Kind of curious to see what the prevailing trend for first person games these days is now we're being denied even that quite a bit in the industry since everything seems to be extraction shooter clones these days and forced live service/online stuff.
I'm not that picky about what sort of shooter I can play as long as I get to pew pew things but I can go for most first person content if it's done well. My main thing lately though is trying to find stuff that I can quickly hop into which has replayability and there aren't that many singleplayer games out there which are like that.
Staying away from most online stuff these days, it all seems to be old games by today's standards that run like shit and seem to be getting worse even on modern systems thanks to the amount of bloat that devs are cramming into everything making the install sizes 60gb+. I tried running Rust and even with the changes allowing you to craft weapons from the bones of other players it's about as disappointingly fucked as I remember.
I think horror really benefits from being first person. Brings you more into being there in the moment as that character, rather than a detached observer, makes things far more scary when they jump out at ya
And yet Silent Hill 2 remains the apex of the genre.
Jump scares are not the same thing as horror. I think this is a mistake that a lot of people make, both in games and in movies. Sudden movement and noise startling someone isn't what makes the genre. Look at something like the original Alien. The horror comes from the creeping dread of the atmosphere and not knowing what's out there, or knowing what's out there but not knowing where it is. It isn't the jump scares that stick with you, it's those times where you could hear Pyramid Head's rusty blade dragging along the ground in the distance but he wasn't on screen and didn't show up for another hour or two of gameplay. Just knowing he's out there but being completely unsure of when or where he'll show up...that is the essence of the genre. The dread, not the reveal.
you're not wrong in that most of it is in the build up and dread, but still, for me that reveal is enhanced by it being first person.
Tightening the pov and making it feel as though something is behind you the whole time, all the time that the dread is being built, that is also enhanced by it being first person imo.