But horror isn’t CoD. I will never be that big. But Konami thinks it can be, and will either sacrifice the quality of the games in order to appeal to a wider audience, or keep the games as scary as they are, and fail to meet their own unrealistic expectations.
The scariness of the games is an additional complication that AAA publishers don’t seem to get.
A bad Call of Duty still lets you click heads and scream slurs in a match lobby.
But make a horror game that isn’t scary? Or even the wrong amount, or type of scary? Complete failure.
If you target hardcore horror fans, your game has to be good enough to scare them, and you’ll never be able to sell to everyone. And if you can’t scare the hardcore fans, you need to be interesting enough for the casual fans to buy in. Getting both is near impossible, which is why indies do so well in the genre. It’s REALLY hard to make horror for everyone. Usually, a horror game interests only a subset of gamers.
And when you have a franchise, every new game needs to figure out how to scare people who have played the previous games. Or else interest them in other ways.
Horror is really easy to overplay. If your game is too long, the scares stop working because the player gets used to them. If sequels just do the same thing as the last game, entire games can stop being effective. And once you start trying to reinvent things every game, they can end up losing their identity (see RE5 and 6).
Doing this every 12 months? Just no.
Resident Evil is an excellent example. Capcom has tried and failed to increase release frequency, but titles that actually sell are about two or three years apart no matter what they seem to do. And that is WITH their new formula of using two completely different styles to reduce the sameness of the titles.
If Konami wants to release more games, they should tap their other IPs, not oversaturate the already crowded horror genre even more.
And once again Konami proves they have no fucking clue what horror fans actually want.
These companies keep trying to grab both bones, completely failing to realize the second bone is a fucking reflection.
They have tapped some genuinely competent studios for this comeback of the franchise, but tightening the screws, like, at all, and this shit will blow up. Setting up four games from the start may already have been a mistake.
If Konami wants more, they don’t need to make more Silent Hill. They have so many alternatives.
FFS, they are sitting on fucking Zone of the Enders, despite Armored Core showing there’s plenty of appetite for that kind of game.
Or how about a modern Castlevania? Anyone?
Or, get this, publish for some small indie studios with neat ideas for completely new stuff, as a low cost way to discover new potential franchises?
The former is an EXTREMELY faithful re-creationg of WipEout physics (both ps1 and ps3/4 era games, depending on mode), but with support for mods and community-made tracks.
If you haven’t played WipEout, the controls involve four axes of analogue input. Pitch, craft tilt, as well as left and right air-brakes. The fastest way around a track requires extreme precision and a bit of luck.
In addition, weaponry is allowed and you must manage your energy (which is both your health and boost-fuel).
It’s AG racers I keep coming back to, myself. (BallisticNG)
I enjoy trackmania a ton, but everytime I play I get such a dirty feeling after about a week.
Ubisoft really ruined it with TM20. I miss the sound and aesthetic of Turbo, that’s where it peaked for me (though I’ll admit some of the tracks produced by the community in TM20 are art)