I want you to look me in the eyes and say that RE4 wasn't scary/atmospheric. We wouldn't even have Dead Space without RE4.
You bolded the wrong part:
exactly 0 of them being scary or atmospheric in the same way as the original games
RE4 is scary in its own way. But Capcom themselves have detailed how it's very different than the original games- it's more based on tension and adrenaline, usually as a result of getting swarmed and overwhelmed by enemies. It's a very immediate kind of fear that usually comes from the circumstances of the combat. The fixed camera games were often at their scariest when no enemies were present and it was just the strength of the music and visuals driving the fear, or when the tension came from being low on resources and not knowing what kind of danger may be in the next rooms. The fear didn't ever really come from fighting itself, but from the dread of the possibility of having to fight. That's a very different kind of feeling, and no, none of the modern style games have captured it. And I even
like all of the over the shoulder games aside from RE6, which was and is a shitpile.
Also, as I've said before, I think giving the player the ability to aim can really compromise a Survival Horror game, because once you give the player the ability to aim, you give them the ability to miss, and then you have to balance the game around that fact (more plentiful ammo, enemies dropping ammo, buying ammo, dynamic difficulty, etc.). The brilliance of the combat in the older games is that it took player skill out of the equation (aside from positioning) in favor of putting the focus on ammo management. "What weapon should I use on this enemy?", " do I have enough ammo? ", "should I even fight this enemy?", etc., and it allowed the devs to put strict limits on ammo, without concern for players missing all their shots and screwing themselves over. Just giving the player the ability to aim changes everything, IMO.
This is what a lot of people don't seem to understand. Even in the original PS1 Resident Evil, it was possible to have faster ,more maneuverable characters, but Shinji Mikami wanted them to remain limited because that forces players to use strategy to survive. When you can't rely on your weapons to get you out of every situation, you have to be more tactful and make smarter decisions. It's not about running around blasting things, but about avoiding combat as much as possible and conserving resources until they absolutely have to be used. The tank controls work really well within that kind of gameplay, since they place the emphasis on positioning and strategy- like you said, using the right gun at the right time, and being positioned in just the right way to get the biggest effect from the shot.
What does an over the shoulder system, especially one like RE6's, add to that kind of game? Would being able to land headshots consistently or shoot enemies from any long distance make RE2 better? Or would it unbalance the game and kill the tension? Would roundhouse kicking zombies to death make this game scarier? Would it make those enemies more threatening if your character could run up and hit them without any repercussion? Did the ability to see and shoot lickers freely, from any range with any weapon, make them a better, scarier enemy in RE5? Or did it neuter them and take away everything that made them a memorable enemy?
None of this shit helps RE2's game design in any way. In fact, it would pretty much wreck it in most cases; like I said, the game would have to be redesigned to suit these controls, and it's just not possible to preserve the same kind of tension and horror in that perspective because it's a fundamentally different kind of gameplay.