Some games are meant to make you uneasy. Some games are meant to frighten you. Then, there is the Siren: Blood Curse. This game’s sole purpose is to scare the bejesus out of you. Siren: Blood Curse is the second in the series and has finally made its way to the PS3. Siren for the PS2 was considered by some to be too over the top, but Blood Curse is up there with the Silent Hill’s of the genre. Does Siren: Blood Curse deliver a chilling gaming experience? Yes, but it’s going to cost you more than money.

Siren: Blood Curse does a great job delivering a horror experience. Imagine Resident Evil meets Blair Witch. The good does come with the bad in this aspect. The camera does jump around a lot and you often find yourself trying to see where you have to go while you are trying see which way your character is facing. This can be debilitating in the aspect that the game is very dark. Not dark like evil or Disney, but dark as in the absence of light. This is understandable because you are in the woods at night. This can be frustrating because you find places either through accident or trial and error.

The graphics are very good, but not great. I believe they wanted the models to look creepy and shaded as opposed to super realistic. My biggest issue is some of the FMV. It’s very hard to tell what is happening. In the very first cut scene, I had no idea what was going on, but the great voice acting and superb sound really saved that. It’s the things that you can’t see that scare you the most. Hearing a scream in the distance or something following adds to the excitement.

The gameplay is clunky at first but is not that bad after you toy with it. There are some collision issues with melee and hiding in places, but once you find the rhythm, it’s not a deal breaker. Much of the game is based on melee attacks, hiding, and picking up objects. If those motions were more fluid, it would make this a must have.

Now, the bad news. Siren: Blood Curse is download only outside of Japan. So what? You need to download each of the 12 chapters separately. Then, install each one by one. The downloads are total just over 9 gb. This takes hours and would recommend prompting all 12 and just do it overnight. I am all for DL games, but doing it piecemeal was annoying and very time consuming.

Siren: Blood Curse is a horror game done very well and not much else more. It’s $40 bucks for 12 chapters at once or $15 for each set of 4; there are three. The game is not as long as I would like and with no multiplayer, 40 dollars seems fair. This does play to a specific genre however. This is not a FPS and not an RPG. It’s a horror game. If you want to be scared and love this genre, you have to buy it. Otherwise, give the demo a chance.

Overall: 8 of 10