I would like to start by saying that I'm a Silent Hill fanboy, finished all of them except the one on psp and my favorite, and one of the best games ever, is Silent Hill 2.
And then I played Siren Blood Curse.
The demo on PSN really didn't impress me ; mediocre graphics for a next-gen game, "shibitio" aka zombies more funny than scary and confusing surroundings turned me off.
Out of boredom, sheer curiosity and because Eurogamer gave it a 8/10 and Famitsu 36/40, I decided to pay 30 euros for it, and I haven't yet regreted it.
About a third into the game, it gets really interesting (about act 4-5) with a silent hill-esque plot twist that gave me chills for the first time in a long while.
I'm trying not to spoil anything here, but trust me when I say the script and especially the story-telling/directing has a silent-hill quality to it than even certain Silent Hill games lack.
SILENT HILL 4 SPOILERS but SIREN SPOILERS-FREE !!!
Haven't finished it yet (epsiode 7 out of 12, I like to enjoy the game) , but from what I've played so far I'm really impressed and it feels more and more like a better Silent Hill 4 : The room.
I say this because SH4 had great potential and could've been amazing ; I loved the general idea of the game : trapped in your appartement, locked from the inside, only way out is into this weird parallel dimension populated with strange creatures. Great concept ; poor execution, especially the backtracking through the same 4-5 levels.
- The backtracking had absolutely NO SENSE plot-wise, and the levels were virtually the same.
- Combat was shitty - as always you could say - but in this one combat was much more present and they did nothing do improve it. You COULD've avoided it, and you SHOULD've when the ghosts started to pop up, but it felt more like a speed-run than a gameplay choice.
- Story telling in general, and especially through the eyes of the main character, was good, but lacked a little "je ne sais quoi" that could have made it great and SH worthy.
- Monsters were crap (a first in the SH series IMO) and the only "original" thing were the immortal ghosts that followed you even in your appartment.
As for Siren, the basic idea is a bit unoriginal and sounds much like a slasher-movie plot : a bunch of americans get lost in a forest near a strange/cursed japanese village with scary things in it.
But it's what it evolvs into that's really amazing and done in a surprisingly good manner.
- It has some backtracking, but unlike SH4 it fits perfectly into the plot and the surroundings change. Also, the fact that you swich characters whenever you backtrack means that the gameplay also changes.
- Combat, when present, ruins the game. You + a gun *cough* infinite ammo *cough* = god. This is the only grief I have with the game, but I suppose it's meant to be this way so that it lowers the tension and sense of vulnerability present throughout the game.
When "unavailable" (you can technically fight anyway, but there's no point in doing so) the game becomes a VERY well done game of hide-and-seek, in part thanks to the "monster-cam" feature that really adds to the growing pressure, with the possibility to ambush monsters and lay down traps. The only survival-horror game that attempted this kind of gameplay style was HAUNTING GROUNDS on the PS2 (and, offcourse, the previous 2 Siren games)
- Story-telling is really the thing that blew me away ; just like the new ALONE IN THE DARK, the story is told in episodes (12), but where Alone horribly failed, Siren succeeded. Except for the very first episode (that last 5 f****ng minutes) the story is well distrubuted throughout the episodes, whith a nice little cliff-hanger at the end of each episode (they're so cliché that you gotta love'em!) that keeps you coming back for more.
The characters are all great, the language barrier (japanese/english) adds to the immersion and the objects you discover in the game really help you know each character better.
- Monsters are... very, very good. I really don't want to spoil, but there are more than just shibito out there. They're not quite as good as pyramid-head or the twitching-faceless humanoids in SH, but there's a theme in SH that I also found in Siren that's very well exploited here : the wheelchair... I'll let you discover this one out.
The two franchises deliver the same kind of fear/disgust in a similar dark and "dirty" universe. The latest Siren is closer than ever to that "SH" quality that Silent Hill 1&2 gave us, delivering the experience in a better way than the latest episodes of the SH franchise, episodes that were too busy swimming in fanboy money to actually deliver a new and exciting SH experience.
So is Siren Blood Curse better than Silent Hill? In my opinion, it's better than half of them i.e. SH3 and 4 and is an overall great survival/horror game, all this for half the price of a normal game. I strongly recommend it to any SH fan!
What do you think, could Siren become the new Silent Hill (Siren Hill) ???
P.S. One thing that Siren will never beat SH at, is its incredible music. Siren has mediocre music, nothing original. SH has and I hope allways will have excellent music.
------- Edit ----------
I've beaten Siren BC a couple of months ago, so I can now complete the comparison. (Spoilers-FREE).
The ending feels a bit tacked-on. I also believe it really needed multiple endings, because the one they kept simply wasn't 'it' for me. Replay value is pretty much null, except if you want to find out more about a misterious rabbit monster (that scares the f***k out of me, mostly because of the movie Donny Darko). Other than that, at least in my opinion, there's little to no incentive to beating the game all-over again.
Going back to the SH4 comparison, its' endings were alot better. The last levels were also better than the final levels in Siren BC, wich I feel redeemed quite alot SH4's repetitive main levels.
In Conclusion, Siren BC is a surprising roller-coaster ride ; going from slasher-movie plot, to a complex and deep story evolving around a misterious curse, about love, duty, doom and inevitability.
It's also going from amazingly detailed levels with trully disturbing vistas, to poorly designed, invisible-walls laden levels not to mention my personal grief, a couple of pretty crappy final levels.
But the gameplay mechanics, characters and overall feel of the game are great, wich makes Siren a compelling alternative (successor?) to the SH franchise.
And then I played Siren Blood Curse.
The demo on PSN really didn't impress me ; mediocre graphics for a next-gen game, "shibitio" aka zombies more funny than scary and confusing surroundings turned me off.
Out of boredom, sheer curiosity and because Eurogamer gave it a 8/10 and Famitsu 36/40, I decided to pay 30 euros for it, and I haven't yet regreted it.
About a third into the game, it gets really interesting (about act 4-5) with a silent hill-esque plot twist that gave me chills for the first time in a long while.
I'm trying not to spoil anything here, but trust me when I say the script and especially the story-telling/directing has a silent-hill quality to it than even certain Silent Hill games lack.
SILENT HILL 4 SPOILERS but SIREN SPOILERS-FREE !!!
Haven't finished it yet (epsiode 7 out of 12, I like to enjoy the game) , but from what I've played so far I'm really impressed and it feels more and more like a better Silent Hill 4 : The room.
I say this because SH4 had great potential and could've been amazing ; I loved the general idea of the game : trapped in your appartement, locked from the inside, only way out is into this weird parallel dimension populated with strange creatures. Great concept ; poor execution, especially the backtracking through the same 4-5 levels.
- The backtracking had absolutely NO SENSE plot-wise, and the levels were virtually the same.
- Combat was shitty - as always you could say - but in this one combat was much more present and they did nothing do improve it. You COULD've avoided it, and you SHOULD've when the ghosts started to pop up, but it felt more like a speed-run than a gameplay choice.
- Story telling in general, and especially through the eyes of the main character, was good, but lacked a little "je ne sais quoi" that could have made it great and SH worthy.
- Monsters were crap (a first in the SH series IMO) and the only "original" thing were the immortal ghosts that followed you even in your appartment.
As for Siren, the basic idea is a bit unoriginal and sounds much like a slasher-movie plot : a bunch of americans get lost in a forest near a strange/cursed japanese village with scary things in it.
But it's what it evolvs into that's really amazing and done in a surprisingly good manner.
- It has some backtracking, but unlike SH4 it fits perfectly into the plot and the surroundings change. Also, the fact that you swich characters whenever you backtrack means that the gameplay also changes.
- Combat, when present, ruins the game. You + a gun *cough* infinite ammo *cough* = god. This is the only grief I have with the game, but I suppose it's meant to be this way so that it lowers the tension and sense of vulnerability present throughout the game.
When "unavailable" (you can technically fight anyway, but there's no point in doing so) the game becomes a VERY well done game of hide-and-seek, in part thanks to the "monster-cam" feature that really adds to the growing pressure, with the possibility to ambush monsters and lay down traps. The only survival-horror game that attempted this kind of gameplay style was HAUNTING GROUNDS on the PS2 (and, offcourse, the previous 2 Siren games)
- Story-telling is really the thing that blew me away ; just like the new ALONE IN THE DARK, the story is told in episodes (12), but where Alone horribly failed, Siren succeeded. Except for the very first episode (that last 5 f****ng minutes) the story is well distrubuted throughout the episodes, whith a nice little cliff-hanger at the end of each episode (they're so cliché that you gotta love'em!) that keeps you coming back for more.
The characters are all great, the language barrier (japanese/english) adds to the immersion and the objects you discover in the game really help you know each character better.
- Monsters are... very, very good. I really don't want to spoil, but there are more than just shibito out there. They're not quite as good as pyramid-head or the twitching-faceless humanoids in SH, but there's a theme in SH that I also found in Siren that's very well exploited here : the wheelchair... I'll let you discover this one out.
The two franchises deliver the same kind of fear/disgust in a similar dark and "dirty" universe. The latest Siren is closer than ever to that "SH" quality that Silent Hill 1&2 gave us, delivering the experience in a better way than the latest episodes of the SH franchise, episodes that were too busy swimming in fanboy money to actually deliver a new and exciting SH experience.
So is Siren Blood Curse better than Silent Hill? In my opinion, it's better than half of them i.e. SH3 and 4 and is an overall great survival/horror game, all this for half the price of a normal game. I strongly recommend it to any SH fan!
What do you think, could Siren become the new Silent Hill (Siren Hill) ???
P.S. One thing that Siren will never beat SH at, is its incredible music. Siren has mediocre music, nothing original. SH has and I hope allways will have excellent music.
------- Edit ----------
I've beaten Siren BC a couple of months ago, so I can now complete the comparison. (Spoilers-FREE).
The ending feels a bit tacked-on. I also believe it really needed multiple endings, because the one they kept simply wasn't 'it' for me. Replay value is pretty much null, except if you want to find out more about a misterious rabbit monster (that scares the f***k out of me, mostly because of the movie Donny Darko). Other than that, at least in my opinion, there's little to no incentive to beating the game all-over again.
Going back to the SH4 comparison, its' endings were alot better. The last levels were also better than the final levels in Siren BC, wich I feel redeemed quite alot SH4's repetitive main levels.
In Conclusion, Siren BC is a surprising roller-coaster ride ; going from slasher-movie plot, to a complex and deep story evolving around a misterious curse, about love, duty, doom and inevitability.
It's also going from amazingly detailed levels with trully disturbing vistas, to poorly designed, invisible-walls laden levels not to mention my personal grief, a couple of pretty crappy final levels.
But the gameplay mechanics, characters and overall feel of the game are great, wich makes Siren a compelling alternative (successor?) to the SH franchise.
. Soooo I've beaten Siren BC a couple of months ago (Spoilers-FREE).
