People are locking on to the wrong thing in my argument. Tank controls are a means to an end. Getting away from them has lead to a decline in horror in the genre, but I not trying to say they're specifically needed. There needs to be some sort of impairments on players in the areas of control and sight though. People don't seem to realize how game breaking great mobility is for horror, or how much control of what you can see can destroy any element of horror.

See the above. Players do need a handicap for survival horror or it isn't anything but an action game. If you have the camera, controls, and capabilities of characters in RE4 or RE5, you can't make a real survival horror game. RE4 tries for horror and succeeds in one encounter, or until you realize you can massacre entire groups by shooting one in the leg and tapping into your inner street fighter to use areas clearing attacks. In fact, you're heavily rewarded for murdering entire villages of people with your knife. Leon is the scariest damn character in the game. You might as well call Devil May Cry 3 a horror game because the enemies kinda look spooooooooooky, never mind that fact they pose almost zero threat to you unless you can't handle the most basic combat.

Tank Controls aren't necessary, but some limits are. Tank controls can work amazingly depending on how the game is built. If you have slow moving enemies and a fixed camera then it's almost impossible to beat the early RE controls for a survival horror game. It makes fixed camera possible without murdering your sense of orientation ever screen transition, and the deliberateness of moving makes slow enemies more dangerous.

Zombi U doesn't have tank controls, but it still remains the best survival horror game in my book. They didn't need tank controls because of the way it was designed, and that's fine. Your charact is even more capable than most, but it is perfectly balanced. Zombi U doesn't need fixed camera angles to hide enemies around corners, it has first person view. There is no fog to hide things in the distance, but the oppressive darkness and flashlight does the same. The radar replaces the radio for scouting enemies beyond your line of site, and encounters are intense because even basic enemies are extremely deadly when low on ammo.

I'm not saying we should all go back to tank controls. I'm saying tank controls were a product of the limitations at the time and became a tool for building horror. We got away from those limitations and mechanics like tank controls, but at the same time lost what they contributed to an integral part of the genre, in most games at least. Tank controls + fixed camera were the outline to the five paragraph essay that was survival horror. We should learn to move on from such basic concepts, but a lot of people go from that outline and begin to have trouble with their writing because they've gone off on an irrelevent tangent about how cool guns and wrestling moves are.

ZombiU is a game that contradicts your stance because in it you're a capable survivor with no handicap

You are completely wrong. This isn't an insult. You are factually wrong about the purpose of what I wrote.

I've been saying this entire time that Zombi U is the perfect example of my argument. You're obviously capable, you have to be capable in any game or it would be unbeatable. However you are severely limited compared to RE4. Zombi U moved on from the tank controls and fixed camera but added mechanics that serve the exact same purpose. On the other hand, RE4 removed tank controls and fixed camera but added nothing to the formula.

Lets compare the two.

Camera/Sight:

Zombi U is in first person, while RE4 is third person over the shoulder. In RE4 you can easily scan the area visually and even peek around corners. You can't do this in Zombi U and feel uncertainty with every turn. That's before you even consider how compromised your visuals are by the unforgiving blackness, forcing good light management. The first person angle and darkness serve to replace what's lost from the fixed camera.

Controls:

The controls are actually pretty similar in scheme but vastly different in execution. Leon is a ****ing beast.  He's way faster, stronger, and more agile than anything you can do in Zombi U, and that comes through in the controls. Melee a ganados and then melee a basic Zombi U enemy and tell me what's more dangerous and which one is more fluid. The limitations on Zombi U go further as well. Barricades and real time inventory management that forces your eyes off enemies is just another handicap that adds fear. So while you have much better control in both games than the early RE titles, only one places the limitations on you that stops the game from being devolving into a character action game.

Enemies:

Both have enemies that are more capable than RE zombies, and come in hordes. However, enemies are much more dangerous in Zombi U. Melee is more powerful in RE4 to the point of being game breaking. While both games have instant death moves, a mechanic I find lame, Zombi U does it better. You also aren't as encouraged to wipe out every zombie in the game.

Conservation:

There is almost no conservation needed in RE4. Enemies drop far more supplies than you use fighting them, assuming you're mildly competent at the game and aren't running something like 27% accuracy and not using melee at all. Zombi U is about extreme conservation. Enemies can drop stuff for you but not nearly as much. You need to plan your battles well because trying to swap weapons from your inventory just isn't happening in a big battle, because you can't just pause everything and nonchalantly pull out the big guns when you run out of ammo for your current weapon or need a health item.

People are focusing on the statement that moving away from tank controls have hurt the genre, but they're completely missing the WHY of the situation. It's not hurting because tank controls are somehow godly and perfect. It's hurting because the new controls remove horror elements and they aren't being replaced or improved upon.

You just proved my point while saying nothing that enforces yours here's why:

Camera: Wrong in ZombiU you can see perfectly fine in fact even better then RE4 because Leon isn't obscuring part of the view, the game even gives you a rader later on for advance warning something RE4 doesn't do, this part of your post is heavily contraditory as ZombiU in fact gives the player increased control in this aspect.

Control: Ofcourse Leon is a beast he's a heavily trained (for 4 years or so) Government agent at this point, trained people are meant to be more athletic etc... All of what you said here also does nothing in pushing your point because ZombiU still contradicts you controls dictate horror stance which here you just highlighted it's no the controls that are the issue. RE4 and ZombiU have different designs so don't mistake the latter not having Leon's moves as a limitation.

Enemies: Proves my point

Conservation: Again proves my point that it's not the controls and a handicap is not needed.

You essentially just proved my point for me in why it's design and not controls and a handicap and ZombiU highlighted this by having balace in design to combat the added control not much else to say.

Actually, in Mario you slaughter local folks to gather points.

Your response is somewhat incoherent.

Camera:

You cannot SEE the zombies around corners, you have radar. That's a major difference. There's also the fact that everything is pitch plack for the most part when you don't have the flashlight on it. Having to group around in the dark with just a flashlight is a huge limitation that has no analog in RE4. trying to say leon obscures a part of the screen and that's somehow a big deal is a terrible grasp for straws man. Trying to compare that to the darkness and lack of ability to corner peek effectively is a joke.

Controls:

Yeah Leon is a highly trained professional in RE$. He was also a professional police officer in RE2. You know what's not fitting for a "horror" game? PRO WRESTLING THE MONSTERS TO DEATH. RE4 is an amazing game but its not scary at all. It's a slap in the face of anyone that has a clear grasp of the horror concept. It's about as scary as Micheal Meyers getting curb stomped by Busta Rhymes in Halloween: Ressurection.

Enemies:

The fact that you seem to think that vastly inferior enemies in RE4 somehow makes your point is whats got me confused. It's not horror. Threatening enemies that you can't outright see is though.

Conservation:

What?

Zombi U handcapped people by a whole different scale of magnitude compared to RE4, and that's why it is scary as hell, and RE4 is a big dumb, but awesome, action game.

It's sad but mostly true.

My problem was that Parasite Eve 2 completely ruined tank controls for me. Adding a "press Square to target the nearest enemy in your line of sight" was very intuitive and nowhere near as fidgety as oldschool Resident Evil. Aya felt like she was wielding some really heavy weapons. Jill just felt clunky.

That, and PE2 made the bayonet a useful high-skill weapon.

The fixed camera also definitely added to the atmosphere. There is something uniquely cinematic to running down a corridor, the camera angle changing to be UNDER YOUR FEET, and you don't change the control at all. Because your character isn't actually changing direction.


For me, Survival Horror is always about having powerful weapons, but ammo restrictions force you to place shots carefully or evade enemies. That game design decision outweighs tank controls. That said, Dead Space has always felt to me like Doom 3: Limb Chopper Edition, even though it placed restrictions on ammunition. Meanwhile, Dark Souls felt like a good medieval S-H game. True S-H games have gameplay which force the player to plan ahead and ration resources, however those play out in the game.

Capcom, however, has never figured out how to do that outside Tank Controls.