowing holes through everything, but they still keep the spirit of survival horror alive, and do go back to the feel of the first game on higher difficulties. Survival horror even grew into other forms and game genres. Clock Tower put a spin on things by making a survival horror point-and-click game, D was a survival horror "interactive movie" (Sega's disk-based systems were very big on this concept >.>), and Silent Hill was just crazy. There was even a survival horror that predates any of these! It's called Sweet Home, and of course, was only released in Japan. It's essentially a survival horror RPG, and is often believed to have served as inspiration to the Resident Evil series. I've played about halfway through it, and I can easily see where this belief comes from. (If you're a fan of RE and RPGs, I suggest tracking down the translation and giving it a try!) But sadly, the genre started dying out. And ironically, the visible start of this death started on what is actually a great game, Resident Evil 4.

RE4 was clearly a step in a new direction for the genre. Emphasis shifted from survival to run-and-gun scenarios, but the classic survival horror motif was still hidden in there somewhere. Items were scarce, but there was more than enough to kill everything you came across. Death set you back, but not as much as the old games. But most disappointingly, the aspect of "horror" started disintegrating. Creepy atmosphere was almost never established, and the only truly scary things, the Regenerators, were few in number. The genre was changed, but it still worked on a new level.

The same can not be said for RE5.

RE5 marks the official death of survival horror. Atmosphere has been thrown out the window. Fear only exists if you're not used to giant monsters from every other game ever already. (or are racist lawl) You are no longer a lone, vulnerable person, but instead a huge brute that can literally punch his way through crowds AND who has backup in the form of an agile woman that is more than capable of handling a gun herself. Resident Evil, one of the strongest pillars holding up the survival horror temple, turned into crumbly "standard-shooter-game-cement" and crumbled away. From what I hear, Silent Hill is also going mostly the same route. A cheap prop was whipped up in the form of Dementium, but nobody bothered to help stand it up due to terrible control and save systems. And now, nobody feels like maintaining the survival horror temple, as everyone has flocked to the newer, shinier temples.

So the genre is dead. Some may act like it still exists, but they are clearly crazy and should have their bedrooms searched for creepy effigies or mummified corpses hidden under their mattresses. But why has this happened? Has interest been lost? Would people really rather just play more of the same shoot-'em-ups? Or has the genre just been "updated" too much and evolved into something unrecognizable and hideous? Whatever the reason, the genre is gone, and it has taken with it some amazing gameplay mechanics and some of the only forms of media that actually succeed in scaring me. (I sat through The Exorcist and countless other scary movies as a kid with no problems, but when the Resident Evil 1 remake came out, those damn Crimson Heads scared me off the game for a looong time.)