As a foreword I will confess than I’ve never finished the first two games released on the PS2. Hell, not only that – I actually only played like half an hour of the first one. I was hyped for the first game and spend countless hours browsing through the amazing website that promoted it. It was supposed to be a dream come true - a truly Japanese horror turned into a video game. But when my PS2 swallowed the DVD it was like getting your favorite soup with a dead, half-rotten rat in it. The game’s hallmark feature – the sightjack (the ability to see through enemy’s eyes) turned out to be a pain to use and the game was more unforgiving than your boss after crashing the company car. I didn’t touch it ever again and I didn’t even consider getting the second one.
However, during the absence of horror games, on a gaming session with EXramp we downloaded the Siren demo from the Japanese PSN. I have to say that when I pressed X over the Siren icon in XMB I was expecting the worst – the same clunky controls, the same silly level of difficulty and I was just so wrong. I won’t bother writing about the demo, because you had a chance to read EXramp’s impression and instead I’ll concentrate on the final product.
Siren: Blood Curse (or New Translation as it’s known in Japan) tells a story about a TV crew stranded on an island where people are killed and turned into undead monsters (the Shibito). The events are somehow connected with a blood rain the falls on the village. The story is not that different from the ones in the previous Siren games, but I can tell you it’s a really good one. There are some unexpected twists that made me blink twice to shed off the surprise. The plot is well written, very well executed and you will have doubts about that exactly is going on until the very end. I’m not going to tell you more, because I wouldn’t want to ruin anything, but rest assured that the (circa) twelve hours you spend with the game won’t be wasted.
Just like the story, the characters are well developed and the actors responsible for the voice overs should get a bonus in shape of pineapples and hominy for doing such a bloody good job. This voice acting with the very nice character models make the game feel more natural (giving the circumstances) and realistic – which greatly contributes to the experience. The Shibito are also excellently modeled and will make you very uneasy every time you encounter them.
The overall atmosphere is simply top notch mainly do to great sound (You want to have a nice surround system for this game, you really do.) and great graphics. You’ll fall in love with the dark skies with red clouds flowing on the horizon. It’s all very intense and somehow charming. The parts of the game that happened during misty days are also incredible with the deaf silence of foggy locales. However, considering the downloadable nature of the game some sacrifices had to be made. Some of the textures look more like someone’s smeared brain than anything else and no, it doesn’t add to the atmosphere – it’s just ugly. Still, most of the time you won’t notice that because you’ll be in the sightjack mode. And the sightjack mode is a completely different kind of shit – there are multiple filters layered on the screen and it’s much harder to move and even see, so even though you have an idea where your enemies are there is this sense of dread that you might make a wrong turn by mistakes and find your guts on Shibito’s knife. And believe me, it happens more often than you can imagine. The ability to look though Shibitos’ eyes can be nerve wrecking by itself as those creatures do not go to the kindergarten – you can take my word for it.
The game can be pretty scary at times but it’s mostly disturbing. I’ll give you my favourite example as it’s something that still gives me nightmares.
There is a part of the game where you control a small girl and you need to escape or hide from the Shibito (the girl can’t use weapons). At one point the only viable place to hide is an old furnace… you can’t even imagine how many times a Shibito was treading by my hideout and I was sure that the monster will light the furnace up and I will be burned alive. When you read this it might not sound like much, when you’re experiencing this in the game it does make you breathe in a very shallow and quiet way.
The gameplay is something a bit different as well. You will control multiple characters throughout the course of the game – some can fight, use weapons and items and some can only hide. There are puzzles in the game (save one), but rather natural choices. You come across a locked door – you need the key, but the key is guard by a Shibito with a rifle, so you need to distract the Shibito with something first.
This game is a lot more about survival and horror that any other survival horror. I can tell you that.
One thing that (at least for me) ruins the climate a bit is the whole game is objective based. You start a chapter and you get a set of objectives that you must complete – reach floor x, find a fuse, start the elevator. It does make the gameplay a bit more fluid and you won’t be going in circles wondering what to do, but on the other hand it feels as natural as eating rocks through a straw.
The gameplay itself is not particularly balanced either. If you don’t have a weapon there is no way to take a Shibito out (apart from a few scripted encounters), but when you do have a weapon there is no stopping you – you can take out almost everything on your path – unless it has a gun – if it does, you are screwed. And it goes on like this – you either hide all the time, or kill every Shibito you can find. It makes the stealthy parts sometimes a bit too hard and the action parts way too easy.
The game is great for collectors – there are many items to find (that includes weapons, documents, plot items and so on) and in most cases it will take multiple playthroughs to get everything. There are no bonuses for collecting all items, but for people who like to get one hundred pre cent out of their games it is an incentive to finish the game more than once. There is an “Archive” section in the main menu where you can browse through your findings and I bet you’ll be surprised how much work went into this game. For example all the videos you’ll find in the game are neither CG or engine based but actually recorded by hand with real actors (I’m not taking about story cut scenes here, but rather about video tapes you’ll find scattered throughout the game). I find it very cool and it’s something that adds to the immersion.
Siren: Blood Curse is without a doubt a great game with its own ideas and mechanics – something that seems more ambitious and less action oriented than what we are exposed to lately and it only makes the game better in my eyes. It’s also an excellent survival horror with thick atmosphere and great story. It may not be perfect, but it doesn’t really matter, because its flaws are minor and insignificant. If you haven’t played it yet, be sure to download at least the demo from PSN. And if you happen to live in Europe or Japan you can get a disc version (since today) as well as the downloadable version.
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