Siren calls out to horror fans

The horror game genre gets a new lease of life in Forbidden Siren, argues Daniel Etherington of BBCi Collective in his weekly games column.

Siren: Gaming as something pretty demanding

Gloom. Fog. Desolation. Weird noises. The distant moan of the living dead.

It is a familiar scenario in video games, but Forbidden Siren from Keiichiro Toyama, creator of Silent Hill, breathes new life into it.

More specifically, it shifts the survival horror formula more into the realm of stealth gaming, while throwing some innovation into the mix, as well as expecting patience and commitment from the gamer.

This is not gaming as lightweight diversion. This is gaming as something pretty demanding.

Personally, I love the survival horror genre. I would even be prepared to make an argument for the notoriously bad control/camera system of the Resident Evil games.

But I have struggled with the convolutions of the storytelling. And convolution is something Siren has in spades.

The 78 missions played by 10 characters do not occur chronologically, sort of like the movie 21 Grams, and the play does not receive a nice explanatory prologue. Yet somehow I am still drawn to it.

Gut-wrenching

Japanese horror culture, which has its paradigms in the 1998 film Ringu and 1999's Silent Hill, has an incredible lure when it is done well.

Forbidden Siren is a painstaking experience. But, conversely, it is also compelling and unique Discuss this story on BBCi Collective

For the Westerner, these experiences are, at an intellectual level, cryptic and beguiling.

Doubtless a lot of cultural nuance is lost in translation. Something not helped in Siren's case by the touch-and-go English dub.

But this sense of disconnection, of possible misunderstanding, of not entirely intended ambiguity, actually serves to heighten the experience.

It contributes to where they have the most powerful effect - the gut level, the unconscious.

Siren's gameplay involves psychic "sight-jacking" into the first-person point of view of the zombies, to give the player data to build up mental maps of the areas.

It is an intriguing, disconcerting device, but, when you are thrown into the game's setting, one that demands a lot more mental effort. Considerably more than most games.

Frankly, it is not exactly a barrel of laughs, but it is rewarding.

Forbidden Siren is a painstaking experience. But, conversely, it is also compelling and unique.

Bolstered by accomplished graphics and the heady influence of HP Lovecraft, Siren offers a remarkable experience of immersion into something enigmatic and chilling, even when the play is not exactly playful.