Bad News First
When I got the word I was going to review this title, I spent a couple of days getting into the series by playing the original Siren on PS2. I was intrigued by its dark story and how I was able to see the same story through the eyes of several different characters. The mix of stealth and horror was neat, and the Sightjack (more on this later) innovative, but it didn’t take very long for several of the major issues of the gameplay to appear. I haven’t completed the original Siren, but I have finished up Siren Blood Curse, and while it’s an improvement in several areas, even this new Siren still suffers from some of the nagging issues that plagued the first.
One thing that made the original such a pain at times was your inability to defend yourself, unless you had a weapon, when caught by a Shibito (the primary enemy, basically zombies). Of course, the idea is not to be seen, but you can rest assured it’s going to happen, so when it does, you’d like to be able to do something about it besides try to run. In Blood Curse, you can actually defend yourself, sort of – you’re able to actually punch or smack the Shibito, but it doesn’t actually do much but maybe buy you a quick second to try to get away before being hit or tackled. You cannot, unfortunately, pry away their weapon and use it against them, which seems to me would make a hell of a lot of sense. So basically, if you’re caught without a weapon, you’re still in deep in Blood Curse, but being able to do at least something instead of nothing is a step in the right direction. However, in all of many escort missions in Blood Curse, the NPC you’re helping get from Point A to Point B still won’t do anything to defend themselves (except run to pre-scripted areas in a handful of instances), nor will they help you out at all if you’re in danger. As you can imagine, this can be frustrating. Oh, unfortunately the Shibito still do come back to life in Blood Curse after a few minutes as with the original, but several improvements to the gameplay, explained shortly, keep that nuisance to a minimum.
Secondly, I would have to say that the characters in this game are still very rigid. Just take a look at your character in the West Fields in one of the maps, as you step down the small hills, or climb up them – the animation and movement is stiff and slow, and this can drive you crazy especially on a particular defense objective with Melissa Gale in the tenth episode, where time is so crucial. This goes for climbing ladders and quickly turning or aiming with the gun; aiming with the gun was ridiculous with the old hunter in the original Siren, as far as how long it took him to take it off his shoulder, bring it up to this face, and take aim – by that time the Shibito sniper or the standard patrolling Shibito was all over you and you couldn’t do jack about it. Siren Blood Curse has improved on this only slightly; I still ran into a lot of situations where all I wanted to do was quickly turn around and take aim, or heck, even just shoot at a Shibito who was coming close to me, but the movement of these characters is so darn stiff, I died more often than not. I just had to wonder, why are these characters moving so slowly when the situation is so dire?
Another example of the ‘stiffness’ of these characters is in swinging melee weapons. If you swing, be prepared to wait for the full swinging motion before you can reposition or do anything. You cannot break off a swing once you started, and since it can be hard to judge distance between yourself and a Shibito, a swing that misses can be the end of your little adventure, because usually the Shibito will be on top of you with a tackle or a hit. Being tackled or knocked down introduces an annoying control mechanic whereby you have to swing the Sixaxis controller up and down quickly to get back on your feet, otherwise your character just stays down. Anyway, without any kind of block, it’s not hard to get into a brief cycle of swing, miss, take a hit, and before you know it, it’s time to reload your last checkpoint or start all over again, more on that shortly. I just wish movement was more fluid and urgent in this game; sure you can run pretty quickly, but it’d be really nice to be able to turn quicker, be faster with guns, and have more dynamic control in melee situations.
Speaking of checkpoints though, one of the several things I did appreciate with Siren Blood Curse over the original Siren was the inclusion of more checkpoints per mission. Some missions in the original Siren didn’t even have checkpoints, but in Blood Curse, checkpoints are nicely scattered throughout. It’s a great relief when you come to one, and though I thought a few of them could have been better placed, these were a welcomed addition to the experience.
More About the Gameplay
Most of you know, either from reading or playing the demo, or from having experience with the original, that Siren Blood Curse is a stealth horror game. The niche or hook feature that gave the original an extra bit of intrigue was the Sightjack. This ability allows players to scan around the map and see from the eyes of the Shibito, so that you might plan your movements to stay undetected accordingly. The Sightjack system in Blood Curse seemed just a bit simpler to use than in the original, but I actually found it less useful, I think for two reasons: the checkpoints made playing through a mission a more casual affair than in the original, so I wasn’t being as painstakingly cautious. Furthermore, if you have a weapon in Blood Curse, especially one of the longer melee weapons like a garden hoe, poker, or shovel, you’re in good shape, and you don’t have to be as cautious against the average Shibito. In fact, after beating the game and viewing my episode stats, there were several episodes where I didn’t even use the Sightjack. That said, there are times where using Sightjack is all but necessary to gather information, like where a certain item is that a Shibito leaves behind, for example.
Sightjack isn’t always something you trigger manually: anytime a Shibito spots you and is pursuing you, their full, shaky red view of the world and you comes onto the screen and takes up the right third or almost half of the screen – I thought this was annoying, because it took away from your viewing ability and also because it wasn’t useful, most times, to be looking at their view while you were trying to run and reposition; it can be disorienting, and when you’re being pursued, making concise movements is vital. I didn’t always do this, but most times I was quick to press L2 to take their view off of my screen.
Siren Blood Curse gives you the opportunity to hide in closets, under beds, even in the hospital incinerator to ward off pursuers, or, to get an important clue as to what you need to do next. For example, one chapter of one episode begins with Bella Monroe, the kid, hiding in a room with three Shibito. You can leave this hiding spot anytime, but it’s game over if you step out too early – the thing to do was to sit and wait, and watch as the Shibito leave the room. If you Sightjack one, you can see that he places a key down on a table that you need to snag to open a door later. Hiding is sometimes required, but unless it was required, I didn’t find it useful, especially if I was carrying a weapon by that point in the mission.
A Typical Episode
Siren Blood Curse is available in episodic packages, I believe three sets of four for $15 each, or $40 for the entire set. For those understandably unsure if they should make the plunge, I’d like to tell you about a typical episode in Siren. They are very similar to each other as far as how the content is presented and in how much gameplay you can expect out of each. Each episode consists of five chapters, which sounds like a lot, but as with the 2003 Siren, the term ‘chapter’ is used for both cutscenes and gameplay. For each episode, you get two playable chapters, the other three being cutscenes, with the final cutscene in each of the first eleven chapters being, literally, a trailer for the next episode. Outside of episodes one and four, which I completed in around ten, and twenty minutes respectively, you can figure at least forty-five minutes of gameplay per episode. My total game time was about ten and a half hours upon completion, and this was doing through about as fast as I felt safe enough to do. I didn’t wonder around if I could help it, and I know for certain I didn’t find a lot of the Archive items that can be found by inter-connecting events between the different episodes and chapters (i.e., unlocking a door in one chapter may help another character find something in a later chapter). I personally don’t think trying to find all of the Archive items (miscellaneous objects, like letters that you can read from the Pause menu) or collecting all of the weapons is worthwhile in playing through this often frustrating adventure again, but I’m sure many gamers will enjoy hunting those items down.
Other Thoughts
I’ve spoken quite a bit about various aspects of this game, but there are still several thoughts I want to mention in one section here in the interest of being concise, yet still thorough. First, as far as the sights and sounds of Siren Blood Curse, I wasn’t amazed, but I was satisfied. I was very pleased that not all of the maps that you play were just dark, rainy environments. While none were colorful and sunny, understandably given the story of the game, there were a few missions that were much brighter and easier on the eyes to play. Secondly, there isn’t much graphical variety in Siren at all, not that this is truly important, but I thought it worth mentioning. While you take the role of about six different characters, you traverse the same eight or so areas a few times over, which while helpful in finding your way around, also at the same time keeps the visual variety dampened. Aurally, my favorite part of this game was the song that plays during the Pause Menu, and I believe during some cutscenes. However, that’s not to say that voice acting, while short on the variety of dialogue, wasn’t well done. Effects were also fine.
This is really a random thought, but I wanted to mention that the map in Siren Blood Curse was very helpful and well put together. All objectives and your position on the map, as well as how the various layers of the map are connected, are clearly marked and it made playing through Siren much more enjoyable, which was most definitely not the case with the original Siren, so kudos to the Japan Studio for improving upon that.
I would add that story in Blood Curse, and the characters, are not only a chore to keep up with, but by the time I reached the final couple of chapters, I had really lost nearly all interest in not only the outcome, but in the characters themselves. I think a lot of this had to do with the story; it starts off strong, largely because it’s so mysterious, but as things unravel, the story really falls apart into what seems like just a mash-up of ideas. The revelations in the final episodes – especially in the final chapter — were not only uninteresting, but also added to the ‘ok, whatever’ feeling I had by this point.
In closing, Siren Blood Curse is a much better Siren experience than the original, but it’s still plagued by some glaring gameplay shortcomings. The experience is a mix of satisfaction and frustration, the best advice I can give would be to check out the demo first before making a purchase.