The original Silent Hill felt like lightning in a bottle for horror games. Team Silent was a group of developers within Konami looking to create something different in the horror genre. While the team would be dissolved by Konami after the fourth installment, the original director Silent Hill, Keiichiro Toyama, left the team voluntarily immediately after its initial release to form his own team under Japan Studio. His next project, titled Project Siren, would not become a household name like Silent Hill, but Siren would become a cult classic in the decades following its release. It even had a cameo appearance in Astro Bot, which may have been hard for most people to recognize.
With interest in Silent Hill reinvigorated thanks to the impressive Silent Hill 2 Remastered edition and Siren being added to the classics collection on PS5 – and with Halloween approaching – it’s the perfect game to scratch that psychological horror itch. While Silent Hill games seem like improvements on the core concept through different character perspectives, Siren tries to explain horror in a grander way while still giving it that Silent Hill flavor. However, like the original games, it is not without its flaws.
Non-Linear Horror
Siren avoids the traditional linear horror format and instead divides itself into 10 distinct and interconnected parts. Instead of playing as a single hero, you will control 10 different characters over a 72-hour period, each with their own goals and motivations for coming to the haunted town of Hanuda.
However, the sequence of events you face is not presented in chronological order, and some actions you take or don’t take as one character can affect what happens when you control another. The game will continue to loop until you find the right sequence of events to unravel the story by thinking four-dimensionally across each character.
I found this setup confusing at first when I played it on PS2, as the game does not do a good job of explaining why you are returning to completed stages. However, the added Link Navigator makes it easy to go back to any previous stage once you decipher its confusing layout and color-coded network. Upon revisiting it, I came to appreciate how the changing perspectives and repetitive storytelling contribute to the feeling of a real nightmare; I will never escape until I overcome my fear and find my own way.
The plot itself is a wonderful tapestry of folklore, astrology, and mysterious supernatural powers. I delved deeply into unraveling the dark history of Hanuda and its people slowly through environmental notes and clues. Discovering new pieces of the puzzle helped alleviate the monotony that could have arisen from repeating levels for the second or third time. Like Silent Hill, Siren gave me ample room for reflection and reevaluation of my understanding of events during (and after) the conclusion.
One aspect of Siren I am more conflicted about is the gameplay.
At its core, it is a third-person horror experience focused on stealth. You will guide your current character through one of the ten sections of Haruda, collecting clues and items, avoiding the main enemy Shibito. These zombie-like enemies stumble in the darkness searching for you, but they are not mindless at all – they will use melee and ranged weapons to chase you and are quite adept at pursuing you. Most of the time, your character will be unarmed, although you can find some melee weapons and a rare firearm. However, combat is punished in almost all circumstances. One hit from a Shibito can cause fatal damage, and it is generous to describe your combat abilities as poor. The swings are oddly timed, have a huge range, and long recovery times, strongly encouraging you to commit to stealth.
Where Siren shines is the ability of Sightjack, unlike any other survival horror game. Instead of relying solely on your limited vision and sound cues to sneak past the Shibito, all your characters have the ability to see through the eyes of nearby non-playable characters, whether friendly or hostile. Seeing a monster approaching in the darkness, or bumping into someone while skulking around a corner for a jump scare, are effective, but familiar, ways to instill fear. However, closing your character’s eyes, only to find yourself being chased by an enemy you didn’t realize was there, sparked a unique kind of terror I had never felt before. It brought back memories of horror stories of people camping alone and later discovering a photo of themselves taken while they were asleep. In Siren, the fear was not creeping, but immediate.
Frustrating Puzzles
Puzzles are the essence of this kind of horror, and Siren is no exception. I always feel a slight tension when facing the first puzzle in a horror game due to the precision required to solve it without breaking the tension. Unfortunately, Siren’s puzzles are almost universally unintuitive to the point of frustration. It borders on the kind of logic that people joke about in old point-and-click adventure games, where reaching the intended solution feels almost impossible. One nice example may be the puzzle where you need to drop an electric lamp down a garbage chute to lure a Shibito to investigate it. Then, you need to drop an electroencephalogram (EEG) device down on top of her picture to incapacitate her, which are two uses I never would have imagined using those specific items for.
The only saving grace of these puzzles is that there is no way to fail. Instead, you will either need to be lucky, search for the answer, or resort to using every item with every interactive object in the environment until you get a response. This may be a minor flaw in any other game, but horror titles like Siren heavily rely on immersion, so these puzzles end up detracting from its strongest moments. If you plan on visiting Siren, this is one case where using a puzzle guide only enhances the experience.
Siren feels a lot like that original Silent Hill in spirit. It’s rough around the edges and a bit obtuse, but it delivers an experience unlike anything else in quite the same way. Siren 2 – and the PS3 remaster of Siren: Blood Curse – still offer a uniquely Japanese style of horror totally their own. I believe this unique taste makes it something that will never be widely accepted, but it will be more challenging for those who engage with it.
Siren is now available on PS Plus for Premium subscribers.
