I don't think it's strictly graphics that led to the decline in horror games, but I think it's a contributing factor in many cases. The lighting in games like REmake, Amnesia, and Dead Space, and the environmental effects in games like Condemned and Cryostasis both added some great atmosphere (not to mention sound design in all four), but I do acknowledge that being able to show every little detail takes away some of the uncertainty and suspense that some earlier games evoked. This is especially apparent in the HD re-release of SH2/3, where they took out the games' signature fog and film grain to reveal the low-res textures and border boxes for the town.

One thing that's a problem in horror games is pacing. Dead Space has a problem with this. You were attacked in almost every room, and you could pretty much guess where enemies would pop out (those grates for example), and you were in danger in pretty much every room. It was actually some of the quieter spots in games like Silent Hill (namely SH2's opening) and Amnesia that creeped me out the most, because it keeps you from developing some rote routine of expectations for combat.

I didn't mean to sound down on Dead Space. Basic combat gets repetitive (in DS1 at least. DS2 has better pacing), but when you're in zero gravity rooms with enemies jumping every which way, it gets insanely tense, not to mention the great boss fights. Then there are the pseudo-invincible enemies later in the game that you have to avoid or kill creatively. My favorite part in the series is in Dead Space 2, where they introduce these Raptor-like hunter creatures that are among the smartest enemies I've seen in a game. They come in maze-like sections and will hide around corners and mess with you while you fight them. Dead Space kind of keeps a routine combat and will either occasionally go slower or faster from there.

I guess you have to use other games to gauge Dead Space. For example, Call of Duty always has the dial at 11 to keep you glued to all of the uh-splosions, while Silent Hill has it at zero to reel you in and dials it up to 6 or 7 to mess with you. Dead Space kind of keeps it at five, and will occasionally drop to 0 (for story reasons) and up to 11 (for the aforementioned tense zero-gravity/boss fights/creative sections). Dead Space 1 was a neat experiment, and a great change of pace during a span of samey-ness in gaming, but it had some (forgivable) flaws. Dead Space 2 was much better written with better pacing, but I'd recommend both to anyone.

Probably because Nintendo actually announces games. I don't own a Wii, but I'd probably be excited if I owned one watching their conferences. Maybe I could get excited if Sony and MS would announce something besides multimedia, sports crap, and uninteresting motion control games.

Holy shit. Last of Us does look great. I kind of want this console generation to keep going, now that we're getting some new IPs. I don't want to go through the graphical growing pains of another console generation right now.

I meant in the sense of the graphics race we saw in the beginning of this generation. Granted, I appreciate the leap from Call of Duty 2 to The Last of Us, but it's been nice lately to see the engine race slow down so we can release some cool-ass games instead of glorified tech demos.