Blog: "10 Ways to Evolve Horror Games"

[AspiringFailure]

I want to say something about the difficulty of the enemies, -It's not the ACTUAL difficulty that I think really matters, but the PROJECTED difficulty. Practically, killing enemies is easy as pie in SH2. But the combat is SO timing based, and the controls SO clunky, that I, personally, dreaded all combat encounters, because even though it's easy to kill the enemies, it's also easy to slip up and then get brutally raped by them, permanently hurting your odds of beating the game later on.

Now with Deadspace, I never found myself worried about enemy encounters. The problem is that combat is FUN in Dead Space, therefore, I even enjoyed it. Now I know it can be argued that "Un-fun combat doesn't make the game scary", but you have to remember, nobody's scared of doing something they enjoy.

I also think it's unfair to compare Amnesia to SH3. SH3 just threw TONS AND TONS of enemies at you. I mean that game SUFFOCATED you with 'em. Amnesia hardly does this. It's not scary in a loud or forced way. It's scary in a more psychological way. I.E. I have personally found myself becoming downright PARANOID, closing every door that I open and checking to make sure should a monster show up that I have a place to run and hide to. This kind of horror touches you on a FAR deeper level than "OH GOD LOOK AT ALL THESE ENEMIES I GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE.".