A Siren, of the Forbidden kind

Forbidden Siren was a 2003 PS2 survival horror game created by a subsidiary of Sony, made up from -amongst others- former Silent Hill employees. As such, it sported a fantastic atmosphere, an engaging storyline, and lots of scary moments. However, the gameplay itself was somewhat lacking. Still, it was a radically different entry in the genre of survival horror, which had by that time already begun to feel really stale.

The game emphasized mostly on avoiding confrontations with enemies altogether, rather than killing them. In fact, enemies could not be killed at all, which was a genre first I believe. Of course there were certain unkillable enemies before, such as the Nemesis or Pyramid Head*, but this time you couldn't even kill Zombie Joe Average. This made for more intense sequences of stealth, frenzied attempts at running and hiding from the shibito, but they were perhaps a bit too intense.

Having the constant fear that your enemies will eventually rise up and hunt you again, even after bludgeoning them for the 50th time, knowing that there's no real safe place to hide from them as they can also open doors and effectively seek you out wherever you be... It certainly makes for a more frightening experience, but it's not really fun. And while it could be argued that Silent Hill 2 wasn't exactly all about the fun either, there was some form of entertainment to be had there, perverse though it may have been. This wasn't the case with Forbidden Siren, however, on the contrary it was more of an annoyance than anything. Not to mention that a whole village made of unkillable entities required a far deeper suspension of disbelief than I was willing to indulge myself in.

A sequel was eventually released, and though it addressed many of the flaws of the first game, it didn't really sell that well. Which was a shame, but what can you do?

On the brighter side of things, Sony is preparing a remake of the first game for the Playstation 3, which hopefully will also address the flaws of the original version. Its name will be Siren: New Translation and while that's not the catchiest name ever, I'll have to repeat my point from my last post, it's just a name.

Judging from the first trailer, they certainly got the scares right... I think this is easily the spookiest game trailer I've seen so far. Hopefully the finished game will be just as mind-fuckingly scary.



TL;DR version:

George gets scared by a simple trailer of a videogame and cries like a little bitch. Siren: New Translation is a name worthy of yet another translation but what can you do. In the meantime, George decides to kill some demon fools in Viking: Battle for Asgard so he can feel like a man again. Italics.

* Yes, both were eventually killed in their respective games, but not before the very end, before which they always came back to... well you can't really call it life, but you catch my drift.