Finally, the PlayStation 3 has a little survival horror under its belt. With upcoming big-budget titles like Silent Hill: Homecoming and Dead Space ambling in our direction, I think a number of us were surprised by the sudden arrival of Siren: Blood Curse on the PlayStation Network last week. This HD follow-up to its PS2 predecessors takes the same old horror mechanics that we’re all familiar with and delivers them to players in an intriguing episodic format that just nails the feel of a serialized drama. Possibly to its fault.
Click through for the goods.
The story in Siren: Blood Curse is a bit of a convoluted mess. Players start the adventure after a brief blurry live-action video that makes a number of scenes from Blair Witch seem like they were shot on a steadycam and in HD. I’m not entirely sure what it was that I saw, but thank goodness there was dialog that attempted to explain what was going on: a camera crew from the US came out to the remote, supposedly haunted, Japanese village of Hanuda to shoot a documentary. After arriving, they bear witness to some kind of ritual of sacrifice that leaves the party split up and in a town full of shibito--the wandering dead.
Suffice to say, the shibito aren’t too friendly. Each episode of the game is broken up into chapters that give the player control of any one of a number of the main characters. In the first few episodes of the game, I actually found myself scaring pretty easily. I constantly made my way through the derelict village at a snails pace--avoiding the shibito at all cost. In Blood Curse your enemies never die, they can only be knocked out for a duration with any of the impromptu weapons you come across. Obvious weapons like axes are supported by some more obscure items like bowling trophies and serving ladles, each with their own unique damaging abilities. Occaisionally, you’ll be lucky enough to come across a gun but don’t expect to hold onto it for too long.
All of the weapons are merely present to support you should you need them. The majority of game play is designed around the unique “sightjack” ability present in all of your party members. By pressing the L2 button, players are able to tune to the eyes and ears of surrounding friends and enemies via a dynamic split screen. By utilizing this ability, you’ll often discover the key to that locked door you need to get through, or the best route to move unseen. I was impressed with how varied they kept the puzzles throughout the game. Oftentimes escaping an area required a good degree of patience and proper use of sightjack; remember, finding an ally is much easier when you can just look through their eyes.
After beating the game a final scoreboard tallies your ability to evade enemy detection, so stealth does come into play a great deal. It really sinks in during the chapters you play as Bella, the ten-year-old daughter of the documentary crew’s reporter and religious expert. Yea, there’s a family involved in Blood Curse, much of their plot revolves around meeting up with each other or protecting their daughter. Frankly, the whole adventure is so laden with their family melodrama that I often wondered if they even realized that they were in a village filled with the walking dead. I mean, really, the mother and father are having conversations about their break-up while it’s raining blood and no one even mentions the odd weather!
Most all of the characters suffer from this strange lack of awareness. Shibito fly around with wings sprouting from their eyes and no one even mentions how creepy that is. I feel like I’d be much more scared during the game if my characters just noted how totally insane everything going on around them is. I’m totally adjusted to the idea of the living dead walking about, but I’m pretty sure not every person out there can accept that a man with a tree branch jutting from his sternum is stumbling towards them to kill them.
In a bit of an odd choice, the designers clearly chose to forgo much of the actual story in the village, leaving it for fanboys to decipher the events in forums after the fact. A number of scattered items and books are acquired throughout the episodes that help flesh out the characters prior to their time in the village. Despite the fact that there are a few books about the village’s lore and religions, very little about the current plight the village is in is ever discussed. Like Lost, Blood Curse appears to leave the entire story for the people that actively search for it, not for casual viewers.
Graphically, Blood Curse merely gets a pass. The environments and character models are all fine, by no means fantastic. To top it off the whole game is covered in a constant “old film” filter that makes all the details chunkier and just puts a bunch of noise between the action and the player. The 3rd person view often leaves the player right in the middle of the frame, blocking the view of whatever your character is looking at. There is an optional first-person mode, but for anything other than aiming a gun it’s mostly useless.
The music is pretty ominous and spooky. Some shrill notes definitely raise tension whenever you feel the controller shake and see shibito’s view of you pop onto screen. Having a surround sound system may just be your saving grace when searching around frantically to find that one flying shibito that’s buzzing about.
Despite all my complaints about Siren: Blood Curse, I did have an enjoyable time going through the 11-12 hour adventure. The episodic structure, complete with recaps and coming previews provided a much more casual play approach than I’m used to for a survival horror. In between episodes I could take a break to come back later and catch the next one. The one big caveat about the game is that it requires three 4-episode purchases of $14.99 (or one complete purchase of $39.99) and a ton of your time to download and install the game. The whole thing runs in at a little over 9 gigs and you’re forced to download--and install--each episode individually. What’s worse, is that I doubt many players will actually go back to replay the adventure. And once you’ve played Blood Curse, it’s not like you can go sell your copy at the local games store, it’s digital.
If you’re a fan of survival horror games, then I recommend checking out the demo available in the PSN to see if Siren: Blood Curse is right for you. It doesn’t do anything to break the mold we’ve come to know in the genre, but you can consider it a palette cleanser before we get to the main course later this season.
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