Once again, you use the word 'horde'. And once again, I ask where these numbers have become such a staple?
Okay, picture your in a house, and only one enemy is after you... an enemy that only has a vague idea of where you may be hiding, but he can hear your footsteps, your girly frightened breathing, and he's not above slashing the fuck out of a mattress just to see if your hiding under the bed.
You can run, you can hide, you can deceive him (break a window to make it look like you climbed out, then double back for the closet) and if all else fails, wait for the right time to put a chair over his back while he's near the stair case.
And if that house is big enough, then losing that one enemy for a while would be easy, but confrontations would have you so physically outmatched, the only voluntary combat you initiate is to give you that shot at the door, before he finds your hiding spot.
And this is just assuming a typical setting. Sci-fi or supernatural horror can work without just putting you up against dozen's of zombies with scythes on their shoulders. Imagine a second your against something that's blind... sure, one casual swipe and it's guna take your head off, but it's navigating purely on sound. That includes your breathing, which get's worse as it stalks closer, and that kettle you just threw down the hall to lure it's attention.
As it zero's in on the sound and bounds off to check, it get's the scuffling of your shoes, and chases you into a packing area, where there's too much sound, and it's becoming angered, and is now randomly tearing up work stations and shelves, screeching. Nows a good time for you to climb and get to higher ground without it following, and either keep going or find something big to drop on it's head.
And say your not getting away from it that easy, and all you have in your hand is a shard of glass in a cloth. It's sniffing along a wall, throat clicking, listening and searching, and it's between you and your exit. You've got a free shot... do you take it? Shanking it in the back is guna severely piss it off, but as it spazzes out, you've got a free 'run' card and can put as much distance between you two, AND you may even cripple it, or impair it. Or... you could get slashed to meat ribbons.
So once again, stop assuming horror games are either run from hordes, or fight the hordes xD there are clever way's to design a horror game, and I'm sure my two examples are only a claw mark on the surface.
