When I want to take a break from murder and destruction in video games, I like to treat myself to a good horror game. The problem is, they don’t make very good ones anymore.

In the PS2 generation, survival-horror games were everywhere; Gamestop shelves were littered with “Silent Hill”s and “Resident Evil”s, as well as dozens of less popular (but still good) games like “Clocktower” and “Fatal Frame.”

But then people stopped buying survival-horror games because they became too hard to market to general audiences and cost the studios millions that they never gained back from sales.

So the genre had to adapt to become more marketable and only the big franchises survived. However, the surviving franchises, “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill,” had to add more of an element in order to keep up sales.

This became apparent when I went from playing “Silent Hill 2” (2001) to playing “Silent Hill: Homecoming” (2008).

“Silent Hill 2” had an atmosphere designed to unnerve the player and make them uncomfortable in the foggy town, forcing them to be completely on edge and jump out of their seats when monsters would come stumbling.

“Silent Hill: Homecoming” pulled the fog back to show enemies approaching from a good mile away. While this made the game easier for rookie players, it also removed all suspense from traveling across town.

This has been a change almost across the board: horror game developers going a little easier on gamers, accepting that rookies may be playing the game.

Another example from the “Silent Hill” series is the combat. The first four games in the series had terribly hard-to-control combat as the protagonists were an author, a depressed clerk, a teenage girl and an on-and-off photographer, so naturally none of them were very good in a fight. Although it’s hard to control, it added a challenge to the game and made combat nerve-wracking.

However, when “Homecoming” debuted, the protagonist was a soldier and, as such, he was a skilled fighter; this one, seemingly minor change radically altered the feel of the game. The combat became too easy and there was no reason for me to fear enemies in combat.

There’s nothing wrong with having good combat in a horror game; “Condemned 2” had solid combat but still managed to create great atmosphere that scared me to death.

Modern games also have this bad habit of copying Hollywood horror films like “The Descent” by suddenly throwing scary things right into your face without any subtlety.

The best part of playing “Silent Hill 2” was entering an area and hearing heavy breathing; your muscles tense and sweat begins to drip from your forehead. You enter a dark room and turn on a flashlight and shine it around the room, examining the TV, bookcase, couch and lamp. But then you realize that the lamp isn’t a lamp; it’s an undead burn victim who happens to want you dead.

Hiding the enemies in plain sight is so much scarier than hiding them in dark corners or under your bed. It’s things like that that result in lost sleep, not flashing pictures of scary Asian children every time you turn a corner.