Siren: Blood Curse
(out of 4)
Platform: PlayStation 3
Price: $14.99 per 3-episode pack, $39.99 complete
Rated M
It was a humbling, even humiliating, experience: In 2004, I was completely defeated by the original Siren.
Now, I like the survival-horror genre, and loved almost everything about the PS2 creepfest ... but I couldn't play it. Beat my head against the wall for hours, bloody death after bloody death, until I just gave up; Siren had won. So, when I saw episodic sequel Siren: Blood Curse available at the PlayStation Store, I knew I had to take my shot at redemption.
Reworking/retelling the storyline of the original, Blood Curse returns us to the same xenophobic Japanese backwoods mountain town. The titular curse, with its titular bodily fluid, is in full effect, the dread demon-god is aborning, and the twisty little streets are overrun with unkillable zombie-people. In this terrifying milieu, cut off from the rest of the world by an endless, undulating sea of blood, a handful of characters must do what all survival-horror characters must do: survive, and be horrified.
The former is a lot easier now than in 2004. The Siren games are firmly in the hard-stealth end of the survival-horror spectrum, the main goal at any time being to avoid at all costs any contact with the trundling, zombified townies. Helping with this is the characters' ability to "sightjack" other beings, to see through the eyes of allies, animals and patrolling zombies in order to figure out where to go, and when, in order to stay alive. Blood Curse makes the sightjacking system far friendlier and more helpful than it was in Siren, deploying a split-screen mode that allows you to move and take action while remaining tuned into zombievision.
On the horror end, it depends on what you're looking for. Shifting between characters and time frames, the episodes of Blood Curse are certainly super-creepy, building up bit by bit the enormity of what's going on. There's gore, shocks and goosebumps aplenty, delivered through top-notch art, sound and visual direction – if you can get past the cheese factor of the often clunky script and stilted voice acting.
In this case, the delivery of Blood Curse as an episodic download works. Breaking the game up and making it available chunk-style enhances the game's nature as a set of intertwined yet discrete stories. The fun of suspense is somehow actually heightened by the act of buying, downloading and installing the next episode pack.
This is a top-notch survival/horror package, much gentler difficulty-wise than the original. Very spooky and atmospheric, with a gimmick (the sightjacking system) that both enhances the horror and creates unique gameplay, and well worth checking out; at 15 bucks each, Blood Curse episode packs are good gore-soaked value for your dollar.
