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Name 5 things you don't like about modern horror games...

1.

Lack of music.

How can you have a horror game with no sounds? I know some people may find it distracting, but at least make it optional in that case. Most of the music is low level anyway, but it really adds to the mood. The same with the camera viewpoints. But if you don't enjoy first person, how about third person? Make it where players have a choice.

Keeps everyone feeling happy. Right? Gets you more sales. Right?

When you play the RE2 remake, you can hear a pin drop. It's too quiet. I want to hear eerie piano music, or a string orchestra. Not just the sound of my character breathing heavily.

2.

Shopping systems.

You see, I hated that weird looking vendor in RE4 because the idea of older survival horror games from the golden age of the genre at least, was that you basically found things mainly by being all alone, while perhaps occasionally getting the odd bit of generous grenade launcher ammo, herbs, or something from a companion, who just so happens to be close at hand. Then you split up again for a while, going off to investigate something. As was the case with Barry Burton, when you randomly met up with him in the mansion.

This was only occasionally. But in later RE games, you had somebody helping you most of the time, such as Piers, Jake, or Sheva. Even what would often occur, is that NPC personnel like civilians or soldiers could aid you in battling enemies. It ruined the atmosphere.

The atmosphere was hereby retained by being by yourself, and you found all sorts of fascinating surprises along the way. It was a great feeling. Unlike nowadays, where you just shoot everything and loot wooden boxes, and Bob's your uncle. It's too effortless in that regard.

Starting with RE4, you can quickly buy tons of heavy artillery for a price. Grenades. Submachine guns. Even rocket launchers. It's nuts. Not to mention doing wrestling moves and being like Jackie Chan with high impact karate kicks, which was neat, but too silly looking.

You can then effortlessly kill everything in your path, making it not remotely creepy in the slightest. It's too action heavy, and while there's no denying it's a great feeling when you blast half a dozen cultists at once with an oil lamp hanging overhead, it deliberately betrayed the iconic tension of those prior games in many cases.

3.

Pyramid Head.

It seems the producers of Silent Hill just forgot the point of Pyramid Head to begin with, and just used him in the movies and had similar looking bosses appearing in other games, because he was considered to be the main scary villain, of sorts. But they failed to understand his genuine purpose was to punish James Sunderland, all because of how he treated his late wife, Mary. He ended up becoming a cheesy, popcorn bad guy. They just put him in the films to put asses in seats, I reckon.

4.

Characters getting redesigned, or too confident.

Using iconic characters keeps fans happy. I agree. But in horror games, it's way more appealing to control a mysterious newbie who is just a normal bloke looking for a loved one, or who is just wanting to get out of dodge, and also being a person who isn't a combat veteran armed to the teeth with weapons, so you can relate more to someone inexperienced with encountering monsters, ghosts, bioweapons, or whatever it is, because he is just like you in a sense.

Chris and Jill probably look like pensioners by now. But they've been making a career out of slaying creatures. They're familiar with it all.

The thing with RE games, is that Capcom uses the main heroes too often, and their experience just makes these games feel like a walk in the park. Leon Kennedy is in all of the animated movies too, serving as a glorified stuntman. They aren't scary. They are entertaining, however. And sure, that is okay.

Or if they want to use the original characters, look at how they looked like before throughout their prior adventures, so you don't ruin them when you hire the wrong looking actors to portray them using the RE Engine, for the current installments. After all, Chris in RE7 looks bloody terrible.

Of all the guys they could hire to portray Chris, they picked whoever that dude was. He looked like he had just graduated from a university out in Sacramento. Too young. Didn't suit the role at all.

5.

Let there be light.

OK. Why make everything so damn dark, that you can barely see a thing ahead of your flashlight? You had light and darkness in good measure in the old RE games, so you could see everything around you most of the time. Items would also sparkle for you sometimes. Other times, you had to search a bit longer. But that's where I'm coming back and saying the old RE games liked to surprise you with randomly placed goodies.

Now these games are blanketed in darkness half of the time, with minimal lighting, and quite possibly the worst zombies ever, where even a well placed headshot with auto aiming on is still ridiculously ineffective. WTF? :(

Also, don't keep adding in antagonists that don't feel characteristic of RE games, or repeating boss fights between separate scenarios. Because the last time I checked, RE wasn't about living puppets, robots, 9 feet high vampires, werewolves, and the Buster Bloodvessel, Bad Manners frontman, look alike. :D

God, it's not hard. Just stick to the basic formula of what made the RE franchise great to start off with. Viruses. Creepy environments. Zombies. Umbrella. But please don't use bizarre venues that look like they're from a 1930's era, Universal film set. ;)

My God. It's way too zany. :p
 

01011001

Banned
most of them are walking sims and barely even games

lack of immersion due to the fact that nothing is at stake and there's barely any player agency (harking back to that walking sim issue)

usually low budget indy shit

if game mechanics exist it's usually the most dull and simple stealth system that is a focus

ambiance and/or music usually not on the same level as RE2, Silent Hill and other older horror games
 
totally agree with #5 and not just in games but movies/tv shows. i'm sick of everything being so dark. you can have horror movies/games and have some light. i'd like to see a game inspired by Midsommar/The Wicker Man (1973) so that we can have some fucking light and colour!
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
1. Generic Story.
2. First person mode.
3. Lack of interesting killer.
4. No music.
5. Copy mechanics from another games
 
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Well, I felt the first person camera angles really worked for Silent Hill 4: The Room, when Henry was trapped in his apartment. It was great how you could look out the windows for clues and dial phone numbers to find out if anybody would answer you, like that one you could see advertised on the billboard across that busy street.

Other than that, the traditional gameplay was still there, only they made it way too friggin' hard. You were now limited to a small carrying capacity, and needed to do so many obnoxious tasks like using swords to pin the ghosts of Walter's slain victims to the floor, or exorcise hauntings using holy candles. And then the latter half of the game basically becomes a frustrating escort mission as well. Keeping your female companion safe is important, if you want to achieve the best ending.

But at least it felt like it belonged in the franchise. The others that followed were a bit on the crappy side, to be honest. For I hated the last one where you had to turn valve handles and picture frames to open up new areas, in order to escape from the dark void that began to pursue Murphy. The camera perspective went all weird as well, for some reason. And as I recall, there was only one boss fight in the prison. Other games usually had several bosses spread out between the places you went to, and the standard enemies were not included. That sequel only had these things, that I believe are supposed to be banshees. Where were those nurses and the dogs? They were completely absent from that story...
 
Outlast started this trend. Twitch streamers brought in the sales to a shit game.
Sorry I don't want to run and hide. I love Re2, but hated Re3 due to the nemesis.

Now imagine a game with no guns and just you and mrX or nemesis. That is basically what outlast and games like it are. Walking and hiding sims.


Good horror games (my opinion, you may disagree) like Silent Hill that have weapons but aren't 100% about combat, don't exist anymore.
We have had a number of good zombie games, but I don't classify them as the same genre.
 

Melchiah

Member
Invincible chasers, and hide & seek mechanics. The scare factor is completely gone, when you have to replay the chase sequence after failing.

Too much emphasis on cheap jump scares, instead of ever present feel of dread and unease.

Open world fad creeping into the genre.
 

MacReady13

Member
It begins and ends with a great concept/story. Silent Hill 2 got its hooks in me well before release with its brilliant and intriguing story. 1 preview in a magazine and I was full of questions… couldn’t wait to find out how your dead wife could send you a letter years after her death to return to Silent Hill! Brilliant!
Then there’s music… half the reason I adore Silent Hill is cause of the phenomenal soundtrack. Akira Yamaoka sets up the world and atmosphere perfectly in all Silent Hill games he’s done the soundtracks for. Aubrey Hodges did the same with the PS1 ports of Doom and Final Doom and they ended up becoming my fav ports of Doom cause of his soundtracks! His Doom 64 soundtrack is a major reason as to why I consider it a top tier Doom game worthy to stand next to the original games.
Same can be said of the original Resident Evil titles. I mean, I had to get the original soundtrack for the Resi 2 remake as it’s iconic, scary and so damn perfect. Get the music right and you’re half way there!

I‘m over the walking through a house with no weapons type horror games. Give us the story, the creepy setting, the great protagonist and eerie music and I’m in! Bring it old school a little, please?!
 

Paasei

Member
- The aim for jumpscares and then stamp it with horror game.
- Lack of real ambiance that make you feel uneasy
- No interesting story
- not being able to defend yourself properly
- They are all just kinda the same because of the above.
 
Who else is glad that Naughty Dog didn't remake The Last of Us? I heard that bit of hearsay quite some time ago, but it turned out to be news of a super PS5 and PC remaster. A sigh of relief was in order there.

At the time though, I was like, what? Why would they want to remake that game when it's not even quite 10 years old, and they have started working on a TV series? LOL.

Very glad they screeched on those brakes. But in general, I am not a fan of remakes. Maybe the reimagining of RE2 is somewhat fun if you look at it as just a general zombie apocalypse story, and try not to view it as an official remake of the original. Which by the way, I still consider to be the best RE game to date. It was the game that got me into the survival horror genre more than two decades ago. Because let's be honest. The original eats it for breakfast. Yes?

RE3's remake was so bad, so I won't even go there. That game was an absolute embarrassment. Some people didn't even like the original RE3, and that's okay. Every trilogy has a black sheep. Although RE3 is still a very suspenseful game. It also has an epic ending with Nemesis being killed, and then Barry picking up Jill and Carlos, just as Raccoon City is about to be wiped off the face of the planet. You cannot deny that RE3 is more RE than RE4 ever was.

Not sure about a Silent Hill 2 remake. The original has such a captivating story. Would they change things about it? Improve it? Wreck it? You know?

I think the first game should have been remade, since well, it's the FIRST game. But even so: It maybe doesn't matter too much, since hardly any of the games besides the prequel Origins and 3 are even connected to the first game's plot anyway. So remaking a separate game should be fine, because it has no real ties to the plot with Harry looking for Cheryl in Silent Hill. It's just how to go about your business doing it if you are working with a relatively new company such as Bloober Team.

Who is sceptical about the RE4 remake? You see, Capcom likes to cut corners, and they could drastically reduce the length of the remake. Hopefully that isn't the case. But you know how they have been up to now with removing creatures, areas, weapons, and other things, which fans can soon list and expose on YouTube. It ends up being a bigger disappointment than it ever needed to be, had they simply taken their time and thought things through.

Of course, a reimagining allows for such changes to play out, since the premise is the same, but differences may occur. They aren't exactly using the term "remake" that often in their promotional material. So to them, they probably don't see a problem with removing stuff. But fans of the original will be able to identify these changes, and will feel cheated.
 
1: No new Silent Hill for a long time

That gets to me too. It was sad around March this year, knowing the last game was out all the way back in 2012. :(

I was sorting out my survival horror games today in boxes, and noticed them. It always takes me back to the 2000s, when I got into the genre. But these days, you're right. They are walking simulators.

I am also trying to get every top ten horror film that is a part of the North American box office. So I definitely like horror related media loads. ;)
 
Developers rarely have the balls to do fixed camera angles any more.
Are there ANY examples in the AAA space from the past 10 years with fixed camera angles?

Given that Resident Evil Remake still looks FANTASTIC 20 years later, imagine what CAPCOM could do with fixed camera/prerendered backgrounds today. Focus nearly all the GPU rendering budget on the player characters and NPCs to make them look close to the best CGI available today. It would look flabbergasting lol
 

Mozzarella

Member
I dont have a problem with modern horror games but if i had to list some issues:
1- Same story ideas
2- Scripted sections
3- Uninteresting and linear level design
4- Forgettable soundtrack
5- Lazy uninspired game design and mechanics

My favorite modern horror titles:
Amnesia The Dark Descent
Alien Isolation
Resident Evil 7
The Evil Within
Soma

The rest are not good, including P.T and Outlast. They range from awful to mediocre to ok at best.
Visage is the latest one i played and it was complete SHIT.
 
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I dont have a problem with modern horror games but if i had to list some issues:
1- Same story ideas
2- Scripted sections
3- Uninteresting and linear level design
4- Forgettable soundtrack
5- Lazy uninspired game design and mechanics

My favorite modern horror titles:
Amnesia The Dark Descent
Alien Isolation
Resident Evil 7
The Evil Within

The rest are not good, including P.T and Outlast. They range from awful to mediocre to ok at best.
Visage is the latest one i played and it was complete SHIT.
That's interesting you liked Amnesia and not PT/Outlast/Visage, since Amnesia is kinda sorta like those. What turned you off of those?
 
1. Build tension with no pay off...games think to subvert the jump scares means 0 pay off...so it will build tension without actually having a pay off which leads to the tension fading not building for ever

2. baby cries arent scary ...i know it initiates a feeling, but a baby crying is an overused sound cue in horror games now

3. People can run, hide and semi fight, being completely defensless isnt realistic...i hate the moder horror trope of being uber defensless...we should be able to run, hide and even have our instincts kick in to some extent...humans survived hundreds of thousands of years, we are good survivalist

4. same settings...the world is so big yet horror games only take place in a house...give me a horror game that takes place mostly in a corn field, or a horror game that makes me explore ancient mesopotamia...why is it always the same house, same hallways etc. even the best scenes in RE village was the same hallway just done in a more effective way.

5. PT was a moment, not a blue print...mechanically all this ties together to stop trying to be PT... its a great demo but there was a whole game after outside. it was going to be a collection of cramped hallways over and over so make games outside, give up room to explore and come up with a way to build fright...stop relying on the current trend of the moment.

-ps a horror game lover
 

ShadowLag

Member
1. Everything is predictable. If you're a gamer, you already know all the unwritten rules of games. You always know when something is going to happen, and 99% of the time it's a "jump scare", which is another way of saying "we don't know how to actually scare you".

2. Linearity. Modern horror games are afraid to let you explore, use your brain to accomplish tasks in different ways, or just plain get lost in a spooky environment. Going in a straight line of badly scripted events is neither interesting nor scary.

3. Lazy sound design. Dumb jump scare stings, overblown music for the situation in an attempt to force you to think "oh no I'm scared because loud music is playing wow", or dull and uninspiring sound effects and musical compositions overall. Add terrible acting to this one, too. This category is arguably the most important in this genre - with the right sound design, players will scare themselves more than you could ever scare them with anything specific. Believability in the audio department causes player imagination to skyrocket.

4. Jank. Unity asset flips, one man teams that can't handle the scope of what they're trying to do causing them to end up with mountains of hilarious glitches, eye-rolling scripts/dialogue filled with grammatical errors, and so on. If you read a note in a horror game where a sentence has the word "thier" instead of "their", while a monster is getting stuck in a wall violently flipping and stretching around like a Skyrim NPC on the PS3, chances are you aren't scared.

5. Bad game design. Just because it's horror doesn't mean the player shouldn't be able to make the choices they would make in real life. If your game is only scary because you won't let the player act like a normal human being that uses every offensive/defense option available to them in a fluid and normal way, your game isn't actually scary. Fear doesn't come from being unarmed - it comes from within.
 
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Mozzarella

Member
That's interesting you liked Amnesia and not PT/Outlast/Visage, since Amnesia is kinda sorta like those. What turned you off of those?
P.T i didnt like the concept, P.T and Visage share a lot of similarities, they are about a person trapped in a house and they use weird voices to scare you, which works, they are spooky, but they play out their hand with this trick, it overstays its welcome in Visage.
P.T is more a case of unfinished game than Visage, i know its a demo but i dont get the hype at all, especially since there was no story or any remotely interesting levels at play. Most of the priase is just mindless because it has Kojima invloved in it which is undeserved.
Visage is awful, i hated the inventory management and i hated the story as well, as said earlier they overplay their hand with the spooky factors and cheap jump scares most of which i found to be scripted sections, the game is too convoluted for no logical reason and progressing is tedious, i didnt like the puzzles and it had the worst movement in any horror game i played, too slow and there's a lot of backtracking making progressing super tedious. It doesnt help that its also uninspired game.

Outlast is not bad, its actually decent, the first one at that, i just found it less memorable and less tense than Amnesia, i have to give credit for Amnesia for being the pioneer in this type of horror, while Outlast was inspired by it, but never managed to deliver the same magical haunting atmosphere, Outlast still has scary and well made atmosphere but the chase sections felt worse to me than Alien/Amnesia counterpart, the horror is less terrifying because in Amnesia its lovecraftian video gamey, but in Outlast its hollywoodish, also in Outlast there was no interesting puzzles to solve, Amnesia had cool puzzles that are rooted in physics and science and i loved that.

My love of Amnesia is more due to the fact that, it got me into the horror genre again, the first person one where you dont fight back, the monster design was very creepy, the castle is dense with dark atmosphere and i loved how they told the story, idk but it felt engaging, the music is super well made too, and the way the game uses its tricks to scare you was unheard of. You could call it a mixture of inspired game design, atmosphere, personal setting preference.

Soma doesnt have all the cool factors that i liked in Amnesia but it has an edge over the most and that's its story and setting and it nailed them.

To conclude i would say the only one that turned me off for real is Visage, the other two are just not good imo, but they are not awful as well. Outlast 2 sucked though.
 
When you have zero chance to defeat the enemy
when you can't fight back at all
when you need to just do trial and error to figure out the path where it won't kill you
when enemies don't say something cool like "can't wait to die" like they do in deadly premonition
limited resources like batteries or saves
 
P.T i didnt like the concept, P.T and Visage share a lot of similarities, they are about a person trapped in a house and they use weird voices to scare you, which works, they are spooky, but they play out their hand with this trick, it overstays its welcome in Visage.
P.T is more a case of unfinished game than Visage, i know its a demo but i dont get the hype at all, especially since there was no story or any remotely interesting levels at play. Most of the priase is just mindless because it has Kojima invloved in it which is undeserved.
Visage is awful, i hated the inventory management and i hated the story as well, as said earlier they overplay their hand with the spooky factors and cheap jump scares most of which i found to be scripted sections, the game is too convoluted for no logical reason and progressing is tedious, i didnt like the puzzles and it had the worst movement in any horror game i played, too slow and there's a lot of backtracking making progressing super tedious. It doesnt help that its also uninspired game.

Outlast is not bad, its actually decent, the first one at that, i just found it less memorable and less tense than Amnesia, i have to give credit for Amnesia for being the pioneer in this type of horror, while Outlast was inspired by it, but never managed to deliver the same magical haunting atmosphere, Outlast still has scary and well made atmosphere but the chase sections felt worse to me than Alien/Amnesia counterpart, the horror is less terrifying because in Amnesia its lovecraftian video gamey, but in Outlast its hollywoodish, also in Outlast there was no interesting puzzles to solve, Amnesia had cool puzzles that are rooted in physics and science and i loved that.

My love of Amnesia is more due to the fact that, it got me into the horror genre again, the first person one where you dont fight back, the monster design was very creepy, the castle is dense with dark atmosphere and i loved how they told the story, idk but it felt engaging, the music is super well made too, and the way the game uses its tricks to scare you was unheard of. You could call it a mixture of inspired game design, atmosphere, personal setting preference.

Soma doesnt have all the cool factors that i liked in Amnesia but it has an edge over the most and that's its story and setting and it nailed them.

To conclude i would say the only one that turned me off for real is Visage, the other two are just not good imo, but they are not awful as well. Outlast 2 sucked though.
Glad I asked and thanks for responding. That's interesting. I played Amnesia about 10 years too late, I think, and couldn't get over it being dated looking. Funny, because you talk about Amnesia the way I talk about Bioshock, and the only difference is that I played Bioshock upon release.

I thought Visage was great in terms of spooks and scares but could not care less about the atmosphere and story. Basically it was PT fleshed out and I appreciated it for that and not much more.

Outlast 1 and 2...were actually too tense, boring, and disturbing for me to finish. Especially 2, where they went into some territory I wish I had never experienced
 
The best modern horror games so far is Little Nightmares 1 and 2

Lot of modern horror games usually use first person which is a massive turnoff for me
May I ask why FPS is a turn off for you for a horror game? I think RE7 is an amazing horror game and is very scary because of FPS and the addition of VR. Same for RE8, both great games imo but I think the FPS really help sell it. Although, I think RE7 was scarier than 8.

I am lso looking very much forward Calisto Protocol and Dead Space Remake looks great as well. I think there is a market for both.
 
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Alien Isolation was the last good horror game I played from start to finish.

Knowing you can't kill the Alien but only slow it down or distract it was amazing. I never went running around in a level to complete an objective.

But I think modern horror games could do with:

- More music
- Some humor
- Daylight (hate that everything always takes place in the pitch black of night)
 
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May I ask why FPS is a turn off for you for a horror game? I think RE7 is an amazing horror game and is very scary because of FPS and the addition of VR. Same for RE8, both great games imo but I think the FPS really help sell it. Although, I think RE7 was scarier than 8.

I am lso looking very much forward Calisto Protocol and Dead Space Remake looks great as well. I think there is a market for both.
Agreed. Though I must say, while RE7 maintained a baseline tension higher than RE8 (which was going for more of an action route), there is one part in RE8 that is head and shoulders scarier than anything in RE7
 
Agreed. Though I must say, while RE7 maintained a baseline tension higher than RE8 (which was going for more of an action route), there is one part in RE8 that is head and shoulders scarier than anything in RE7
Are you talking about the house part with the giant fetus baby and the dolls? It was scary sure, but to be honest Resdient Evil 7 had far more tension because the player spent way more time in a creepy house with crazies stakking you.the castle was awesome in RE8 but i found the Lady not as scary. She was attractive for one lol and her boobs made it more funny. The daughters were somewhat creepy but that' it.
 
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Are you talking about the house part with the giant fetus baby and the dolls? It was scary sure, but to be honest Resdient Evil 7 had far more tension because the player spent way more time in a creepy house with crazies stakking you.the castle was awesome in RE8 but i found the Lady not as scary. She was attractive for one lol and her boobs made it more funny. The daughters were somewhat creepy but that' it.
Yeah, that's the part! The
baby rounding the corner after minutes of nothing happening but the feeling of dread. The dolls didn't do much for me
Put it this way, RE7 maintained a tension around, call it, an 7/8 out of 10 throughout. Village was like a 5 for the majority. But that one particular scene in your spoiler is the most horrifying experience I've had in a game, ever. A 10 on the tension and terror scale (for me) It 100% worked (on me), the buildup, the eventual reveal that didn't disappoint, and I'm happy to have had the experience!
 
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I don't even keep up with them that much, but based on what I do know of them...

1. They tend to be first person. I like some first person games, some which include horror first person games...but there is something about the way they are utilized in many horror games that bothers me. It feels derivative, formulaic, rip-off-ey in most cases.
2. Lack of music. This irked me in RE2r, was expecting many of my favorite tracks from the original to be hauntingly remade. RE3r upped the ante in this department
3. Lack of variety in gameplay style. I wish there are fixed camera angle games, some OTS here and there to break up the pace from the usual stuff.
4. No compelling storyline. One of the hugest reasons why I love classic RE because it had a great interconnected storyline that spanned between the games. 4 was supposed to conclude the series with a definitive ending, and I still love the 4 we got but what came after that barely feels like RE to me even if they play well as games. 5-Village may as well be a different series tonally
5. Segmented fanbase. Different people want different things from horror anyway. There is nothing that really unites the fanbase. Even within a single franchise like RE, you have people who vehemently defend one part of it while decrying others, and it gets really dramatic sometimes.

So that's my 2 cents on the problems of modern horror gaming, everything here is my own opinion
 
Yeah, that's the part! The
baby rounding the corner after minutes of nothing happening but the feeling of dread. The dolls didn't do much for me
Put it this way, RE7 maintained a tension around, call it, an 7/8 out of 10 throughout. Village was like a 5 for the majority. But that one particular scene in your spoiler is the most horrifying experience I've had in a game, ever. A 10 on the tension and terror scale (for me) It 100% worked (on me), the buildup, the eventual reveal that didn't disappoint, and I'm happy to have had the experience!
I dunno man. It was scary but I think after so much tension in RE7 I've built a solid immunity lol.
 

Umbasaborne

Banned
Poorly done stalker type enemies. Alien isolation is an example of that type if enemy done right, resident evil 7, 2remake, 3 remake, and village are done poorly. They are so slow, and easy to avoid.
 
May I ask why FPS is a turn off for you for a horror game? I think RE7 is an amazing horror game and is very scary because of FPS and the addition of VR. Same for RE8, both great games imo but I think the FPS really help sell it. Although, I think RE7 was scarier than 8.

I am lso looking very much forward Calisto Protocol and Dead Space Remake looks great as well. I think there is a market for both.

I just like seeing how my character looks in third person, not to mention I suck at first person games
 
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