Heed the Sound
Siren: Blood Curse will genuinely scare the pants off you... just be ready for the controls to do the same.
Published: August 10, 2008
Siren: Blood Curse is, in many ways, a step back in the whole survival horror movement. Japan has proven time and again that they understand how to succinctly and completely scare the shit out of you, be it in movies or game, as in the case of this PlayStation 2 remake -- to say nothing of the Clock Towers and the less action-driven Resident Evil entries and most certainly the Silent Hill series. They just have an innate way of building dread instead of "BOO" moments that tends to sink in, no matter your initial resolve.
Such is the pedigree of the Siren series, which more or less came and went here in the US after the first entry and never really got the proper attention it should have. With the PS3 version, however, Sony has redoubled their efforts to make the game a terrifying yet enthralling experience. For the most part, it worked. The game suffers -- particularly early on -- with just trying to present itself in the right way. All the core elements are taken from the first game, which makes sense as this is based on the first game, but like the PS2 game, they're clunky and at first a little frustrating.
When the first few Resident Evil games came out, the discussion was on the tank-like controls, and the relative frustration therein. The response, Capcom admitted, was that it was entirely intentional. If you couldn't instantly react, but had to actually maneuver around the slow-moving zombies, then it was an additional challenge. Well, Siren is more or less devoid of slow-shuffling corpses, as you discover over the course of the dozen episodes provided by way of the PlayStation Store, and instead requires a rather speedy reaction.
The controls, however, don't offer that.
Not expressly, anyway. You'll eventually come to understand how the speed of some characters is different from others, as is their armament, which effectively spreads the ability to repel a bunch of rage-crazed sub-humans across the 12 chapters of story. At first, the clunkiness is annoying. Then it's downright frustrating. Then is somehow starts to feel more... "normal." I'm not claiming that any part of the controls gets better exactly, but it did all start to click right (for me) as the storyline started to get good.
And that's a key part of Siren's appeal. It's an episodic game, though released more or less instantly, which kind of makes me a little sad because it could have been a portent to an actual TV show-style approach. Are the teasers at the end of an episode enough to get someone to buy the next one instantly (or wait with bated breath for it to arrive on the store)? No, not really, though there are some fantastic hooks here and there that would easily get me to buy at least that next one.
Why not mention them? Because the game is broken up into three chunks of four, more or less -- episodes that tell the story in bits and pieces that are supposed to represent a TV series. Early on, it seems almost stupid, and indeed the buy-in for something like this is excessive (though if purchased in full, it's still $20 less than most PS3 games). You literally have to pay to see the game through to its end, both in terms of the concepts it establishes early on and in story details. Is it worth it? For a guy like me that hates to admit he loves being scared and will take his sweet time in doing so (just look at how late this review is), yeah, absolutely.
Such is the pedigree of the Siren series, which more or less came and went here in the US after the first entry and never really got the proper attention it should have. With the PS3 version, however, Sony has redoubled their efforts to make the game a terrifying yet enthralling experience. For the most part, it worked. The game suffers -- particularly early on -- with just trying to present itself in the right way. All the core elements are taken from the first game, which makes sense as this is based on the first game, but like the PS2 game, they're clunky and at first a little frustrating.
When the first few Resident Evil games came out, the discussion was on the tank-like controls, and the relative frustration therein. The response, Capcom admitted, was that it was entirely intentional. If you couldn't instantly react, but had to actually maneuver around the slow-moving zombies, then it was an additional challenge. Well, Siren is more or less devoid of slow-shuffling corpses, as you discover over the course of the dozen episodes provided by way of the PlayStation Store, and instead requires a rather speedy reaction.
The controls, however, don't offer that.
Not expressly, anyway. You'll eventually come to understand how the speed of some characters is different from others, as is their armament, which effectively spreads the ability to repel a bunch of rage-crazed sub-humans across the 12 chapters of story. At first, the clunkiness is annoying. Then it's downright frustrating. Then is somehow starts to feel more... "normal." I'm not claiming that any part of the controls gets better exactly, but it did all start to click right (for me) as the storyline started to get good.
And that's a key part of Siren's appeal. It's an episodic game, though released more or less instantly, which kind of makes me a little sad because it could have been a portent to an actual TV show-style approach. Are the teasers at the end of an episode enough to get someone to buy the next one instantly (or wait with bated breath for it to arrive on the store)? No, not really, though there are some fantastic hooks here and there that would easily get me to buy at least that next one.
Why not mention them? Because the game is broken up into three chunks of four, more or less -- episodes that tell the story in bits and pieces that are supposed to represent a TV series. Early on, it seems almost stupid, and indeed the buy-in for something like this is excessive (though if purchased in full, it's still $20 less than most PS3 games). You literally have to pay to see the game through to its end, both in terms of the concepts it establishes early on and in story details. Is it worth it? For a guy like me that hates to admit he loves being scared and will take his sweet time in doing so (just look at how late this review is), yeah, absolutely.
