Siren: Blood Curse
Let me say this up front; Siren: Blood Curse is very different game, and feel very much like an interactive experiment. It's set up to be like an interactive TV show. There are 12 chapters, each chapter begins with a short recap of previous episodes, followed by two interactive sequences, followed by "scenes from the next episode". Originally they were released as downloadable chapters but I bought the blue-ray.
The story begins simple; an American Television crew investigates a city called Hanuda, where blood sacrifices were made 30 years earlier. From that point on things just get weirder and weirder. Appearently Hanuda is cursed and there's "intelligent" zombies called "chibitos" all over, who seem to be stuck in their daily routine, living out their daily lives, even if they are actually dead.
At first glance the game looks like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, meaning it looks like a survival horror game. Unlike other horror games though, where you are usually meant to kill whatever comes in your path, Siren puts more focus into sneaking. You will often feel you play a regular person who have no combat experience, and sneaking is often the best way to go by. The goal is often about getting through the area, meaning you have to get past the chibitos. This can sometimes be easy if you find a weapon, but they will never stay down forever, they will get up again in a minute or so, so there's no way to "clear the area".
As a help you have something known as "sightjacking". You can enter the eyes of a chibito, making it possible to track their routine, something that will help you sneaking past them, or decide the right moment to whack them over the head with one of the 50 improvised weapons in the game, everything from ashtrays to frying pans to real weapons like guns and blades.
One cool feature was the archive. On each map you can find secrets that unlocks archive items. These archive items can be accessed from the main menu and usually expand the storyline. Most of these are actual photographs or live video with the actors used for the game. There's even a fake website,
the main characters blog.
Siren Blood Curse is interesting experiment, but I don't know if it's a good game. The story suffers like most horror plots that simply tries to be scary without telling anything more. The maps can be very frustrating to get through, often since you have to do a great feat to get past every obstacle without failing. Essentially you have to learn how to do each map through trial and error. Once you know how to do it you blaze through the map in notime. But I still have to give them thumbs up for trying to do things different. With a better plot and some less frustration, this could have been awesome. If they make another game like this, count me in.
