Siren Impressions

Lately I’ve been battling my way through Siren. I haven’t had a lot of time to play games lately, but a couple of times a week I am sitting down and trying to make some progress.

Siren is an interesting game. It seems to be universally loved or hated (GameRankings’ page shows the reviews of the game divided almost evenly into thirds: 60%, 70% or 80%), and I understand the confusion. While I usually try not to pass judgment on games until I’ve completed them, I thought I’d post some of my impressions of Siren so far.

The Good

Siren gets a whole lotta things right. The graphics are excellent, both in terms of technical prowess and art style (though the way they use texture maps for facial animation is very strange). The game looks amazingly good, even though it is quite dark. There are a lot of really nice touches to the visuals too, like the bad VHS dub effect they put over the view when sightjacking.

The soundtrack is astoundingly good, perhaps the best of its kind that I’ve ever heard. The zombies (“shibito” in Siren) make horrible noises, the background sounds are amazing, and the sound effects for in-game events are top-notch. The voice acting is a little weak (a flaw which is compounded by the odd juxtaposition of British accents and Japanese faces), but it’s certainly passible.

The controls are great. The buttons are a little difficult to remember sometimes (it’s a little odd that the circle button is cancel), but the control and collision detection is easy and smooth. There are some things about the control scheme I don’t like, but I’ll get to those in a minute. Mostly, the control is perfect for this style of game.

I’m really hip to the design. Siren isn’t like any other horror game to date, even though it certainly took some visual cues from Silent Hill 2. The play mechanics are pretty unique, and the focus on sneaking above all else is new to this genre. The sightjacking mechanic in particular is really well done; the use of the analog stick as a tuning device is brilliant.

The Bad

Not everything is perfect, however. The single biggest flaw with Siren is that it’s just too damn hard. Siren is a sneaking game, which means that rather than solve puzzles or take out enemies, your ultimate goal is to get past the shibito without being seen. It turns out that not being seen requires a lot of patience and waiting, but it also causes the game to be scary as all hell. However, since such an emphasis has been put on sneaking, it’s often the only option you have. If you are seen, your chances of survival are slim. On many levels you have no weapons, and on some you actually have to escort another character through the level. All of these mechanics sound fine in theory, but Siren’s implementation seems very poorly balanced. One level will take an hour to complete after 15 tries, while the next will be beatable in 20 minutes on the first try. I am not very far into the game, but one particular level took me twenty-odd tries (over a period of three months) to beat. That’s just unreasonable.

This level of difficulty is compounded by the ineffectiveness of the combat system. When you do have a weapon to wield it’s still very hard to beat the zombies. Siren uses an odd combination of button pressure and timing to allow you to select how hard you want to hit an opponent, so the harder and longer you hold down the button, the longer your attack takes to complete and the more damaging it becomes. This takes some getting used to, but even now going up against an unarmed zombie can mean death for me at least 60% of the time.

So long, convoluted levels + ineffective combat scheme + ultra high difficulty = frustration. Frustration is the enemy of fun, and Siren really suffers from it. To win, your only choice is to sneak past your enemies perfectly. The margin of error is far too small.

All that said, some levels are better than others. The design of the levels themselves is pretty great. I am looking forward to finishing Siren, and I hope the later levels turn out to be better tuned than some of the first. Even if it doesn’t get much better, Siren is a great example of how developers might go about developing horror games that are unique and innovative.

Database Updates

This evening I’ve made some changes to the database. I’ve removed a few games and added a new one. Here’s what’s changed:

Games Removed:

  • Dead Rush. The game has been canceled, sadly enough.
  • Kamaitachi No Yoru and Kamaitachi No Yoru 2. I’ve decided to exclude text-adventure games from the quest.
  • Shadow of Destiny. This is an excellent game (I just finished it this evening), but it isn’t survival horror.

Game Added:

  • Zombies, a survival horror first-person shooter from French company Krysalide. Think Resident Evil as an FPS.

Siren Special Edition?

From The MagicBox:

Sony will release SIREN Special Edition for PS2 in Japan on October 7, exact details of the game is not yet known.

I wonder what will be special about it.

Michigan Gets Movies

Thanks to Insert Credit for the link to the official site for Spike’s upcoming first-person camera man horror game Michigan.

Be warned, the site contains content that is not safe for work. Specifically, clicking on the flashing phone will take you to Spike’s promotional live-action videos for Michigan (they are terrible, skip them), which star an actress who wears little. Links from that area are more explicit (the actress, Yinling, is apparently not adverse to nudity), so consider yourself warned.

However, scantily-clad random women aside, the site does have some good information about the game, including screenshots and in-game movies:

The screen shots and in-game movies are work safe.

The release dates between the movies and the web site conflict. We reported two months ago that Michigan was due for release in Japan on July 22nd, but the information page on the official site lists the release date as August 5th. Either way, it should be out pretty soon.

The movies and screen shots on the official site are interesting, as we’ve heard very little about what Michigan will play like. It appears that game play will revolve around making decisions as you film. In one of the movies, we see the player looking at a man who has fallen down onto some train tracks. The man complains that he’s hurt his leg and is unable to climb back up onto the platform. The screen glows with a “Press X to Help” icon. The movie cuts before we can see what happens, but before it does the man becomes frantic and we can hear the sounds of a train approaching in the background. It seems that most interaction will probably be of this nature: choose to interact or not. Again, a departure to the regular run-of-the-mill survival horror formula.

Fairly disappointing about the information on the official site is the apparent focus on digital T&A. In addition to the racy live-action promotional videos, many of the screen shots and movie footage suggest that the player will spend a lot of time peering through their lens at polygonal breasts and asses. This is really too bad, as I am sure the game experience will consequently be cheapened. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Rumor Mill Churns

The rumor mill is saying that Dead Rush has been canceled, due to a change of management over at Treyarch. Hopefully this rumor will prove to be unfounded. If the game has been canceled, I’ll remove it from the list as soon as I have official confirmation.