What happens when you put a bunch of regular individuals in a precarious scenario that they can not control and send them into an unending pit of darkness that will spiral through their thoughts and give them the chills? The most creative survival horror game ever created comes with a fantastic plot that follows a high school boy, his teacher, and a helpless girl as they fight to survive in the middle of unspeakable terror.
Dear Marvelous Gamers, welcome. Today, we discuss a game that has been compared to others like Silent Hill but never received the respect it deserved from western gamers. A game that may have laid the groundwork for stealth-survival horror back in 2008, but which was overlooked because of the demographics of distant Japan, with which the western audience could not identify. Siren: Blood Curse is a survival horror game that you DO NOT want to miss! It was created by Japan Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment back in July 2008 as the third instalment and a redesign of the Siren series.
INTRODUCING – THE CURSE OF HANUDA VILLAGE
The story is set in the autumn of 2007, as an American TV crew visits a remote village in the mysterious mountains of Japan, that was rumoured to have vanished completely from existence in 1976 under supernatural circumstances. The game starts off as a film crew is stopped in the middle of the highway at night by an undead policeman. The player has no weapons and no options, but to run away in a desperate attempt to save his life and avoid getting shot by the zombie. Set mostly in Hanuda village, including the Karuwari and Tabori districts, the Hanuda Mine, and the Saiga Hospital, the game explores interconnected stories featuring different characters in unique survival horror situations in a series of twelve chronological episodes.
The village has a unique cultural blend of western and japanese cultures and follows a religion known as Mana. The god of Mana, Kaiko is the game’s primary antagonist who has set a curse upon the region to spread his influence, raising the dead as the ghastly ‘Shibito’, and preventing any human who enters from escaping.
As the story progresses, we get to know from Miyako, a little girl who has been attempting to escape the village for a long time, that the area is stuck in an unending time loop, and that an artefact known as the Uryen must be obtained to fend off the otherworldly spirit known as the Kaiko. Let us take a look at what makes this game really good, and why we recommend playing it even after 14 years since its release.
GAMEPLAY AND DESIGN
Siren Blood Curse actively encourages hiding, it is the epitome of a nerve-wracking survival horror-cum-stealth experience that feels very fresh and equally unnerving. The village of Hanuda is haunted by monsters around every nook and cranny, designed by artist Isao Takahashi, these undead creatures are a nightmarish sight; which will make every single player who dares to play the game, wonder about the level of disturbance that the writers have had to put their team through to come up with designs, as horrifying as the Shibito.
The player takes control of one of the many characters in the game at the beginning of each of twelve linked episodes, each containing intersecting chapters for different characters, who must complete a mission, where most of the gameplay takes place.
This is a third person survival horror game that incorporates stealth elements into its gameplay. Characters are generally unarmed when the mission starts, making them easy targets and leaving them with little choice to engage. The player’s limited arsenal includes shovels, pistols, rifles and even a katana! Gameplay is based on quick decision making, whether it is bracing a door to prevent a Shibito attack, or hiding and sneaking past their patrol routes.
The world design is commendable with the game exploring various elements of the horror genre like sacrificial rituals and other occult situations. The game is full of disturbing images, great sound design and well developed aesthetics of the Japanese mountainscape.
The introduction of the ‘sight jacking’ feature for this third instalment of the Siren series is a brilliant upgrade, as it lets the players change their perspective of the environment by entering a trance which lets them switch back and forth between characters, and also assign separate objectives to them.
The story moves forward with completing objectives and through cutscenes, which leads to the introductory trailer for the next episode. The game picks up its pace and starts to truly build a sense of tension and suspense that plays with the gamer’s psyche and forces them to experience a sense of anxiety and claustrophobia, something that the Siren series and SCE Studios Japan is famous for.
The pacing of each chapter is substantially longer as the game progresses and more emphasis is given on stealth gameplay to clear levels, with the Shibitos growing stronger and the complexity of multistage missions increasing, the game manages to maintain a delicate balance of breakneck tempo and subsequent downtime, which helps deliver the true essence of japanese style survival-horror.
The inventory is simple, known as ‘Archives’ and maintains a record of all the weapons found in the game, along with audio recordings, videos and documents collected by the player by completing missions, which are pertinent to uncover details of the story.
The stunning visuals of the remote village has a grainy Silent Hill approach to its visual storytelling that is complemented beautifully by the music of the game. Led by Hitomi Shizimu, the sound department has created an excellent audioscape throughout the game with lots of spooky samples that get triggered when enemies are approaching or while interacting with objects of interest.
The haunting score sets the tone for the aura of the curse that engulfs the town of Hanuda with a mix of low chants, wails and string sections. With a campaign time of good twelve to sixteen hours, Blood Curse is a game that every horror enthusiast would enjoy whether you are playing the game for the first time or reminiscing childhood memories!
WHY SHOULD YOU HEED THE SIREN’S CALL ?
With a metacritic of 78%, Siren: Blood Curse received generally favourable reviews. The compelling aesthetics, brilliant inter-connected storytelling, along with excellent level design and complementing sound design, the game was on its way to being one of the best survival stealth horror games in 2008. But sadly, due to its off-beat cultural setting of Japan, and characters that were revamped from the original franchise to cater to the western crowd, did not work out well for the game.
Undoubtedly, Siren: Blood Curse was the best thing to appear in the genre in a very long time, as rightfully stated by Eurogamer, the skillful way Siren toys with your loyalty and pulls surprises points the way for future attempts at this style of multi-faceted interactive storytelling. Yet this underrated survival horror title took a major dip soon on the global sales charts due to the shortcomings of the gameplay, and the crippled playability coupled with a clunky first person ADS.
Blood Curse has a lot of room to grow, at least regarding certain aspects of its combat experience, but what it lacks in gameplay, it makes up for more than in its design. The characters are relatable, the game is mostly fun to play with campaigns that keep you hooked. The adrenaline rush of stealth gameplay is addictive, and the game is an overall exciting experience. If you are not picky about game mechanics, and approach this game as what it really is, a stealth horror from back in the old days, Siren: Blood Curse is the perfect title to chill with if you decide to revisit your PS3 this weekend.
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