[Kibs]

As Yahtzee so eloquently puts it, it's frightening the first time a monster you thought was dead jumped up and bit my ear off, but after the third or fourth time it was monotonous, and I'd since then run out of ears.

There is a bit of a cliche with horror games, being that their controls are generally ♫♫♫, and that's what upped a lot of older games' scare factor. The designers of Dead Space have been quoted as saying "we don't want people to feel like they're doing bad because of the controls" or somehting of the sort, in a sense they want you to have a good amount of control in horror games.

Unfortunately they give you a bit too much control in the game. By the time I'd finished the game on "impossible" I'd gotten too good at the game, and was taking down most enemies in mere seconds with 4 or 5 strategic shots, and I hardly used more than one gun through the whole game (the machine gun is nice for taking out the creepy crawlers that gnaw you to death).

I, personally am not a big fan of horror games where you're made to feel helpless, mostly because I can't really escape reality in a backwards fashion, sure, I can pretend I'm some 7 foot tall spartan in space armor mowing down armies of alien races on my own, but when it comes down to being a helpless person who's only defense is running away and having a heart attack, I can't put myself in that situation, because I would always do my best to fight back, rather than hide in terror.

I also am not a big fan of survival horror games merely because a good amount of them have so many hidden secrets that it's damn near impossible to play through it without a strategy guide.

When I played Haunting Ground I was constantly being told by Jackie "no don't go there, or do this first" at one point I had to have the dog sit on a spot that wasn't very obviously a switch, and wasn't very obviously connected to a hallway, that wasn't very obviously a booby-trap, meaning that I'd have to die 2 or 3 times in a trial-and-error game environment, which really tends to suck all of the fun out of games for me.

But I think I've gone a little far off course.

I think we need a balance in horror games, much like everyone else here, I do want to play silent Hill: Shattered Memories, but that one will have to wait for now.