What started out as simply a minor spin-off of the all encompassing Action-Adventure genre has quickly settled into a genre in of itself, with many disparities and its own set of rules to separate it from its father genre. As such, the goal of the survival horror is most often simply to survive whatever present situation you're facing. Of course, there needs to be an overall goal to either stop or escape from whatever supernatural terror currently threatens the player character, but the danger can be so overwhelming that it is often better to just run or hide than use up precious resources fighting something that won't stop coming.
Based on the corporeal nature of the opponents you fight, your character may indeed be practically powerless against whatever dangers are around, or at the very least can only temporarily fight off the darkness. This is the case in such "pure" Survival Horror games as the Fatal Frame or Clock Tower series, where you often find yourself controlling a high school girl who couldn't shoot or fight worth a damn and needs to rely on other means to survive. Other Survival Horror games tend to have more of an action edge to them, where you are perfectly able to fight back. These include the very iconic series of Resident Evil (in which you control fully-trained special military or police officers) or Silent Hill (which has characters who are not fully trained in weaponry, but can use them as well as they are able).
As advancements in computer graphics allow them to become more realistic with movie-quality animation, the survival horror genre is one that continues to improve with these advancements, allowing the scary bits to seem more genuine and therefore more effective.
My idea today is again something I should think already exists in some capacity, but I cannot find anywhere. It therefore stands to reason that the game either doesn't exist, or failed so badly despite the premise (or maybe because of it, I'm not perfect) that it has been mostly forgotten. Anyway, the idea is a survival horror based on the Apocalypse.
You'll play a hapless guy caught in the middle of Judgement Day. Instead of it being a gradual 7-year long thing in the Christian Bible, the shit sort of hits the fan all at once. As well as the footsoldiers of the Apocalypse and regular staple of the genre, namely the living dead, there'll be all sorts of terrors unleashed at the same time. I'm talking some really nasty things going on, ranging from non-corporeal horrors that - while unable to physically harm you - terrorize the survivors by chanting their various sins in life and working as scouts for the bigger guys to find you. The bigger guys in this case range from all sorts of Apocalyptic creatures: from the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to Lovecraftian uber-colossal Hell creatures to hideous creatures from various ancient civilisations who had been sleeping for countless millenia. Pretty much every bad element that has ever been waking up simultaneously to end mankind.
The game's story will begin with our guy simply tracking down his family, first going to the surburbs where he lives for his wife and then onwards to the high school where his son is a pupil. After which it's simply a battle to survive for as long as possible, through brave fighting, fortuitous circumstances and lots of running like the dickens before something you cannot handle spots you. Towards the end of the game, it turns out the remaining group of humans - mostly powerful mystics and similarly lucky or well-trained personnel - find a way to finally fight back against the world-killers, culminating in an over-powered showdown in which you're a vital lynchpin to the eventual success of humanity. I'm not sure if it's going to be technological-based or mysticism-based as yet: The former would be better story-wise as it reflects humanity's talent for what they do best: making giant machines to kill things. The latter would make more sense considering the storyline however, with the survivors lending you their life-force so you can become superhuman and start kicking copious amounts of supernatural butt. Or it might just end with your eventual death and with it the death of mankind itself, since it is supposed to be Armageddon and all. Maybe delaying your death until you've done enough good in the world by saving people will be the goal, so you end up going to a better afterlife. It's not like alternate endings are unheard of in this genre.
So as it stands, the game is a combination of Silent Hill's kind of "everyman versus the undead" and something like Clock Tower where the stronger enemies are simply too powerful for you (currently) and you need to escape. Escaping the city where you work just as a 300ft tall colossal beastie shows up to level it would make for an awesome cutscene I think, and there'll be similar-scale calamities wherever you go. The game will take you all over the continent as you escape one danger to find yourself in another, and it'd be cool to bring in monsters from all sorts of apocalypse myths of the world: instead of limiting it to the Christian Bible (Four Horsemen and Hell Demons), you could include parts of Ragnarok (such as the Midgar Serpent or Fenris the giant wolf) or even elements from fictional mythology like the Angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Maybe even something like the Meteor from FF7 or the Moon from Mask of Majora, as an ever-present threat in the sky to deal with. The Apocalypse should be disturbing on more than just the physical destruction element alone, with all sorts of dangers unleashed to extinguish human life.
Actually, it turns out a game with a similar premise (though a completely different playing style: this sounded more like a Devil May Cry action title than a survival horror) was being made by 3DO shortly before they went belly up. It was called 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse and used our favorite four icons of unholy evil as bosses to fight with guns and stuff. Sounded a lot more interesting than most of what 3DO put out back then.
