Several of mine have been said already, so I'll just add this one:

"Confirmed"

I'm surprised no one else has said it, yet.

I'm not one to usually defend that game, buy the Alien was definitely not a jumpscare (outside of specific scripted sequences). The whole idea behind jump scares is that they are usually scripted, have very little build up, and are very brief in presence. That's why people don't like them. The scares always feel unearned and cheap because the genesis of the scares come from being suprised and caught off guard rather than from a genuine feeling of terror.

That's the exact opposite of the way the Alien funtions in that game. While the times when the Alien is able to be interacted with are directed, for the most part, its actions are unscripted. Being attacked by the Alien is triggered by a list of predictable and avoidable actions done by the player, just like any other enemy in any other game. The tension felt when being in the vicinity of the Alien is not unlike the tension felt when ghosting through a stealth game, and is only given it's horror flavor by the setting, the premise, the sound design, and the visual design of the Alien itself. Being in the immediate viscinity of the Alien both part of the build up and part of the scare in its own right because of these factors, and because of how long these can last, they are rarely ever brief.

Obviously a differnent, more intense kind of scare happens when the Alien spots you, but by that point, it feels earned. You understand the rules of interacting with the Alien, and you are experiencing that scare because you broke one of those scares. The scare can last longer than most jump scares too, because of the earned ability later on to ward off the Alien temparerily with fire.

This is all, of course, not accounting for design oversights where the Alien kills the player through flaw in the AI design rather than an intentional result of the way the enemy is designed, etc. Those are obviously unintended exeptions to the rule, and not deliberate design decisions the way jump scares always are. I think calling it a horror game is definitely accurate, and that the prevalent feeling of suspense throughout the experience is more a result of intelligent game design than it is an indicator of it being a different, but closely related, genre/sub-genre. I don't think it's a particularly good horror game, or even a very good game at all, but it definitely deserves to be called a horror game.

Horror is far from my favorite genre, but it's the genre I'm most interested in from a game design POV because of how much it benefits, more than any other genre, from being interactive. I'd also say that I've never truly been satisfied with any of the many horror games I've played because most of them have many common design decisions that I think negatively impacts the horror done in those games. I, perhaps controvercially, don't think there's ever been a horror game that has been truly exceptional from start to finish at pacing, executing, and maintaining a completely uncompromised feeling horror and terror throughout the entire experience. I think that many of the most well known "good" horror games do a few things exeptionally well, but I truly feel like in order to be effective, the game needs to be pretty much perfect in every aspect that impacts the scares and the application of those scares, and no game has ever come close.

I've spent an embarrasing amount of time thinking about why this is and how it could be done better to actually create that first truly perfect horror title.

It's probably going to sell like 3 million copies on a console that won't reach 15M sales. And that for a NEW IP on a Nintendo console. How is that not spectacular? It's selling better than most of Sony's games on the PS4. It's going to outsell Little Big Planet 3, Driveclub, The Order 1866 and Infamous Second Son. On a console that's a commercial flop.

As for the reviews, the game came out with one third of the content it has now (and all the dlc was free) and it still scored 81% on metacritic. If it was reviewed as it is now it would have been 90%+. Although I'm not sure why anyone would care what a critic thinks. High metacritic scores sure didn' help games like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus. Metacritic is a very flawed system. A couple of review sites adjusted their Splatoon review from a 7 to a 9 after all the free dlc, but metacritic never changed it.

This is a game that people predicted would bomb like TW101 and that the online would be barren after a month. People like you. It's one of the best games released this year and it did something new, innovative and creative. You'll be hearing a lot more about this franchise in the future.

"Possibly confirmed?" Anything that has the word confirmed followed by a question mark annoys me. Either something is confirmed or it is not.

"lazydevs", thankfully I don't see it as often these days

The NX threads, the threads that start with "So," and the threads with titles that feel the need to add as much emphasis as possible by adding "ALL CAPS, LOOK AT ME SENPAIII!!!!! <-- SEE THESE EXTRA UNNECESSARY EXCLAMATION MARKS??? CLICK MEEEEE!!!!" I hate all of those. And political threads. Fuck political threads. We get more reports/bans from those than all the other thread types combined. Being civil in a political thread is almost an oxymoron 

When people use that term, they're referring to upper management at the studios, not the actual programmers.

This. I'm not even kidding when I say that we should treat VGC like a dinner table and forbid threads on politics and religion. Causes more harm than good.

The fall is what causes spike sin consolke sales so it is not those games and none of those gmes are hardcore making them mainstream games,because the majority of the people who play them are not into gaming besides those games.

1. I don't think user base is relevant when not taking into consideration the releases on the system. 15M having to choose between 2 games for the game is very different from 25M users having to choose between dozens of games. 

2. New IP. So? Nintendo marketed the hell out of this game, especially to the younger audiences. It will outsell The Order 1886. Dunno about the others, certainly not Infamous:SS - all games which did not get anywhere near the marketing that Splatoon got (on top of releasing between multiple third party heavy hitters).

3. So, like Driveclub then? And no one said that there's a correlation between sales and metacritic.

4. No, it wouldn't have bombed like TW101 since Nintendo was really pushing the game.

5. Something new? It ripped off the concept of The Unfinished Swan and turned it into a TPS.

Ultimately, good on the game for selling 1.6M with heavy marketing and no competition.