One of the main pillars of horror always lay in the feeling of being helpless. Survival horror titles invented many ways to make you feel helpless over the years. Limited ammo, limited healing, limited ability to defend yourself or no ability to heal. Pitch black darkness. Clunky controls versus agile enemies. Immortal or incorporeal monsters… And all of those can be a good thing, but what if there is a limit to how fun the game stays as you become more helpless?
Personally, I still feel that survival horror became truly scary only in 1999 with Konami’s Silent Hill. I can almost guarantee that the first time you started playing that one, it wasn’t easy. Firearms got less precise and more useless than in RE. The game felt claustrophobic, constantly limiting visibility with fog or darkness. Sound was an important part of gameplay and even the voice acting wasn’t “Jill sandwich” levels anymore. Yet, 5 years ago the fourth entry, The Room, wasn’t just scary – it was frustrating. Despite using similar ideas and basic elements, the game stopped being fun and I was curious to see why.
Today, I feel like one of the main reasons for that was the fact that you, as a player, became too helpless against what game was throwing at you, too out of control. Super limiting inventory, one save point, immortal ghosts, melee weapons that could break with use and despite all this, a huge emphasis on action. And fear turned to frustration – it wasn’t about being tense, it was about being annoyed about replaying a chunk of the game. Death stopped being a climax of a scary situation, it became an annoyance. And instead of wanting to be afraid and play more, you wanted to stop playing altogether.
It wasn’t the only game to be like that either. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Penumbra, Fatal Frame – just a few examples of games/franchises which I tend to describe as – you become tired of shitting bricks. They’re great titles and all of them (apart from Fatal Frame) were completed by me at least ones. Yet, apart from some other horror titles, playing them was so exhausting that I rarely ever revisit them, despite wanting to. I would start replaying the game and then instantly stop, because I remember how tiring the process would be.
Like with many other mechanics or concepts in games, so rooted in individual player psychology, I doubt that there’s some quantifiable single limit at which point a game stops producing adrenaline in your blood and starts producing “exitine” and “uninstallin”. And perhaps there are even people who never get tired of shitting bricks and can do it all day. As for me, though, I know that I just can’t stand games that never let go and leave you constantly helpless.