Really, it's about what the game as a whole is trying to do. The only dislikeable thing about genres is that people get expectations about what being of a certain genre should entail and take exception to that which falls outside their expectations.

Those are just over opinionated individuals, but dislike them all you, uh... like.

You know, I'd also like to disagree with Cheese on the nostalgia bit. I only played Silent Hill a year or two ago, and it was fantastic even though that game is a PS1 game. PS1 games age terribly with their gross graphics, so when you can enjoy one today you know it's good (I never played PS1 games when the thing was actually current, I had an N64).

My solution is to play my psone games on my psp now.... the games still hold up well provided they're on a screen small enough to look good. :)

Alone in the Dark (1992) is still a fantastic game, provided you can handle the control system (not too bad) and the graphics (dated).

It's the music and voice acting (CD version) that really make the game stand out, as well as the Lovecraft-inspired story!

Would love to see a faithful remake. Would only really need to up the poly count on the character models and change the UI...

you have given me some good pointers here :)
fatal frame sounds tempting as wel as cryostasis
amazone here we come :)

The ending for Scratches freaked me out. I almost screamed.

I don't know about nostalgia ... but there certainly is selective memory. People only tend to remember the really good (or the really, really, really bad) games which always make up a small selection of the total games released. But for all the normally bad, boring, uninspired games, people simply forget they were ever released. Now they see the deluge of crap, but forget there was almost as high a percentage of crap then too because most of it gets forgotten. With a few exceptions Good Old Games is only trying to restore the good of what came out ... not everything that came out before. So a good game one is nostalgic for, could still very well be a great game that you play still, hence why this site exists, but we tend to forget all the ho-hum games that were also rans back in the day.

On the other hand there are more crap games now in an absolute sense simply because the video game market is much bigger now than it ever was. As for proportions, difficult to argue if the percentage of crap is bigger ... maybe, but you'd really have to take a hard look back at the past and account for all the bad games that came out then too.

On the innovative front, it is a little unfair because when video/computer games were very young almost every time you created a new & innovative video game, chances were you were inventing a new field/sub-genre and not just innovating within a field. So of course a city builder made now will not be as innovative as say ... Sim City, even if the game is innovative within the city builder genre. The genre however already exists.

But yeah ... survival horror video games ... err .. scratch head for on-topic post ... comes up with nothing :)

I disagree. Yes, it's true that there are no more "pure" games belonging to a single genre, but it is as much true that you can pick up some hybrid, meaningful and above all recognizable definition and apply this to every past, present and (very likely) future game...

Portal? A puzzle-fps. Trine? Puzzle-platformer. Half-Life 2? sci-fi fps (in its purest form, indeed). Mirror's Edge? fps-platformer. Prototype? Sandbox action-adventure. Zombie Driver? driving shooter. VVVVVV? Puzzle-platformer. (and I could go on for hours...) Resident Evil 5? For the love of (some) god, it's an horror action-adventure and not a fucking survival horror anymore :-P

This is true.

I'd say the best survival horror games are generally in the past mainly because its something we have now taken for granted and shock factor is hard to replicate, for that reason I can fully understand resident evils transformation into the modern games of being more of an action adventure.

I'd say the best scary games are

Resident Evil 1 + 2 Last time I screamed in a game was when the licker jumped through the two way glass in the police station.

Silent Hill,1 + 2 When those baby things just batter the crap out of you in the beginning. and Silent Hill 2 I would say had the best plot in a horror game.

Illbleed- Probably the weirdest yet most innovative horror game of its time, It relied more on traps and setting than monsters and despite being very 80s b-movie style it plays very well and is a real challenge.

The Suffering - Best combination of action and horror in a game setting, kept me playing from start to finish some enemys are creepy esp the ones with all the bright green syringes in them and the burning children

Condemned 2 dispite the slightly lame cult twist, the plot is very disturbing and some of the violence does create a lot of shock factor, plus I wish every rpg had combat as bone crunching as it has. Hitting someone in the face with a pipe you can just feel it at times and makes you cringe.

Deadly premonition, Though ive played very little, The first level tripped me out slightly with those weird creatures and zany characters, heard its a real cult hit apparently.

Slightly less survival horror but realms of the haunting and clive barkers undying had horror elements as a main undertone

Cant say I got into fatal frame, Wanted to try Parasite Eve when I had a modded psp but was one of the only psx games i couldnt get to work :(

Edit:Picked up Alan Wake and will judge it when ive played it. Also did anyone ever play Martian Gothic: Unification? , Heard rave reviews about it, but never got around to playing it

I loved the first two Resident Evil games, and I barely remember playing and enjoying Alone in the Dark. Other than that though the genre isn't really my thing.

Unless you count Dead Space, but I consider that more just a shooter.

Yeah AITD was just wicked, and despite having monsters with 2-digit polygons, it blows many newer "horror" games out of the water. Infogrames clearly understood the importance of music and atmosphere.

Recently played the demo for Amnesia: Dark Descent. Loved it. I'll buy the full version soon. Very very creepy.

I'm so bad at this. I'm way to scared to actually play through survival horrors. I have trouble getting through the first Half-Life, and I never got through the first stealth scene (Innsmouth) in Dark Corners of the Earth. Hell I only barely made it through the Hospital in Vampire: Bloodlines! (While listening to the happiest Eurodance music I could find).
Thank God I haven't found any must-play doll-based horror games...
(Funny thing is that I have no trouble with scary books or movies, I own like 200 different horror movies and have read most of Lovecraft's stories)
Oh, by the way, just to poke the embers in the fireplace... Is Phantasmagoria a survival horror game?