I reviewed Siren: Blood Curse at Variety, and it was pretty difficult to do, because my opinion's largely divided.
I'm sort of convinced that the siren sound that I heard in the Silent Hill movie, the distant polyhedral knell that swells to a discordant scream, was actually the siren from -- what else? Siren. Either way, as survival horror nerd, that noise has conditioned a level of reaction for me (heart quickens! Scalp crawls! Hair stands on end!) that few other video game sounds can provoke.
That siren sound closes the first episode of Siren: Blood Curse on PSN. And even though I can't say I had very much fun playing it, capping the first episode with that climax felt like the perfect closure.
Episodic really, really works for survival horror -- though, there's also something to be said for the surreal, labyrinthine disorientation that a Silent Hill marathon can induce. But really, I have two crucial problems with Siren: Blood Curse. First up is I just don't like the gameplay very much, personally -- I didn't like the first one either. Second, episodic just doesn't work when it takes so, so much significantly longer to download and install a game than it takes to play it, period.
Second item first. As someone who liked MGS 4, it's evident I have a high threshold for long installs and load screens. When I'm having an intense experience I almost don't mind the break, a few minutes to absorb what I've been doing, get a glass of water, et cetera. So if I find the excruciating download times for Blood Curse (I am not calling it Siren to avoid confusion with its predecessor) as prohibitive, you can trust it's pretty bad.
You can avoid the entire issue by just buying the full game and letting it install overnight -- but then, doesn't that defeat the point of episodic content, which is supposed to be available in "bite-size chunks?" Couldn't it have been released on disc, maintaining the episode structure as traditional chapters?
The gameplay issue is more complicated and more subjective. It's going to work well for some, to be sure. I like that someone in the comments of last night's discussion on Braid's design analogized Siren (both of them) to Portal, in that there's generally one way through the level that you find through trial, error, and repeated death.
I love Portal (who doesn't, seriously?). In fact, in the same discussion last night, I believe I am on the record as calling it "the second coming of christ"[sic]. But the same principles just don't work for me in a horror context -- half the reason is that both Siren games are seriously, nauseatingly terrifying. I suppose that's subjective, too, because different things scare different people, but I find Siren so scary that I can't even focus enough to patiently sightjack, wait in a bush, plot my flight path. I usually just end up spastically running out into view, flinging my controller and flailing and shrieking. Yeah, it's a really ignoble scene.
It's frightening enough for me that it destroys my incentive to keep retrying. Of course, the more times you have to die and repeat a level (for me, this is frustratingly often), the more acclimated you become to the environment and overall fear factor. Do that enough times and scary becomes largely uncomfortable and annoying. You don't get the gratifying sense, as with Portal or Braid, that you're oh-so-smart because you solved a logic puzzle -- you just feel like you figured out how to work the system. Same thing in concept, feels different in practice.
So two major quibbles, and one minor one -- they Americanized it. I'm not one of those "everything is better in Japanese" sorts of people, but Japanese horror is very specific and cultural, and Americanization reduces that aesthetic to a curio or a convention, rather than something that feels sincere. In my review of Blood Curse, I compare it to what film did to 'Ju-On' and 'Ringu' -- the American adaptations, The Grudge and The Ring, relied on Japanese horror conventions while simultaneously distancing themselves from them. I understand the concept that an American audience might enjoy the material from a new angle because of the xenophobic disorientation, but that they did this with Blood Curse makes the horror environment seem a bit cheezy and forced to me.
I'm not saying it's bad -- it's quite well-done, actually. Horror Portal(?) cool! It's that there's only a very specific audience who will enjoy it. This is how I felt about the original Siren, and this is how I feel about Blood Curse. Which is another reason why the episodic thing puzzles me slightly -- isn't the idea behind episodic to lower barriers to entry and increase accessibility? Why would you do that with a game that is, frankly, hardcore?
One supposes it's a wise choice on Sony's part, though. Siren was beloved among a niche, but on a retail shelf, it's not going to sell like a Resident Evil or a Silent Hill. Americanized and framed in the PlayStation Store as a new, spooky experiment in content delivery, I'd guess that it will make more money than it would have traditionally, even though the average consumer may not buy the full game, and even though the full game costs less than a retail disc does.
But yeah, anyway -- good game, but I didn't like it. Nice structure, wrong delivery. Viscerally terrifying while still being slightly stupid. It's a good game, but I don't like it? I like it, but I hate playing it? Much respect, no love? Split decision, for me. I know that doesn't help you guys much in deciding whether or not to buy it -- but hey, at least you can buy just a little bit until you know for sure! That's one good thing.
By the way, the Siren-siren (everybody back in the pool!) frightens me. But it's got stiff competition against the Fatal Frame bell-chime as being Scariest Video Game Noise Ever. Agree?
