I'm in total agreement. I hope that they can pull something off in RE7, and if not, when RE8 comes along, I think what we should do, is simply not buy it. If we can get enough people to do that, capcom will see that Horror is not dead in the video game industry, it's just that so many people can't pull it off right.
I'm mean, look at Metro: Last Light, that was a great game that was ultimately a survival game, but with the constant darkness, and not knowing what mutated creature could be behind us, it gave us a sense of fear.
Another game that I think can pull it off is Silent Hill. While the games may not be as scary as before, they still are, and to this day, I can't play a single Silent Hill without jumping at least 10 times.
I think what's changing that video game company's haven't realized yet, is that it's not us that don't like horror. It's that in the late 90's Silent Hill and Resident Evil were the first horror game, and we've come so far now, that it takes a lot to scare us, so as we mature, Video Game's need to get scarier than they were in the 90's because we've built up such a tolerance in the past 15 years.
I agree with you , amnesia , and the evil within , are scary games , another game that is similar to those which is in the making , a new "aliens" of the spin off movie series , but this Aliens game you cannot fight back , its very different from Alien vs predator and aliens colonial marines , this new aliens game you just have to avoid (1 alien) in the game , it's very creepy and shares the same concept of amnesia and the evil within , we feel helpless and scared as heck !
I agree that we matured in a meaning of , what can scare us and what cannot , silent hill for example was super terrifying , i had such an insane time playing that game , silent hill is so damn scary i feel like my soul is on its way to hell when i play that game ...... >< !!!!!!!!! i cannot explain but , silent hill 1 , 2, 3 and silent hill 4 the room ......absolutely frightening , but like you said we can accept more fear now , i can play those games with no trouble now , even though they are still frightening games , i can
To be honest, I think the old REs weren't really scary to begin with. I remember being afraid of Plant 42 when I played RE1 for the first time, but disappointed when I actually saw it, and there were other similar cases and jump scares, but in the end RE is more violent than it is scary (and you decide for yourself whether or not you find violence scary per se). So while I think dark and scary-looking places are better (I was kind of ****ed off by the bright sceneries of RE5), I don't expect to be scared by any future RE in the true sense of the word.
If I want to be scared, I play Silent Hill, but I eventually stopped following that series because with the lack of changes in gameplay, it began to feel like playing the same game over and over again with a different character, so even though that's a rather unpopular opinion, I'm actually glad RE changed in the course of time (and I haven't touched the main campaign of Revelations since the second playthrough because it became boring to me).
I agree resident evil 5 is too bright , i like darker environments for scares , resident evil 1 at the time i was a young teen , it was a scary game to me , not too scary i didn't play it , silent hill were the games i had a hard time playing but loved it haha , resident evil 2 was creepy and cool and perfect , i remember resident evil 3 the first time me and my friend played it , the thing that scared us was that nemesis was running around the streets for us , yelling "starrrsss" and hearing his thundering running coming was creepy , but its a lot about noises more so than actual visuals that scare in this way , movies do it all the time to get a jump out of people a loud NOISE!!!!
But i agree with you also , except the part that resident evil 1 wasn't scary haha , because at the time , it was one of the few horror games and very new to me , so never playing a horror game before that (other than doom) i was new to the horror game scene probably as most were at that time .
one of the scariest though even today in my opinion is silent hill 4 the room . freaking perfection for a horror game !!!!!