Siren New Translation/Blood Curse

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Since I found out that I'm actually getting this game for Christmas with my PS3, I thought I'd make a new topic about it since the old topic is long gone.

So has anyone played this game? I think it's a pretty fun and scary horror game for the PS3. It's too bad that it wasn't released on disc outside of Asia and Europe, but luckily my Mom is importing the game for me from Hong Kong which fortunetly has the option to let you play the game in English.

I actually used to have the first game on the PS2 and I thought it was pretty scary, and despite what all the reviews said I thought it was a great horror game even though it could be confusing at times. What made it different from other survival horror video games was that the enemies were unkillable and you played the game as several different characters instead of just one or two characters, and some of the characters would die later in the story so it made the game feel more like a real horror movie.

Siren New Translation/Blood Curse is actually a remake of the original game for PS2 only it replaces the original Japanese cast with American characters and it has added features from Siren 2 (which sadly was never released in the US) such as the ability to pick up weapons from fallen enemies. There's a huge variety of characters to play as such as an American foreign exchange student, a TV reporter, a camera man, a college professor, a 10 year old girl, a Japanese doctor, and a mysterious priestess. Each character is controlled over a period of 12 episodes which shows what they are doing in the village trying to stay alive and find a way to escape.

So yeah I'm really excited about getting this game. Anyone who's a fan of horror would probably like this game too.

I love survival horror games, but I've never played any of the Siren games, although I wanted to.

You really should play Siren New Translation/Blood Curse if you have a PS3.

I do have a PS3. Hmm, maybe I can ask for it for Christmas.

I've played the game. It actually has one of my favorite video game characters in it. It's a fun game but you'll need a guide if you're someone that goes for the intel/secret items and stuff.

There are quite a few frustrating parts in the game though.

How is it?
Siren looks very interesting to me, but I am not sure if I want to spend sixty dollars on downloading it.
I loved Fatal Frame III and the game Manhunt, but Silent Hill "homecoming" was awful.

You can probably find it cheaper if you look for a physical copy.

Overall I really liked the game. It can be frustrating at times but the atmosphere and the characters are often worth it. I wouldn't pay $60 for it though. You could get a new game for that price.

Welp I finally got to play this game, so yay for me! I'm stuck on the part where you play as the little girl who's trapped in the hospital, it's kind of a hard mission because she can't use any weapons and she dies very easily (if you can even call it dying, all she does is croutch on the ground and cover her head and it's game over).

The graphics weren't really as good as I was expecting for a PS3 game, but I liked how there's more details in this game than the original game for PS2. You can actually see the individual leaves and flowers growing on plants and trees as well as the objects sitting around rooms. Combat in this game feels a lot easier than it was in the first game which is kind of both good and bad: good because it makes fighting enemies easier but bad because it kind of takes away the purpose of stealthing around to avoid enemies.

Anyways I really do like this game, it will probably end up being my favorite and most-played game for the PS3.

I didn't mind the graphics. They're not the best but the atmosphere of each level is very good. I don't think the graphics necessarily hinder the game.

The hospital bit was tricky, especially when the main antagonist shows up. If you find a good spot to hide and simply observe you should be able to plan a route to the exit. Fortunately if you don't like her segments this is probably the only hard one.

One of my favorite things about this game was the ability to revisit different parts of the town with different characters as the game progresses. The hospital is always one of the tougher levels though.

I'm actually close to beating this game now, I have about three episodes left. I really do like this game and I think it's probably the best (if not only) survival horror game for the current generation of console.

I've actually had kind of a weird idea, once I beat the game and unlock every mission I thought about replaying the levels and using only specific weapons for each character that I think fits the characters, and try to avoid picking up weapons from shibito unless I absolutely have to. I remember how in the first Siren game every character pretty much only got one or two weapons for their missions, and I want to try and recreate that for this game. For example I will make Howard stick with the firepoker for the Abandon House level and use guns whenever he needs them, Sam will stick with the metal pipe and revolver for the Mine levels, Melissa will use the parking sign for the Hospital levels and an axe for the Church Yard level, Seigo will stick to his shotgun, Sol will stick to his video camera for his level, and I will make Amana use a really weak weapon such as the mattress beater for the Village level because she's sort of the second weakest female character (next to Bella who can't use any weapons) and I kind of see her on the level of Risa from Siren 1 who chose to use a pathetic umbrella as a weapon for her mission.

Gotta love being obsessive-complusive like I am.

The only bad thing I have to say about this game is the fact that sometimes it feels a little sexist when it comes to the female characters. Every female in this game is pretty weak when it comes to combat, even Melissa who seems like she should have at least been the one tough female character because of her aggressive personality. Two of the females, namely Miyako and Bella, can't even use weapons. For Bella it makes sense because she's only 10 years old but Miyako is 16 and unlike the first game she isn't disabled this time so she has no excuse for not being able to defend herself (and don't even get me started on the differences between the first game and this game when she tries to hit a male character with a tree branch to protect herself). Amana and Melissa are the two females who can use weapons but neither one gets to use a gun like the male characters (Melissa uses one during a cutscene and that's all), but what's really messed up is that both women can only use one handed weapons and are unable to pick up two-handed weapons on their missions such as a mallot, a sythe, a rake, and a video camera. You can't tell me a woman in real life would be unable to pick up these things to use as weapons. Do they really think all women are so weak that they can only stick with small weapons during a fight?

At least the one thing Melissa has going for her to stand out as a tough female is the fact that she's the only one who can perform special attacks with weapons, unlike Amana which in a way makes sense because she's a passive nun and not very violent. But still the way the women in this game were potrayed was pretty sexist, yet I still like this game a lot because it's an effective horror game and we haven't seen any good scary games out in awhile.

I enjoyed this game a lot and have beaten it a couple of times. It has 2 sets of collectibles and some extra media. If you have a short attention span it is broken down into manageable segments which do not take away from the experience.

Tutorials are not as in your face as some other games so there is very little taken away from the climax of scares. About the women part, while perhaps sexist from an outside perspective playing as the little girl was excellent because it projects onto the player a feeling of helplessness as you wonder around in plain sight unable to yield weapons.

If there is one gripe I do have about the game it is that they have Westernised the original Siren game for PS2 far too much when it would have worked just as fine with an all Japanese cast and quirky voice acting. This game did scare me a lot but not as much as the originals.

Well even the first two games weren't as sexist as this one. In the first game there was a female character who was able to use a handgun, and I believe that in the second game the female characters could use almost the same types of weapons as the male characters with the exception of certain types of guns. Plus another thing I forgot to mention was the hand-to-hand combat in this game, all the males will punch shibito while the females literally perform a silly hand slap. Look I'm not asking for Laura Croft-type characters in a realistic horror game about ordinary civilians trying to survive against supernatural undead monsters, but at least show some respect towards the girl gamers out there by not coming up with unrealistic female stereotypes as an excuse for why the women can't fight the monsters as well as the men.

As for the Americanization of this game, I personally didn't have a problem with it. I actually thought it was kind of a unique idea to have a different perspective of a Japanese horror setting by using American foreigners who were visiting Japan. Nobody has ever really tried that idea before, and I felt it was handled realistically with how you would expect Americans to react to that situation while still keeping the Japanese culture true to itself. Maybe if Sony had pulled a Konami on us and gave the game to an American development team who didn't know what they were doing I would have been offended, but the fact that the Japanese developers of this game came up with the idea to use American characters themselves makes me appreciate the game a lot more. To me the game still feels uniquely Japanese even with the American characters so it's nothing bad for me, and I don't see why fans of the game are so bothered by it.

I don't know... the mother was one of the toughest characters in the game storywise, second to maybe Seigo Saiga. If she was somehow weaker gameplay-wise I did not notice.

She went all out to save her daughter. It's a shame we only got to see two iterations of the disaster.

The only downside to using so many American characters is that there aren't enough Japanese survivors. If you think about how everything started (after the ceremony) things went to s**t amazingly fast. And somehow only two Japanese people survived the first few minutes of the disaster.

It's funny how Japanese can usually put a nice twist on Western things but the West tend to struggle doing this with Eastern culture.

Story-wise yes, she did seem like she was the obligatory "tough chick" of the characters because of her aggressive attitude and fierce determination to protect her daughter. But gameplay-wise she wasn't that much different from Amana other than the fact that she could perform those special attacks on shibito like the male characters. But she still wasn't able to use two-handed weapons like Sol's video camera or the scythes and garden hoes found in the church yard, and when fighting shibito unarmed she performs that ridiculous open palm slap.

But like I said before she does at least get that ability to perform special melee attacks on shibito so I guess that makes up for it a little and helps her to stand out as the toughest of the female characters. Amana shouldn't be that tough because she's a nun yet she was still able to use weapons because she is an adult female, and it makes sense for Bella not being able to fight because of her age. Miyako on the other hand, it does feel kind of silly that she's almost the same age as Howard and has to be babysat. It made more sense when Kyoya protected her in the first game because she was blind and therefor was unable to see to defend herself (and was much younger too), but in this game she's a little older and has no disabilities so she really doesn't have an excuse for being so helpless. However I think maybe they were trying to be true to her character from the first game, in both games her role was the mysterious damsel in distress who leads the protagonist deeper into the darkness of the village and she aids him with her strange powers while he tries to protect her from the shibito and the Mana cult.

Anyways I guess you're kind of right that it seemed unrealistic that the entire Japanese village was wiped out in a matter of minutes and only two Japanese characters survived yet they both ended up dying in the end. However I guess it can be argued from the fact that the buildings looked so old and ruined that when the Americans arrived the village was stuck in time and the villagers had been trapped there for a long time giving the shibito more than enough chances to kill them all. The evil god Kaiko seemed to be controlling things in the village so maybe Seigo and Miyako were spared so that they could play the role they were supposed to play in the story? After all in the first half of the game when certain characters died who weren't supposed to time just reversed back to the first day. The village is trapped in another dimension where the normal rules of time don't apply so anything is possible. Plus it can also be answered by the fact that this game was simply intended to appeal to American gamers, which in my opinion isn't nessecarily a bad thing.