Forbidden Siren. Why is it that Japanese Horror is often so
much scarier than it's western equivalent? Is it the fact that it's usually oozing in
ancient tradition, mixed with deep, psychological twists? Or is it that its often absolutely
bat shit insane?
Who knows, but Forbidden Siren was released
in 2003 for the PS2 and was re-released on the PS4 in 2016. It was a challenging survival
horror game that started with an earthquake tearing apart a small religious village called
Hanuda, unleashing a deadly red sea that turned people into shiboto, which translated literally
means 'corpse people'. The game told the tale of ten survivors of
this disaster. It switched mission to mission between each of their stories as they struggled
to find out the classic 'what happened here?' as well as try to make their escape. The constant
switching between characters did at first make things a little confusing, as this was
a game that never liked to clearly describe what was going on and had a very steep learning
curve. If the character faces look a little weird
to you, then that's because, rather than using traditional facial animation techniques, these
heads were made by taking actor's photographs from eight different angles and then having
these photos plastered onto the characters in the game. While it was a pretty ambitious
idea, the results are... scary, to say the least.
But when it comes to presentation, the faces are nothing. Wait until you hear the voice acting...
"I told you to wait in the car."
"But, but... what's happening? What IS this? Why is this happening?"
Wow. Just- wow. Obviously it was originally
Japanese, but for the English version, all the voices were replaced with these terrible,
hilarious British accents.
"Oh my God!"
"What do I do? Call an ambulance?"
We're talking worse than Castlevania: Symphony
of the Night here!
"Please, shut up!"
The game was broken up into short, self contained
stages, each coming with their own clearly defined objectives. They were like little
stealthy puzzles, usually involving getting from one place to another. You would have
to set up traps, in order to cause a distraction, allowing you to sneak your way past the wandering
shiboto. Getting spotted usually meant a quick and
painful death. But, when you were armed, generally you were OK, especially on the levels when
you got to play as the old guy with the sniper. The enemies did go down easy enough, but unfortunately,
like the red skeletons from Castlevania, they didn't stay down for long. Maybe two minutes
at best. When it came to the enemy snipers though,
forget it- if they spotted you, you were as good as dead.
Some of the levels were incredibly dark and had a great creepy atmosphere, but this also
made it impossible to know where you were going. Most of the time you did have a flashlight
light, but using it would throw stealth out of the window, so you were stuck with not
knowing where you were, with no map or compass to help you out. It was very easy to get lost.
But there was one feature that could help, one of the coolest ideas that the game brought
to the table- sight jacking. Essentially this allowed you to see from the perspective of
others. Hitting L2 and then rolling the analogue stick about would tune in like a radio to
the enemies' sight. They could then be mapped to the face buttons, for quick access and
allow you to get a better bearing of your location, as well as give clues as to what
weapons the enemy were holding. Combining sight jacking with a lot of patience,
meant that eventually you could piece the surroundings together and formulate a plan
as to the best time to make your move. But unfortunately, there was one vital flaw
that made this game truly frustrating. On many occasions, it would make you repeat the
same levels, because you missed a hidden objective. It worked like this. The game jumped around
on a timeline, often looping back on itself whenever a task was missed. This forced the
player to repeat the same levels over and over again, only this time, with the secondary
objective clearly described. It felt like a cheap way of dragging out an already pretty
long game out. The timeline was a cool concept, showing what
each of the ten characters were doing at any given time, stretching right back to 684 AD,
1976 presumably also AD, and X days ago to be nice and vague. But the looping mechanic
ruined this making playing frustrating, confusing and often unfair.
Forbidden Siren did have some neat ideas, especially the very unique sight jacking mechanic.
But at times it was also pretty annoying. It eventually went on to spawn a couple of
sequels as well as loose film adaptation and it built up a strong community of fans. Anyone
wanting an old, challenging, but not perfect, Japanese survival horror game may want to
check this one out. Thanks for watching!
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