Operation Raccoon City & WTF happened to Zombie Survival Horror?
Yes it was brutal, brutal in sticking a grenade to a Zombie's face like a tissue and booting them back to watch the fireworks. Brutal as picking up a body off the floor by their head and then choosing where to insert holes in to them like they were some sort of wooden object. Brutal as being on fire and then slicing a zombie's head off who is also on fire and clearly just trying to seek some mutual pity from you!
This got me thinking - what the flippin' Zombie brains has happened to survival horror? The masterpiece that is Richard Matheson's, I Am Legend (NOT the terrible film adaption), truly resembles what has happened to the genre. No longer are you fearing the undead but now they fear the player, I almost feel sorry for those Zombies getting barged aside like a flag on a downhill ski slope as the player blazes their way down the slope that is Raccoon City.
At the beginning of Resident Evil 2 you begin in the centre of Raccoon City when all hell has broken loose and have to escape the hordes or Zombies that chase you down alleys and through scarred urban roads. It was exciting, exhilarating, survival.
In retrospect, Capcom have released Resident Evil: Revelations which is in fact a real return to their roots but it's a shame that this is only available on a single handheld device and their new take on survival horror which is more like a jump on the band wagon action game, is on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
I don't remember a game before the first Resident Evil that actually terrified me. Before that I was only scared by films like The Thing and Gremlins. Capcom created a whole new genre but now just seem to mock it by allowing the player to slap the Zombies about a bit, point at their chests and then flick them in the nose before using them as a human shield as they march on mowing down more tougher foes.
Now I'm not an old stick in the mud, I like change and for games to progress and develop into more modern renditions. Due to influences such as 28 Days Later we now have a lot of with running Zombies, or 'infected' as you may want to call them if you're a smart-arse.
Left 4 Dead is an example of these games and it's fantastic. This game is almost the game my friends and I have been crying out for, true co-op survival.
Other games such as Dead Space and Amnesia have been fantastic additions to genre, each adding their own idiosyncrasies and methods to fright the player.
Even more, we have a huge amount of Zombie games in the casual genre. Some of these are great such as Plants vs. Zombies, a straight-out unique concept which at heart still plays as a Zombie survival game. Or there's Zombie Smash which I personally find to be complete garbage as the player can just pick up and throw around the Zombies as soon as they timidly walk onto the screen without a hint as to how that's possible. Plants that shoot peas though, now that's acceptable.
If I had the power, which I don't (sorry), I'd like for the genre to take a step back and look at it's roots. I would love to see a first-person Zombie suvival game, and of course co-op, but be true to the fundamentals of Zombie Horror Survival. If you get bitten, that's it pal! you're a gonna. You really have to watch your back and each other's. On top of that, I want the fact that the only way to kill a Zombie is to shoot it in the head. You couldn't do this in the first few Resident Evil games because you couldn't even aim except at three angles, and when they brought in the ability to aim in Resident Evil 4 they replaced Zombies with flippin' squid infected fake-Zombies that you could just shoot in the toes a couple of times before they die!
Argh!
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