Disturbing visions

April 16, 2004 | 3 Comments

I finally get to play Forbidden Siren after having to wait such a long time for the English version of the game. This is quite an interesting game that is marred a little bit by horrible dubbing and slightly annoying control. But rest assured, the game is as freaky as I thought it'll be. At one point I was so stressed out because I can't decide which one is worse: turning my character's flashlight on and risk the chance of being found by those Shibitos or walk around in the dark and hope that I won't bump into one of those creatures. The problem is, unlike other survival horror games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, this game requires you to stay as far away as possible from these creatures or else. This mostly stems from the fact that the first character you get to use is unarmed. So you really don't want to be bumping into these creatures because they can kill you easily with 2 or 3 attacks. Anyway, the following is a spoilery short impression of the first 5 to 10 minutes of the game before I encounter my miserable death.

You start the game by controlling a character called Kyoya Suda. The game starts at 9 in the morning where his bike is broken, leaving him stranded inside a forest. Because of this, he decides to seek help from other people but as he walks through the forest to find someone who can help him, he stumbles upon a girl and her dog. The girl seems to be repeatedly smashing something but when Kyoya calls her, she immediately runs away in fear. That night around 11, Kyoya, who's still stranded inside the forest, sees some kind of occult ceremony happening in the middle of the forest involving the girl that he saw earlier that day. However, the people who were in the ceremony spot him and proceeded to chase him. As Kyoya runs back into the forest, he seems to get a sudden headache and decides to stop running for a while. When he turns around, however, he sees a cackling Shibito policeman who�s about to shoot him and this is when the game starts.

The game definitely puts me right away in the panic seat not only because Kyoya was unarmed, but also because turning on the flashlight turns out to be similar to placing a flashing "I'm here, kill me now" banner on top of my head. So there I was hiding behind a truck like a chicken and wondering what the hell am I supposed to do. I ended up dying twice before I realise that I need to enter the house that contains a key to a car that I can use to get away from the place. I finally get the key and get into the car and here I get to taste the annoying part of the gameplay. Unlike other game, this game requires you to keep pressing the triangle button in order to activate a command. So if you want to enter the car, you press the triangle button until some commands come up, then you must select one of those commands. Once you're in the car, you also have to press the triangle button and select the command to put the key in the keyhole, start the engine, and press the gas. Meanwhile, that freak Shibito policeman tries to shoot the window of the car with the gun.

Once you've executed all of the excruciating commands, you will be rewarded with a cut scenes where you get to run over the Shibito policeman. Of course, being a zombie, the policeman wakes up again and then shoots you with his gun at point blank range. A few minutes later, however, Kyoya opens his eyes again and finds himself inside a red-coloured river. And to make matter worse, he has a small bullet hole on his body and yet strangely he can still move around. You then encounter a woman who tells you to follow her and she then starts to explain the use of 'sightjack'. This is quite an unusual 'weapon' in survival horror games. You basically have to press the L2 button and then navigate the 'channel' with your left analogue button. So far I find it to be rather annoying because you often get random channel and you're not sure where or from whose perspective these sights are from. But I think this is the only way I can ensure that I don't bump into one of those Shibitos.

I actually managed to follow the woman who guides me quite well by using the woman's vision as a pointer. What I failed to realise was that I also have to take into account those Shibitos' visions. I didn't do that and as a result, Kyoya ended up in an area that is observed by the Shibitos and bumped into one of them head on. That Shibito then proceeded to stab him twice and the character ends up dead. Again. Overall, however, I'm quite pleased with the experience itself. I purchased the game hoping that I'll be scared to death and I got exactly what I wanted :P. The only thing that really annoys me is probably the bad English dubbing. I wished they had kept the Japanese dialogue and just provide some subtitles for it. It feels weird watching a bunch of Japanese-looking people speaking with British accent. The game polygons don't look that impressive either, but at least the character model is quite realistic-looking. I also like the fact that the majority of the game feels like it's some kind of documentary film.

© memento 2003