Horror Games Special Feature – Siren: Blood Curse

Posted on 28th October 201530th October 2015 by

With Halloween just around the corner, we felt it was time to delve into some of the horror classics of gaming!
In the nights leading up to All Hallows Eve, we’re going to do a short feature of some of the more notable horror games that have been released. This isn’t a list of the best or even our favourites.
Just some Horror games which have stood out to us, for one reason or another.

Episodic video-game series are one of the more recent anomalies on the video-game landscape. If AAA games up to this point have been akin to films, and pick-up and play titles like Pac-Man are like sitcoms, then episodic video games are like those serious, 40-minute-plus TV series.
You know, like The Walking Dead. Or Game of Thrones.

In terms of horror, episodic video games are still very much a proving ground. There haven’t been any masterpieces (bear with me…), but neither have there been any all-out disasters. As well as this, what actually counts as an episodic video game is somewhat up in the air.
For example, Alan Wake is presented in episodes but was released on a single retail disk. That doesn’t really count for our purposes so, for the sake of convenience, let’s define ‘episodic games’ as games that were intended to be released in individual episodes, with a determinable season end.

With that in mind, the only three solid examples we have of horror episodic games are:
-DreadOut
-Resident Evil: Revelations 2
-Siren: Blood Curse
You could include The Walking Dead in this list, but their focus was clearly more on good story-telling rather than on horror. And it is horror that we are pursuing here.

Siren: Blood Curse was the first game to approach horror in an episodic frame of mind, with a grand total of 12 episodes in the full season. And while the game itself was average, it signposted the potential episodic games had in delivering some good scares.

For example, one thing that the game took advantage of was the use of episodes in exploring a much broader cast of characters, instead of the usual one or two. Unfortunately, this didn’t really work as it jumped back and forth between forgettable characters constantly within individual episodes. It lacked structure and ended up a totally incohesive mess. Not unlike Lost.

The implementation was bad, but the idea was good. This is something that would have been particularly interesting in something like, say, Saw: The Videogame. Using each 45 minute episode to see what each prisoner is up to would have been a very effective way to approach a story. In fact, with this structure in mind, you may not even have to play the games linearly, but rather as self-contained episodes that contribute to a larger, unseen story.

Another area in which Siren tried and failed is with cliff-hangers. This is the obvious strength of episodic games, with a good cliff-hanger providing plenty of incentive to come back the following week to find out how exactly the goldfish murdered the postal worker.
While this must have worked to some degree (in that I played every episode), none of the cliff-hangers were so memorable that I can remember them now. The twist in every episode simply seemed to be one character bumping into another. Disappointing…

Other episodic games have been very good at utilizing this unique aspect of the medium. The recent Life Is Strange in particular seems to excel at it. But for now, the episodic game structure hasn’t quite established itself as a killer medium in conveying terror.
Maybe an X-files game would be worth exploring? That flavour of the week style of show would be a perfect fit for this interesting new medium that has arisen.

Best Moment
While it wasn’t as effective as it could be, the ability to see through the eyes of your pursuer was a neat little gimmick. This was utilized best when you played as the little girl and had no way of defending yourself.

Where is the franchise now?
While any form of sequel is unlikely (the game didn’t do particularly well) it is worth noting that there were two predecessor games in the Siren series. While less ambitious in what they tried to do, they were still more fun than the newest entry.