Survival horror

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The Typing of the Dead, spin-off of The House of the Dead

Survival horror is a computer game - genre , where the player as part of a horror survival -History attacks by eerie creatures and puzzles must be solved. The name Survival Horror probably goes back to the phrase " Enter the survival horror ... ", which is shown in the game Resident Evil (1996) while loading and summarizes the two main aspects of the genre.

Game elements

Survival horror games can be classified as a sub-genre of action adventure games , as they contain action elements that require the speed of reaction and skill of the player, and more or less complex puzzles have to be solved in order to advance in the plot of the game.

The player takes on usually a single game character , either from a third-person perspective (external perspective) or (more rarely) from the first-person view is displayed. If the plot of the game is shown from the third-person perspective, a horror film-like camera work is typical, which shows the action from various fixed shots (examples: the first parts of the Resident Evil series, Silent Hill ). The blind spots that often arise increase the player's uncertainty.

The protagonist embodied by the character is sometimes portrayed as particularly vulnerable, for example in the Clock Tower series or in Haunting Ground (2005) the role of a young girl. But also police officers ( Resident Evil , Condemned ) or private detectives ( Alone in the Dark , Call of Cthulhu ) are often to be found as protagonists.

The environment is explored and interacted with by means of the play figure, which usually happens in a manner corresponding to the adventure genre. For example, certain objects, which are then often identified by an overlaid text, can be examined and then possibly manipulated or taken away to be used elsewhere.

When exploring the virtual world, the player sooner or later comes across monsters whose attacks have to be survived. Often different weapons collected during the game can be used. In contrast to normal action games, however , the use of weapons is relatively limited, so that the focus is not on fighting, but on “bare survival”. This can be realized, for example, by the fact that there is not (or hardly) enough ammunition available to defeat all monsters, or that the enemy creatures cannot be defeated permanently at all and resurrect after a while (example: Martian Gothic , Talon Soft, 2000 ). The player is often forced to flee or to avoid the monsters as much as possible. Often the player has only makeshift weapons at his disposal for a long time, such as an old heating pipe or a wooden club.

In some representatives of the survival horror genre, the player cannot defend himself at all using armed force, so that it is only possible to escape the attacks of the monsters by fleeing, looking for hiding places or by manipulating the environment (examples: Haunting Ground , Clock Tower ).

These game elements aim to keep the player in a latent state of danger and in this way to enable an exciting atmosphere and an intensely creepy gaming experience.

As opponents in survival horror games you often find zombies or other monsters, often surreal -looking, nightmarish beings who cannot be classified more precisely (for example in the Silent Hill series). The background stories often take up topics from the broad spectrum of modern horror literature and horror films .

Differentiation from other genres

Since horror is a topic in many computer games, the demarcation of the genre survival horror from other horror computer games is not always clear. For example, some first-person shooters focus on horror, well-known examples from more recent times are Doom 3 ( id Software , 2004) or FEAR ( Monolith Productions , 2005). In these games, however, the focus is clearly placed on fighting with various firearms and it is ultimately always possible for the player (and required by him) to overcome the enemy monsters through massive use of weapons. The game mechanics are similar in other horror- themed action games , such as Splatterhouse (1990) or Shadowgrounds (2005).

On the other hand, there are also some classic adventure games that are embedded in a horror story, for example Sanitarium (ASC Games, 1998) or Scratches (Nucleosys, 2006). However, since the focus in these adventures is on the gradual uncovering of the story and the solving of puzzles and the player can usually not be threatened immediately, so the aspect of survival is not implemented, these horror adventures are also not part of the genre Survival horror .

Genre representative

Third person perspective

First person perspective

Screenshot from the game Killing Floor (2009)

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