Siren

"Excellent idea, poor presentation. Rental material."

Siren is the latest entry in the survival/horror genre by Keiichiro Toyama, the brilliant director of the first Silent Hill. That fact alone should raise the hopes of fans of the genre, but unfortunately Siren falls short in more ways than one. In order to give the game the fairest review possible, I'm going to break this list up into the pros and cons.

Pros:

Story - The plot for Siren is easily one of the best I've ever seen in a survival horror game, and the Memento-esque storytelling technique does an excellent job of drawing you in and making you want to find out what happens next, or find out what happened FIRST in some cases. The player will be thrown into situations with little or no warning or preparation, and this ensures that the tension level never drops. The story is engrossing and genuinely creepy.

Graphics - The graphics, while occasionally sparse and grainy, fit the atmosphere of the game perfectly. The player experiences an incredible sense of isolation in a hostile environment. The normal characters you encounter look perfectly human and realistic, and the shibito definitely do not. Again, genuinely creepy stuff, and very appropriate.

Cons:

Pretty much everything else. Let's break it down.

Gameplay - Easily the biggest flaw in the game, this will be broken into three subcategories. First up, movement.

Movement - Horribly unresponsive and awkward. Your characters move as if in slow motion, and often ignore commands when in the middle of an animation. Running full tilt into a wall or gently brushing against a door frame both result in the exact same slow, unrealistic, and several second long animation of your character gradually pushing himself off the object as though he has all the time in the world, regardless of how many bloodthirsty zombies are right behind him. This would be irritating in any game but is often also fatal in this one, as your characters are physically weak and die after one or two hits. This leads directly into the second major problem with gameplay - confrontation.

Combat - Combat with the shibito is something to be avoided at all costs, as this is a stealth-based game. Generally they are faster, stronger, healthier, and better armed than your characters; your sole advantage is the ability to ''sightjack'' and see from their viewpoints in an attempt to avoid them. Unfortunately the monsters might as well be able to sightjact too, because they seem to always know exactly where you will be and what direction you will approach from, especially the snipers, who are invariably stationed in the middle of nowhere staring at exactly the spot you need to pass through. Gameplay often devolves into simply sitting and watching a shibito for long periods of time until he glances away from your position, because a single misstep will almost invariably result in instant death and starting the mission over from the beginning. And speaking of the missions...

Goals - Obscure, counterintuitive, and flat-out bizarre are all terms that could be applied to the ''find the key'' gameplay at work in the mission system. Basically, the idea is this: in each mission there are a number of things that must be picked up/looked at/otherwise manipulated in order to unlock other missions down the line. Unfortunately, you have no idea what any of these things are and they often involve insane leaps of logic that I have a hard time imagining ANYONE would make without consulting a FAQ. Example: the oft-cited radio fiasco in mission 3. In the middle of leading a slow, unarmed, and weak ally through a level filled with shibito (and snipers) the player is expected to enter a random house, pick up a radio, carry it to a well, put it in a bucket, lower it into the well, wait for a shibito to investigate, and shoot it in the back to knock it into the well in order to change certain aspects of a mission further down the line. No hints, no clues, no nothing. The path through the level is clear and passes nowhere near any of these locations. Not exactly intuitive, to say the least.

Sound - While the sound effects are excellent and atomspheric, they are also competing with the extremely questionable British dubbing job for the player's attention, and the sound effects tend to win. Portions of the dialogue will frequently be completely inaudible, which is unfortunate given that there is no subtitling option and often puzzles will require that the player be able to understand information delivered by other characters. The sound effects for sightjacking are also an odd choice, as using the ability (which you will spend the vast majority of your play time doing) causes a loud, unending irritating static noise, even when you are successfully tuned in to a monster. This gets old fast.

Play Time / Replayability - High by necessity. Due to the extremely obscure secondary mission goals, the player will often be forced to replay certain missions over and over until he finds whatever he missed the first time through. This definitely extends the life of the game, although it can also lead to frustration.

Difficulty / Learning Curve - In the beginning the game will be EXTREMELY difficult, as it is requiring the player to utilize skills that he hasn't even been taught yet. Ironically later missions will be much easier as the player will have learned to use stealth and sightjacking more effectively. The learning curve here is a straight vertical line, and the game is incredibly unforgiving of mistakes. The player has very little room for error...step around a corner one second too fast or one second too late and your mission can very easily be over before you know it.

Final Recommendation: I hate to say it because I wanted very badly to like this game, but it's a definite rental. Siren is an incredibly hard game to like...what it does well, it does VERY well, but the things it does badly it does terribly, and the latter seem to outnumber the former. If you can put up with the flaws, you have an excellent horror game on your hands. However, it would be a good idea to rent it first and make sure you CAN tolerate the flaws, because they are numerous and intrusive.

4/10

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 04/24/04