Zing, Zing, Zing Went My Heartstrings

Nearly at the end of the line here, so put on your happy face that we’ve nearly reached out destination. No worries on the bumpy ride, just pretend you had fun and everything won’t seem so glum.


You just need to smile more

This whole Siren play through has been less than perfect. It’s hard for me to discern exactly whether or not the game ended up falling right into a week where my schedule ended up going crooked, or if my lack of interest in what has turned out to be a stubborn as all hell title to enjoy has helped to sabotage my efforts in getting through the experience with any expedition. This article marks the first of a likely two part wrap-up, as it’s about time to move on from the mess that is the happening in Hanuda village.


…whatever the hell that ended up being. Was there
a hidden message somewhere that when decoded it
just says the equivalent of “Drink Your Ovaltine”?

There is kind of too much to recap at this point (or maybe I’m just tired of doing so), but I urge anyone looking for some interesting analysis of me picking apart the game in the last week to go have at it. Siren doesn’t get much right…at all, honestly. From the game’s deviations of normal tropes involving PS2 survival horror games, to attempting new ideas that don’t pan out, to putting the player through a ridiculous amount of trial and error in some kind of baptism by fire notion of “earning” progress, the whole thing ends up being hell in a hand basket real quick, and never fully recovers.


WWFD? (What would Freeman do?) I wish we could
always just crowbar our way to victory…but alas.

I think one of the final nails in the coffin for Siren was indeed outlined in my last write up with the “Trolley Problem”, as the game locks a lot of lateral content behind needlessly detoured ideas of how to get by obstacles. Not only that, but the whole game is kind of set up on this “loop track” as it were, where you end up replaying the same round of missions over and over again. There are the main objectives, than there are hidden secondary ones you have to go through the levels again to try and find. On paper, it seems like a cool idea to help connect all the disparate mission threads in a game with a non-linear story line. In actuality, between the brutal amounts of rigid difficulty making you play each mission several times, on top of having to go back and replay missions anyways to complete secondary objectives, on top of the game eventually just giving you the equivalent of a spreadsheet with the missions you still need to go back to with little direction after that, and Siren turns into a cell sheet nightmare with ferociously appalling gusto.


Spreadsheets: The ultimate survival horror

I’m in kind of a fucked up spot with the game, as I do want to finish it, which means playing it more, but that also means not being able to immediately move on from the title, stalling a more immediate follow up of different writing machinations. Siren is a great example of why producers and editorialization is so pivotal in crafting a good experience, as a whole lot of people should have said “no” many more times than they did during the development process of Siren, as so little of this game works. I am going to discuss in a little further detail as to why in my part 2 of the wrap up, but my schedule has forced me to divide it thusly. By the time I get to my part 2 later tonight, I’m hoping to have a better handle on both my final thoughts and a want to mosey on down the path of philosophy in regards to what little interest the game has to offer in the face of it’s failures.

To be concluded….
~Pashford

Clang, Clang, Clang Went The Trolley

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry…


When this happens, just remember: DON’T PANIC

After a brief moment of rest, I continue on with my analysis of Siren, which is starting to grow a bit long in the tooth at this point, if I’m to be honest. It certainly wasn’t my intent to drag out my conclusions on the title over such a long period of time, but somewhere between attempting episodic content and Siren being…well, Siren, things definitely took a turn for the worst. No matter, as I should at least address my long belabored point of the trolley problem, or at least my mention of troubling affairs using word play that involves a problem with a trolley in it, and also trolley related problems that upend the traditional standard of trolley problem affairs.


All about the pretense of pretending
to be real while realistically pretending

I was kind of planning more of a concerted denouement of where I think Siren’s design methodology made apparent just how hard it utterly shits directly on the shiny new linoleum in terms of sublime satisfaction, and I think the closest to whatever that article might have looked like is now replaced with the one we are both currently experiencing. So yeah, super quick tl;dr version of where we are at right now: traditionally stylized PS2 survival horror game with lacking scare factor feels aimless in it’s approach of mystery. The story: never really materializing, the characters…kind of just there? The enemies-a mess of big old whatevers that do stop you, but in the most basic and annoying of ways. Siren’s “innovative” ability they try to shoehorn into the game to stand out from the crowd called “Sightjacking” ends up being a huge headache, as the trial and error factor of using someone else’s sight to not get seen gets old so quickly, you’ll likely try to just remember where the mainstay enemies and avoid them, and then try to navigate without the ability all together any other moment you’re playing just to save yourself from restarting for the nteenth time.


Anything to try and change the future at this point

Which, that last description I gave by the way, was more or less “the moment” Siren kind of came into focus for me, as all of the issues with the game came into focus during the aforementioned “Trolley Problem” that I have made mention to these past few articles. Essentially, all of the flaws Siren has comes to a front in the mission where you control Akira Shimura at Gojaku Peak, where you end up controlling a hunter with a rifle attempting to escape what is pretty much a trolley yard. When the mission first starts, you might be jazzed that right off the bat, you’re starting with a gun, and that the gameplay may really start to pick up after a bunch of random ass missions with random ass fools running around a random ass village may finally get some much needed momentum.


Brace yourself for a rude awakening, amigo

This mission helps to condense every bad idea Siren has in a nutshell, and may be the big litmus test for a lot of players on whether or not you even want to keep playing the title. I know I certainly took a second to stop and think about it. Where to start? The level involves a bunch of narrow corridors, and one big open area. There are a number of Shibito (enemy combatants) with rifles against you, which leads you to believe maybe sightjacking will help spare you? The problem ends up being twofold: you can’t control your character when sightjacking, and the riflemen kill you quickly. You can normally survive one shot, but the amount of time it takes for you to ready your gun, find them in the mist, and shoot them, is usually waaaay more time than it takes for them to follow up with another shot, and I don’t think I ever survived the second bullet.


An unedited photo from one of my sniper battles
in Siren

On top of that, once you know where they are, the sightjacking is more or less pointless: they generally are looking in one of two places, and the sightjacking honestly is so sluggish, it usually just sets you up to get nailed. The character animations are also ungodly slow, and the aiming is jank as shit. If you combine all of this frustration in conjunction with constant restarts, and the notion of why enemies with guns just don’t work that well in a scary manner related to the fundamental ideas of what makes survival horror work in the first place, you will likely start to feel existential about the whole thing and ask “Just why?” Don’t get me wrong: sniper battles have their place: I love engaging in them in many shooters, and there are even examples in single player games where they can be thrilling, and in some games the back and forth can be downright intense, but both gunplay and the sniper battles in Siren are so far removed from any element of survival horror you’re left positively dechuffed about the whole notion of it.


We know sniper battles can work, some just involve
a character named The End as opposed to the end
of your time with a game becasue of a shitty sniper battle

To add insult to injury, one of the main hooks of the level involves taking out one of the snipers with a runaway trolley. If you don’t know this going in, and don’t end up going to the right place or make an assumption you can take the sniper out in the same manner as you have done in the past, you will be instakilled in a pointless sniper battle, as the game does not want you to engage in a direct conflict with the sniper, but does not make this more clear, nor has the game at any point hinted that you can use major objects in the environment to take out enemies, nor is this level called “Trolley Trauma” or some cheekily named title to imply heavy trolley combat use.


*Prompt not pictured: Lose Mind*

You hopefully figure out after enough consecutive losses in the sniper duel (unless you shut the game off forever because you’re done with Siren’s bullshit), that you can activate a trolley somewhere else, and then your problem is solved. This was suppose to be a much more elegant setup to my point of “The Trolley Problem”, but I’m just going to have to finish this article up and decide if I can elaborate upon it in a more interesting fashion without Siren clouding my judgement. Anyways, The Trolley Problem ends up becoming the idea involving the danger of creative judgement related to progress in a video game. On the one hand, if you make a point of ingress less obvious either with a quirky solution, a hidden ability obscurely hidden, or some non-obvious trigger in which to activate, allowing the way forward to become apparent, is the challenge to the player discovering this element worth the risk of alienating them from finishing the game by effectively turning them off from continuing to play? A worthwhile idea worthy of investigation for another day. As for Siren, I think we are about ready to wrap this up.

To be concluded…
~Pashford

Next Stop: The Trolley Problem

SSDD…


Not always applicable in a literal sense when considering
some stories detailing the horrors of everyday inanity

For any of you following along who are keeping score, the points we have up on the board so far involve one mention of how expectations may have led me astray in my ongoing disappointments with Siren as an entity, and then another point against the head scratcher that is the implementation of the design choices within the context of Siren, as two major game series that are deeply similar in nature kind of already wrote the book on how you do a PS2 survival horror game the right way.


Not that the PS2 was in short supply of worthy titles
to enjoy playing within the survival horror realm

As hinted at yesterday, I was ramping up my continued analysis of the title with the allusion to “The Trolley Problem”, which is a more complicated assertion than may see obvious at first, but we’ll get there in the end. It’s worth it to note that some of the revelations involving the trolley problem have to do with some of the red flags and warning signs I’ve touched upon in my first couple of brief write-ups, though I think it’s worth a mention that it’s easy to understand the kind of game that Siren is if one has the classic idea of Resident Evil or Silent Hill in mind. Siren does distinguish itself in a couple of unfortunate ways. Number one, the narrative is non-linear and hops around over the course of several days, as a small group of disparate individuals attempt to escape the cursed village of Hanuda, with the story kind of playing out in the vein of if Tarantino had a crack at a biopic based in Silent Hill.


Head over heels kinds of horrifying

Like a lot of what Siren does, the theory sounds great, but the execution is totally lacking when it comes down to execution. The usually welcome ambiguity surrounding the mystery of the narrative that comes as a package deal with survival horror games in being kept in the dark and slowly piecing the fragments of truth together almost breeds nihilistic contempt in the Siren environment, as the cut-scenes due very little in servicing exposition, leaving you nearly always confused as to what is really going on. Since the narrative is non-linear, and focuses on multiple individuals, the player is constantly thrust into a new scenario or point of view in rather quick succession, without having a full grasp of how the last mission was relevant in the overarching story, or without a greater sense of even who the character(s) were that you were spending time with


Like her for example, who is…uh, and did the, um….

Which I think is a glaring flaw that can’t be overstated enough, as each “mission” (scenario, what have you) that you will control or spend time with a character(s) is generally speaking only about five to ten minutes, which means you won’t end up feeling fully immersed or even starting to relate or become familiar with who you’re even spending time with. The complete lack of connection and or familiarity with such a large cast of individuals, or being so distant from the very character of the town of Hanuda itself completely betrays the games larger sense of self-identity and worth, with the end result almost feeling as if you’re spending time wandering on random hikes in a mostly vacant province somewhere, never fully being at the whim of any built suspense or lasting tension, as you simply have no clues as to why you should be rooting for or against these characters or setting in the first place.


Siren is obscured in a horrendous fog of mystery…
almost to the point of self-negation

For any of you keeping score still: I have yet to mention specifically what kind of enemies exist within Siren, where as up till now if totally unfamiliar with the game, you may have been stuck with an image in your mind akin to zombies or random characters of vaguely unsettling repute. Which, works towards my notion of “fill in the blank writing”, as the context clues already given have granted you a somewhat accurate assessment of what the cast is up against. The official enemies involved are Shibito, also referred to as demons ingame, but they very much act as zombified humanoids which seek to stalk you. They honestly are pretty chill, as they seemingly still have some sense of routine about them, as they kind of go about what appear to be daily habits, which lends itself to the “stealth elements” I mentioned awhile back. Which are…somewhat relevant in the grand scheme of how the game plays out, but in more ways than not, tend to reinforce that nihilistic contempt. I also mentioned just how aimless and laxidasical the whole approach behind Siren feels, almost as if you wandered onto the sound stage of a horror film in between takes after the director has said cut. The scene is set and the actors all look gruesome, but they’re all just goofing off casually pretending to haunt instead of selling an actual scene of horror.


Honestly, kind of what it feels like when one of
the Shibito catch up with you

I realize I didn’t follow up on the implication I asserted yesterday in regards to how the trolley problem is endemic to what plagues the design or very concepts of Siren at a core level, and if you feel these articles are any bit aimless and meandering in portraying the kind of energy you can expect from Siren, I’m definitely doing my due diligence as a writer in helping to connect you with the Siren experience at large in the most effective way possible.

To be continued….

~Pashford