Hey, like I said, I never played the second, and I can't judge the third, though admittedly if its gameplay is anything like the first then it's probably pretty repetitive once you understand the best way to take down an enemy. In the first, I had it down to a science: take a leg, take an arm, that should do it. Two dismemberments was normally enough to stop a necromorph, though for the nastier ones, I'd pop the other arm and then the head as necessary. Easy.Xeogred wrote:Always wanted to play The Thing, definitely looked pretty cool.Ack wrote:The first game is pretty much the horror one. And most folks compared it to The Thing, what with the mutations of dead humans. Less so Alien, unless you could argue the other way around, that you are the monster hunting down the only recently born and still infantile necromorphs using a massive wielding torch as your weapon... Anyway, walking through quiet, gore-soaked sectiosn of the ship only to have something hideous leap out in front of you which you could only defeat by sawing it to pieces while it kept coming...that was the idea. I never played the second, so I can't speak for it, but the first was meant to be a horror game. Sure, it really wasn't scary, and fighting enemies quickly became extremely methodical, and ammunition was plentiful, especially if you stuck to one weapon the whole time. But it had its aspirations.
I see where you're getting at though. I guess it's just me when it comes to the "horror" tag. Maybe "scary" should mean something totally different, when horror can apply to grotesque and more in your face violence and shocks. I dunno. Doom 3, FEAR, Resident Evil, etc, and the likes I don't really view as horror at all, they've just got some dark undertones with the atmosphere and the shocking violence. Stuff like Fatal Frame, now that's the only series I've played that's legit made me "think" after putting the controller down and was truly haunting at times. Silent Hill seems to fit that bill too from the things I've heard, I only played a portion of 2 awhile back (hope to remedy that someday).
But on a different track, horror is a wide variety of ideas which can lead to both fear and disgust. Sure, Fatal Frame and Silent Hill are some of the best examples of horror in games, but Doom 3, FEAR, and Resident Evil series have their appeal too. Each one has its different emphasis in horror though: Doom 3 includes a great deal of body horror in its bizarre mutations and freakish monstrosities, but it also tries to prey upon a fear of the unknown through its dark corridors and sudden leaping creatures. FEAR focused on a supernatural element that was most effective when it appeared out of the corner of your eye, though the horror aspect took a backseat to the gameplay. Resident Evil also focused on body horror, with its grotesque mutations, though the zombie can also be seen as a symbol for the inevitability of death and an extension of necrophobia and cannibalism. The problem isn't their horror influences, it is whether they are effective at using them to affect the player.
Also note the effectiveness of the plots in the examples, versus those of the Fatal Frame and Silent Hill series, as well as the protagonist the character controls: Doom 3, FEAR, and Resident Evil offer a variety of superhumans or highly trained professionals to confront these monstrosities, versus the everymen of Silent Hill or the weak little girls of Fatal Frame. Clocktower and Haunting Ground also go this route, though Clocktower also features unrelenting serial murderers going after young women while Haunting Ground goes for the blatantly sexual route and really evokes rape and sexualized violence fears after its overtly-sexualized female lead.
Even Splatterhouse could be seen as a horror game, despite its freakishly overpowered main protagonist who excels in gore-soaked violence and savagery. But it is that gore and savagery on an ever-increasing horde of horrors that gives Splatterhouse its horror edge, as the viewer has on some level to contemplate the mortality of everything, including the self. I know that during the recent modern remake, I was sickened by one of the gory instant kills in which the lead shoves his hand up the anus of a monstrosity so he can rip out its intestines.
So is Dead Space 3 still a horror game? Likely it offers themes, though the game creators seem to have put those ideas on the backburner in favor of another superman removing hordes of enemies. But also keep in mind that it's the third series, following a protagonist who has been killing these things for years now...he's likely gotten numb to it, so they aren't scary anymore, for him or the player.
