Games within a genre
 

The name of another thread inspired me to do this: "which do you prefer?"

Rather than the age-old debate about which portion of a game is good, this thread is to debate which game itself is good within a genre.

I.e.:

Survival Horror

Resident Evil vs.
Silent Hill

Follow-up: Eternal Darkness

(incidentally, this will be the first category I propose)

After a little debate (you can say specific games in the series too. Doesn't have to be a series, though), someone else will propose two games (maybe even three if we want to risk it ;). If you want, you can also have a 'follow-up' game that isn't part of the 'versus,' but merits discussion. People can just post their general thoughts on that.

Please note, don't do things like Barbie's Pet Rescue vs. Castlevania. Try to do two games/series that are considered to be fairly good by many people.

So we start with Survival Horror. I chose the two most prominent series.

Me, I'm a Resident Evil guy, and I've only played one. Although, I think my mind will be changed once I play any of the Silent Hills. I'm just a scared, scared little boy. Can barely play Eternal Darkness, at that.

Eternal Darkness, I think, while very surreal, will never reach the raw intensity of the Silent Hill or Resident Evil series, from what I've seen. From my judgement, I'd say ED is the most innovative of the three, but I still wouldn't categorize it with those two in the versus.

Thoughts?

ED, really goes the extra mile by not just scaring character you with zombies and other creatures which in tern scare real you, but making things happen specifically to freak real world you out, faking system resets, saying your saved game has been deleted. That has no effect on the sanity of character you but more on player you.
I also submit for judging the clocktower series. Resident Evil your always playing as someone skilled in the use of weapons, in silent hill you might not be skilled but you have a gun. However in Clock Tower you gain this feeling of helplessness. You can only paralyze and run from enemies using holy water. Instead of fighting or even fighting/running you instead have to run and hide. This never appealed to me as a gamer but I find that its not as scary to shoot a chainsaw weilding freak with 3 shotgun, then to hide under a bed and hope the chainsaw weilding freak that just broke trough the door doesn't find you.

Resident Evil. It defined the genre as it is, Silent Hill added fog, ED added some (admittedly cool at first) screen effects.

Clocktower might have been first, but I like to take a more offensive role in my horror.

I would have to say ClockTower or Resident Evil. I'm easily scared, but both of those series are "the" horror/survival games. They are each scary in their own way. Resident Evil is scary in a "oh geez, there are deadly zombies crawling through the window, I'd better shoot them or else they'll eat me." Like Hax Mage said. Clock Tower has that feeling of helplessness. I feel a little more portected in Resident Evil games, since if I get startled or a zombie/mutant thing finds me, I can release my fright into many rounds of bullets into the zombie's head. In ClockTower, I have to THINK while being scared as heck. If I run into the scissorman, I can't just shoot a few rounds into him as a natural reaction, I have to think of a convincing hiding place that will be able to trick the killer. (which is hard to do when you just got one of those scares)

So the Clocktower series would probably have to be my number 1 horror game.

(out of curiousity, would Parasite Eve be a horror/survival game?)

I only played it a little bit, but don't you pretty much fight mutants and stuff? And you could get psychic powers?

I might not have seen alot, but I didn't get the scare on me.

It didn't get a big scare out of me either (unless it was midnight and I was feeling jumpier than usual. It does have some freaky moments as you go, (including in Parasite eve 2)) but I was just curious because it seems like a survival game. Maybe it would just go in the action genre...

Oof, Clock Tower? Well I don't mind. I don't want to be rigid--it's just that if we keep mentioning games, it kind of defeats the whole this v this concept. We could go on for ever, with, say, platformers-- 'and monster party, and tak, and vex, and sonic, and...' which is why i was trying to limit it to a few. Still, if you like clock tower best...maybe it should just be, of the two, which is better?

I find myself liking Silent Hill more than Resident Evil. Silent Hill has a much more in depth story, and scares you not because of the waves of zombies and lickers and other such things running towards you, but because you don't know who or what is going to go nuts and start trying to kill you after talking calmly to you just a few hours before (See: Silent Hill 2). Then there's also the whole issue of wonderment about what's going to happen in the story next, where the next weapon might be, or if this pipe is going to be useful for the reason you think it might be. Resident Evil, which I'll admit I haven't played much of, and will probably make most people think this is just partisan slander against Resident Evil, but I don't like a game where I have to conserve ammo so much that you have to take damage just because you can't afford the few shots to cap that zombie or that creature in the corner that hits you harder than you can hit them.

Oh whoops, I guess I misread the first post on how it was supposed to go. Sorry about that. ^^;;

Of Silent Hill and Resident evil, I would say Resident Evil is better. But I haven't played Silent Hill, (I guess that's why I was compairing Clock Tower and Resident evil, since those are pretty much the only horror games I've played)

I'm not much of a Horror gamer, so I've played very little of either of these games. Silent Hill gets my vote, since it has a creative use of a hardware limitation. I am referring to the fog, of course. Since ye olde PLaystation couldn't render all the polygons that the develpoers wanted, the programmers would simply add fog to the edge of you vision, thus rationalizing the fog and cleaning up the screen, instead of having unsightly popup and infintieness.

But Silent Hill USED the fog. Instead of being merely the edge of your vision, the devs used it to instill an air of what doctors call the "heebie-jeebies." And the radio stactic is a nice touch, too.

Resident Evil has people who can survive with nothing more than a Swiss Army knife or a lighter, so that counts for something, too.