{"id":84087,"date":"2015-12-03T02:00:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T00:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=84087"},"modified":"2015-12-03T02:12:28","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T00:12:28","slug":"siren-blood-curse-is-terrifying-you-need-to-play-it-right-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/playstation\/84087-siren-blood-curse-is-terrifying-you-need-to-play-it-right-now","title":{"rendered":"Siren: Blood Curse is terrifying: you need to play it right now"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you consider yourself a survival horror connoisseur, but have never played a Siren<\/em> title, then you need some schooling.<\/p>\n

This is the most terrifying and gripping franchise I have ever played, more so than Silent Hill<\/em>, Amnesia<\/em> or Fatal Frame<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What I suggest you do – if you have a PS3 and are an intrepid underwear-spoiler \u2013 is pay for and download Siren: Blood Curse<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It will only cost you about R200 by this stage, a meagre price to pay for a priceless education in nerve-jangling unease.<\/p>\n

\"Siren:<\/a><\/p>\n

Originally released over an extended period of time in episodic downloadable bites, Siren: Blood Curse<\/em> can now be slaughtered in one go instead of waiting with baited breath for your next nightmare to arrive.<\/p>\n

Siren: Blood Curse <\/em>is the slightly westernized remake of the original Siren<\/em>, my favourite survival horror classic of all time.<\/p>\n

As the third title in the series, it retells the original madness, replacing most of the Japanese protagonists with American ones.<\/p>\n

The basic premise tells of a mysterious village deep in the sticks of rural Japan called Hanuda.<\/p>\n

Shrouded in foreboding enigma, an unsuspecting American TV crew ventures into the isolated scenery, only to find themselves stepping into a place no longer within the realms of human understanding.<\/p>\n

For you see, like Silent Hill, Hanuda has become cursed and transformed into a little piece of hell, its residents warped into murderous hellions called \u2018Shibito\u2019, blood leaking from their eyes.<\/p>\n

The water has also turned to blood and the sky a smoky miasma.<\/p>\n

Whilst Shibito can be beaten into temporary submission, they are in essence immortal and will stand once more after temporarily pulling themselves together to continue sniffing you out.<\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t always skulking after you, however; often, they will be preoccupied pulling weeds or writing who-knows-what in journals.<\/p>\n

\"Siren:<\/a><\/p>\n

It is now up to you to lead various characters through murky, befouled stages in pursuit of escape and sanity.<\/p>\n

You play as nonthreatening characters such as a high school teenage boy, a silly paranormal documentary maker and even his preparatory school daughter.<\/p>\n

Whilst mature protagonists can pick up objects such as spades and pipes to clobber the cackling Shibito around, the pre-teen lass has obviously zero defensive capability and will simply get on her knees if approached by a friendly villager.<\/p>\n

Unlike the original Siren<\/em>, which had its timeline chopped up and thrown to and fro for the player to make sense of after substantial progress had been made, Siren: Blood Curse<\/em> generally follows a concurrent timeline.<\/p>\n

This reimagining of Siren<\/em> is also a lot more combat-heavy than the original, allowing players to pick things up in the environment you generally wouldn\u2019t bludgeon someone with, unless everyone around you had turned into Shibitos.<\/p>\n

\"Siren:<\/a><\/p>\n

Whilst survival horror hipsters (if such a thing even exists) may find this dilution a travesty, it all being in the name of being haplessly hammered to death against a wall you flattened yourself on in the hopes some manic Jap wouldn\u2019t spot you, this does make the game a lot more accessible.<\/p>\n

Another scraping off the original\u2019s excruciating difficulty is the guiding objective text in the top-left corner of the screen.<\/p>\n

This means a mountainous decrease in the amount of time you spend groping around in the dark in search of painstaking productivity.<\/p>\n

The original had you setting up some of the most creative and unthinkable traps and distractions which meant momentary eluding the blood-drenched sentries.<\/p>\n

Rack your brains no more, the gaming industry loves putting helping hands in games now instead of ones twisting your arm.<\/p>\n

The original would not allow you to play a good amount of stages unless you completed some unfathomable, random secondary objective which set the foundations for the events in a now unlocked level.<\/p>\n

\"Siren:<\/a><\/p>\n

This is now gone too, so what we now have is a far more linear and straight-forward experience, which whilst robbing the franchise of some of its iconic, frantic bush-whacking investigation and twisted sense of direction, does allow for a more catering sense of pacing.<\/p>\n

Stealth plays a big part in the game and definitely breeds most of the terror.<\/p>\n

Creeping around almost completely pitch-black, dilapidated buildings and unfriendly forests, all populated with roaming afflicted pursuers is the kind of perturbation you can\u2019t handle more than twenty minutes of per sitting.<\/p>\n

\"Siren:<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019d describe the terror in this game as having a heavy weight on your chest. You\u2019re almost holding your breath as you crawl past a slobbering denizen with its back momentarily turned to you.<\/p>\n

A badly aimed flashlight or noisy misstep will result in the bipedal abominable putridity noticing you and chasing you down for a frightful spot of skull smashing shrieking.<\/p>\n

Just the heavily edited drawl of the Shibito, constantly nattering away insanely coupled with the warped, traditional soundtrack is enough to give you the heebie-jeebies<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Siren:<\/a><\/p>\n

Whilst on the easy difficulty you can in fact clobber your way through most adversity, the hard mode requires calculated passage through each stage.<\/p>\n

This is largely achieved through each character\u2019s newly discovered psychic ability, known as \u2018sight-jacking\u2019.<\/p>\n

By pressing L2, your character will enter a meditative state which allows the entering of any Shibito\u2019s brain, giving bloodshot voyeurism of their senses.<\/p>\n

Sight-jacking is essential in noting a Shibito\u2019s behaviour and patrolling patterns so as to better plan your path.<\/p>\n

Whilst sight-jacking, half the screen will show the Shibito\u2019s view and the other half will remain as yours.<\/p>\n

\"Siren:<\/a><\/p>\n

Give Siren Blood Curse<\/em> a try.<\/p>\n

You might like it, you might not, but your eyes will undoubtedly be rolling to the back of your head with the terror.<\/p>\n

This is some of the most exhilarated shuddering you will ever go through that doesn\u2019t involve actually being chased through the woods.<\/p>\n

Siren<\/em> is an obscure treasure most survival horror fans haven\u2019t heard of, or if they have will never play, and it\u2019s a damn shame. Or not, me being a survival horror hipster after all.<\/p>\n

\n

In other news<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Best action game sequences<\/a><\/p>\n

Computer monitors cost so much more than TVs: here\u2019s why<\/a><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be ashamed of your gaming backlog<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As one of the best survival horror games of all time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":84103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11681],"tags":[129,16565,15399,14472,16563,1681,6870],"class_list":["post-84087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-playstation","tag-playstation-3","tag-project-siren","tag-ps3","tag-siren","tag-siren-blood-curse","tag-sony-computer-entertainment","tag-survival-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}