I love the Siren series it’s another one of those games with all the ingredients to be a real pant-cacker. The game is set in a remote Japanese village and revolves around a cult trying to raise some hellish guff from the beyond and in the process manage to turn the villagers into psychotic zombie killers called Shibito, who don’t make a habit of staying dead for too long and to make things worse the sky ends up pissing down with blood. Magic!
You play as a diverse set of people, young and old stuck in the village for one reason or another, who have to rely primarily on sneaking about to survive. Few occasions occur where you’ll be given a weapon but in these cases should only be used to get the drop on a solitary Shibito or in times where there is no other option to fight as you will become overwhelmed if you try and go all out, like I said before they don’t stay dead for long. All is not lost though, you have an ace up the sleeve.
What I want to talk about is Forbidden Siren’s unique gameplay mechanic dubbed “Sight-jacking”
a mechanic that lets you see through the eyes of the enemy and can be used to orientate yourself according to their current position so that you may hopefully avoid them. The game’s story explains the sight-jacking as a sort of hive-mind ability that the Shibito have and you the player receive as the town’s rain slowly transforms you into one of them which makes it all the more creepy.
The way it works is, with the press of a button your character’s vision is turned to static, similar to that of a TV and with a turn of the analogue stick you tune into the frequencies of each Shibito’s vision, to streamline the process you’re able to assign a shibito’s sight to a face-button to access quicker. Whilst in this state you’re also able to see your relative location to the monster with a coloured cross. For gameplay purposes the Shibito cannot see this cross, just to make it easier.
In order to use this ability you sacrifice your mobility and are completely defences whilst sight-jacking so it’s safest to use it whilst crouched or hiding behind something. It’s a great risk/reward system that adds a lot of tension to an already creepy and atmospheric game.
As you can imagine there are times when you come a cropper whilst sight-jacking and you get to see the Shibito spot you whilst prone and start running towards you giving horrific shots from their viewpoint as they run towards you snarling, knife in hand and you frantically try and exit whilst your bum-hole devours your undies. It reminds me of similar shots that were used in The Evil Dead where the monster stalks the house. It’s a great system that makes for some exciting moments.
Forbidden Siren managed to get a sequel on the PS2 as well, which I also enjoyed a fair bit. Though it didn’t change much significantly gameplay wise it did do something with the Sight-jacking mechanic that I thought was an excellent twist on the formula and is the main reason I started writing this piece.
So imagine the previous scenario, scary Japanese town, crazy blood rain starts turning everyone into Shibito and you have to get out of dodge but this time you’re a blind man...
On the list of worst case scenarios this ranks somewhere between being up Shit Creek without a paddle and Spilling gravy on yourself at Hannibal Lector’s dinner table.
What a deliciously scary scenario to create for a player to experience after establishing the gameplay mechanics and slowly increasing the difficulty curve and tension with other characters, you literally handicap them by taking away their sight. Brilliant!
Just to clarify though you aren’t completely blind and faced with a blank screen (because that wouldn’t work) rather the screen is heavily blurred in the way I imagine people who rely on strong glasses see without them. You are still incapable of effectively navigating around the level by yourself so that’s where sight-jacking comes in, not only can you see through the eyes of the terrors that lurk outside but you are able to look through the eyes of your guide dog to lead the way. Having to manoeuvre around the Shibito, switching between them and the dog to see effectively doubles your workload for these levels, ensuring you are both hidden and progressing in the same direction sounds difficult on paper but I found that it was designed in such a way that rather than it be a scenario where the player would fumble with controls and get caught, it forced you to play extra cautiously and added more close-shave encounters leaving your heart pounding until the end. It’s just a shame the game didn’t have more levels using this character.
Very rarely do gameplay franchises manage to establish a feature or mechanic and then further elaborate upon said feature in a sequel. It was great to see that here and whoever was responsible for these innovations deserves a bloody good pat on the back.
To be honest I’ve only really scratched the surface in describing how great Forbidden Siren 1 and 2 are but I would hope that it would inspire more people to check it out for themselves. The first game got a Psuedo remake on PS3 called Siren Blood Curse but unfortunately ‘2 wasn’t released in the US but I’m sure you’d be able to pick them up on the cheap on Ebay or Amazon. I’d say it’s also a likely candidate for a PSN release in the future.
Thanks for reading,
Kris
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