Posted by Jurassosaurus [148.64.23.91 - vsat-148-64-23-91.c050.t7.mrt.starband.net] on 12 April 2004 at 21.20.59 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: Re: Wasn't that Survivor? posted by Hunter on 10 April 2004 at 22.57.37 ZuluTime:

Yeah, I'm pretty impressed with how well the Resident Evil series has held up. Even though, the chronology has the series at #4, the actual number of RE games (counting remakes & director's cuts) is about 12.

Now, compare that to Megaman, or Tomb Raider, and one can see a distinct difference in the QA dept. (all the more so, considering the former is another Capcom property).

Tecmo is doing pretty well with it's Fatal Frame series. There's only two right now, but both retain a high scare quality. It's like visiting a virtual haunted house.

As for Square-Enix's Final Fantasy, well that's just funny. Especially if one know's the history behind the name.

Still there are moments where one definitely feels like there's nothing but sequel after sequel out there.

With that in mind, there are some new survival horror titles out that look to be pretty good.

The Suffering

I just finished this one. It has monsters created by Stan Winston studios, though that really doesn't say much. The creatures are interesting, and the haunted prison locale is pretty atmospheric. There's even an Eternal Darkness like set of hallucinations. It's a lot more action oriented, and the decisions one makes throughout the game determine whether or not the main character actually killed his family.

Siren

This one is supposed to be really creepy. It doesn't come out till 20th April, so I'm still reserving judgement till then. It features a series of normal people who get spirited away when the town gets swallowed up by some fog (yeah, I know. It sounds familiar). They have to run around dodging zombies and figuring out what happened. The neat thing, is that every character has the ability to "jack in" to the mind of nearby characters (including zombies). This lets one look through that other character's eyes. One is supposed to use this ability to figure out where the enemies are, as there's no map, or radar.

Life Line

This one is a bit quirky. It's a survival horror that is heavy on the survival and light on the horror. In fact, it isn't really scary at all. The neat thing about it is that one uses one's voice to control the main character. You play the operator who's stuck in the operations room of a space hotel (it makes more sense than it sounds), and your job is to help this waitress find out what happened. The voice recognition tech is pretty good for most of the exploration parts, but sucks ass when it comes to battles. This really doesn't become a problem till the last 3rd of the game. The game can be very frustrating, but it's pretty fun for those patient enough to give it a whirl. It also makes for a unique gameplay experience.

There we go, three new games with three new ideas to add to the survival horror bin.