October Horrorthon: Forbidden Siren 2

About two years ago I wrote about Forbidden Siren (http://lifein16bit.blogspot.ie/2010/12/forbidden-siren.html). The stealth based horror gameplay made it one of the most interesting horror games I’ve played but was unfortunately let down by too many silly design flaws. The sequel manages to address everything that was wrong with the original game making it one of the best horror games available on the PS2.

Forbidden Siren 2 follows a group of characters that have been mysteriously drawn to Yamijima Island. 29 years ago an underwater power cable was cut and the entire population of the island disappeared.  Just as this group of people reach the island it is hit by a massive tsunami. When they awaken the island is teeming with Shibito out to kill them. The events of 29 years previous seem to hold the clue to why they are here and what is happening to them.

Shibito are back and as terrifying as ever!

 As in the previous game the story is told from the perspective of about a dozen different characters while the story jumps between different points in the timeline. The game uses a Link Navigator to allow you to select what stage you want to play and show where in the timeline it is. Usually you have a choice of multiple stages to play as you see fit. One of the major problems of the original Forbidden Siren was that each segment of the game had a secondary objective necessary to complete the game and they were so obtuse that a FAQ was pretty much essential. These secondary objectives return once again but thankfully Siren 2 gives hints before the mission and clearly defines the objective. If a secondary objective is required to advance to another stage the game clearly indicates which stage the objective is in and states on the map screen what the objective is.  Siren 2 is thankfully a much better designed game and I never needed to confront a FAQ.

The original Forbidden Siren is infamous for its high difficulty. Many characters were unarmed or so weak that if a Shibito spotted them they were as good as dead. Even when they were armed ammunition was so scarce that you could not afford to waste a single bullet. While this made the game incredibly tense it also meant some of the stages became an exercise in trial and error. The characters in Siren 2 are now more capable of defending themselves. Most stages are checkpointed to further alleviate frustration. However make no mistake, Siren 2 is definitely not a cake walk and enemies still pose a major threat and avoiding confrontation is always preferable to combat.

The Forbidden Siren series most distinguishing feature is ‘sightjacking’ where if you press the right analog stick in the direction of an enemy or other character you can see through their eyes. It’s a wonderful mechanic that is explored in even more interesting ways other than learning enemy routes so you can avoid them.  One of the characters has extremely poor eyesight so you must sightjack his dog to help him see. Another character is able to pick up psychic visions of the past in certain areas while another can take control of sightjacked enemies for a limited period. The use of lighting is also cleverly implemented. To offset the greater offensive capabilities of the characters in Siren 2, Shibito have now become more aggressive and intelligent. However you can now use darkened areas to hide yourself from them. Later in the game Yamibito appear. Yamibito are like the Shibito except they are damaged by light. You can use your flashlight to stun them or hide in well lit areas safe from harm. I found this play on light and darkness a very interesting mechanic. Shibito and Yamibito are natural enemies and you can use this to your advantage, they will rather fight each other rather than attack you.

Sightjacking a Shibito. That's not you holding the gun, it's you in the Shibitos crosshairs

Forbidden Siren 2 is one of the more visually stunning games on the PS2. The environments are excellently rendered and the use of lighting, fog and other atmospheric effects add greatly to the oppressive nature of the game. Characters faces have been digitised from real actors and while the effect can end up in the uncanny valley it does a great job of humanising the characters.

While Forbidden Siren 2 addresses all the problems with the original and adds its own interesting twists to the gameplay it falls short in one area. The story of Forbidden Siren 2 is nowhere near as good as the original. It’s again told in a very obtuse manner and most of the important points are hidden away in archive items you must find during the game. It’s just not as satisfying once you piece it all together. I really liked how the original game focused on the humanity of the characters. Shibito being former humans carried out bizarre corrupted imitations of their everyday routines. There was a strong focus on how the characters dealt with the situation and how they were all slowly turning into Shibito themselves. The characters of Forbidden Siren 2 are just not as interesting and there’s nothing that comes close to the emotional highs of the stories of Tomoko Maede or Risa Onda in the original. It’s still a well written piece of horror fiction just not up to the standard of its predecessor.

The Yamibito are shrouded in black robes to protect from light but not well enough to avoid the light from your torch

Forbidden Siren 2 is one of the best horror games ever made and well worth playing. The stealth horror gameplay that showed so much potential in the original is now polished and allowed to shine.  It’s tense and terrifying like all good horror games but without the frustrations of the first game. The oppressive atmosphere is helped by some wonderfully realised visuals and a superb soundtrack that gives the Silent Hill games a run for their money. Another nice feature is that the game gives you the choice of English voice acting or Japanese voice acting. The original game had Japanese characters speaking with jarring English accents so playing with the original actors and subtitles is a welcome addition. Unfortunately Forbidden Siren 2 was only released in Japan and Europe meaning US players will have difficulty playing this game.

Just a small note to end with, the game is very loosely tied to a Siren film. It’s not required viewing to enjoy and understand the story but worth checking out for fans of the series. My girlfriend really liked it while I found it very disappointing.

Prince of Persia (2008)

I was initially very excited about this game after seeing the stunning launch trailer that was accompanied by some Sigur Ros music. It looked stunning and had a feel to in very much like Ico. I bought and played the game at launch and was quite disappointed in it and it eventually got neglected when I moved on to something else. I decided to go back to it to get it off my backlog and was pleasantly surprised. The disappointment that it didn’t live up the previous excellent Prince of Persia trilogy was a thing of the past and the game could now stand on its own merits and I ended up rather enjoying it.

This version of Prince of Persia is in ways a brave move by Ubisoft. It plays completely differently to the previous Prince of Persia games. The linear progress of previous games is gone and replaced with a more open world consisting of many interconnected areas. The game isn’t totally open world, there’s set paths between each area and many are locked until you beat a boss or acquire an ability, but you are free to tackle each area in any order. Each area is guarded by a boss that must be defeated making the game similar in ways to Mega Man. Defeating the boss purifies the area, opening up new paths, filling the area with light seeds needed to unlock new abilities and changing the visuals to a more pleasing natural look, which leads to the next point. This game is simply gorgeous and still holds up. It’s got some really beautiful painterly visuals and some of the vistas are spectacular. It’s very satisfying to watch the flora and fauna return to an area after it has been purified.

Did I mention how beautiful this game is?

The free running platforming has also been changed from the older games. A complaint levelled at this game is that the platforming is one big QTE sequence but I really didn’t mind it. The platforming flows together and I like how each button corresponds to either jump, the prince’s claw or getting a helping hand from Elika. The protagonist can no longer die now, instead you are saved at the last minute by Elika and returned to the last piece of solid ground you stood on. Although the challenge of the old trilogy is gone a lot of the frustrations are alleviated. I don’t see it as a compromise, more as Ubisoft trying something new. At the time it was quite jarring but now most games are use similar mechanics and have become just as easy. The extra abilities you gain are a bit less interesting, two of them being simple teleports and can only be activated at certain spots.

Combat looks great but is ultimately shallow. Luckily it makes up a tiny portion of the game

 

I have to admire how Ubisoft handled the combat or lack thereof. There’s very little combat in the game and other than the boss battles you can avoid confrontation completely by reaching the enemy spawn area quick enough and stopping them before they appear. Combat with the bosses is flashy with some very impressive combos but ultimately a bit shallow and without tension because again you can’t die. Elika will rescue you at the last minute and the only penalty is the boss gaining a small portion of life back. I also admire how, like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, despite having quite visceral combat it’s an entirely bloodless game which really adds to the charm.

The Prince of Persia games are well known for their excellent storytelling and voice acting and this iteration doesn’t disappoint. Although the story of a sealed god that needs to be purified and sealed away again has been told ad nauseam, it’s the delivery of the story here that impresses. Each area tells its own story and you can stop and talk to Elika about each area, the boss and about herself. These exchanges between herself and the protagonist are well written and delivered excellently by Kari Wahlgren and the ever reliable and omnipresent Nolan North. At the time of release I heard a lot of complaints about the ending but I loved it, I thought it was a brave move. I thought they kind of ruined it in the DLC expansion; it worked much better left as is.

Four years on it's still a stunning game. The protagonist and Elika's relationship is handle well with some excellent writing.

 

Prince of Persia is well worth revisiting. Ignoring how disappointing it was compared to the previous trilogy and taken on its own merits it’s a very enjoyable game that looks gorgeous, has some great platforming that flows well and a well told story. Sometimes it’s worth going back to older games with a more open mind, I know I was pleasantly surprised when I did in this case.

Arcade & Retro Podcast 12: Street Fighter

http://arcadeandretro.com/arcade-and-retro-podcast-epiosde-12-street-fighter/

For this episode we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Street Fighter. Podcast regulars Gavin, Sarah and Stephen (that's me) are joined by Brian, aka Doom, one of the most prominent members of the Irish fighting game scene and expert in all things Guile related.

Street Fighter had humble beginnings as a rather forgettable fighting game but that quickly changed with the release of the seminal Street Fighter 2. Street Fighter 2 set the template for all fighting games that followed and changed the arcade and competitive gaming scene. This explosion in popularity led to numerous updates, sequels and spin-offs. It’s not just street fighter, we also touch on the games the series influenced. Capcom’s rivalry with fellow fighting game developer SNK is discussed, Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct are openly mocked and we come to the conclusion that no fighting game will ever better the magnificent Dino Rex.

Gaia Seed

 Being one of the Playstation’s rarest import shooters Gaia Seed has always been tantalisingly out of reach of most people such as me. As of writing the cheapest copy on eBay is currently $159. Thanks to the advent of digital distribution it can thankfully be picked up for cheap on PSN. Monkeypaw games even brought the game to the US and EU so there’s no need to mess about setting up a Japanese account and paying a premium for Japanese PSN cards. I was looking forward to playing this game. It’s always good to play an old-school hori shooter in a similar mould to R-type or Gradius since I’m not a fan of the bullet hell genre. Unfortunately the steep price of the physical release doesn’t reflect the quality of the game.

Gaia Seed isn’t very complex. There are only two weapons to choose from, a spread weapon and a more powerful laser weapon. The two varieties of sub-weapon similarly lack excitement, both are slow moving projectiles and depending on what item you pick up you can trade power for spread. What is different about this game is the shield gauge. Gaia Seed is very lenient in comparison to other games in the genre. You can take multiple hits, only losing a life if your shield gauge is depleted. Your shield gauge will regenerate over time meaning it’s possible to come back from near death experiences. Unfortunately this makes the game very easy to complete. I’m no expert at shooter games but I managed to beat it on my first go with no continues. There’s also a super weapon that once used recharges over time in a similar manner to the shield bar.

 Graphically the game seems a bit cheap. Games like Symphony of the Night, Gradius Gaiden, etc., have shown that the Playstation is no slouch in the 2D department. Gaia Seed rarely displays anything that would trouble a SNES. There’s a smattering of mode 7 type effects and the game throws around a decent amount of objects, particularly the opening stage, with no slow down. Many times the visuals take a turn for the surreal and trippy. These moments are interspersed with some rather lazy backgrounds that don’t even bother to use parallax scrolling to give them depth. This laziness extends to the level design which rarely gets hectic. There are no standout set pieces and it just feels bland overall. Boss designs are a little bit more interesting but there are a few too many that are non-descript grey ships. There are two ways to beat bosses, let a 2 minute timer run down or shoot them. Whichever way you kill them makes no difference except for the final boss. The only way to see the true ending and get to the real final boss is by running the time down. The one standout in the game is the soundtrack which is a pretty strange mix of genres but suits the strange mood and visuals of the game.

There is a story in Gaia Seed although I’m not sure what it is. It has quite a surreal attract screen which is narrated in hilariously bad ‘Engrish’ by someone that has probably never spoken a word of English in their life. It doesn’t help that he is barely audible. Both endings are narrated by the same guy and I’m still not sure what happened in either of them.

 Gaia Seed is a mediocre game that is totally outclassed by many games in its genre. There are far better shooters on PSN including Gradius Gaiden, Raystorm and Einhander to name three. Its trippy visuals and music never come close to the likes of G Darius, a far superior game to Gaia Seed. I am glad that a PSN release has finally made this game available at an affordable price and I commend Monkeypaw games for releasing it in the West. More of these obscure forgotten games need to get exposure on digital download services and it’s good to see other games like Tomba get the same treatment. For the price I was glad to get to experience it even if it was ultimately disappointing.

Screenshots stolen from here: http://users.telenet.be/twin-dreams/PSone/Gaia_Seed.html

Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles

Castlevania Rondo of Blood was always one of my Holy Grail games. I’m a massive Castlevania fan and being denied the ability to play what many consider to be the best game in the series was maddening. The original was only ever released in Japan and on the PC-Engine CD, an obscure piece of hardware that was never released in Europe. I was pretty excited to find out that the original game was coming to PSP.

This release is a remake of the original game with new 3D graphics replacing the 2D artwork of the original. I’d normally complain about this because the new 3D makeover looks poor in comparison to the original which had some of the best pixel art of the 16-bit generation. However the original Rondo of Blood is included as an unlockable secret as well as the PS1 classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It’s worth mentioning that SotN comes with some improvements in this version, Richter is playable from the start, as is Maria who was cut from the original game and only appeared in the disappointing Saturn port of the game. My one complaint is that these games should have been available from the start and not as unlockables but if you want to unlock them quickly just check a FAQ.

I’ll start with the original Rondo of Blood. It’s one of the all time great 16-bit games. Rondo of Blood is unlike many CD-ROM based games of the time. The extra storage space afforded by the CD-ROM format wasn’t used for grainy FMV cutscenes. Instead the developers choose to pack each level with unique enemies, animations and intricate background details. The sprites and animation are so good that many have been reused in Symphony of the Night and the GBA/DS Castlevania games. There are some cutscenes but they are elaborate fully voiced animations rather than grainy low quality FMV. A special mention must go to the excellent sound effects and especially the music. As per usual for a Castlevania game it delivers some excellent tune, this time streamed in high quality from the CD.

The stages themselves are huge. The majority of stages are filled with secrets and alternative routes. In a way it’s very like Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse where you can take completely different paths through the game. The game lets you revisit stages at will to try and discover secrets and alternative stages, a nice touch that avoids needlessly replaying early stages of the game. There are four maidens hidden in the game that must be found before you can get the real ending which is another reason to explore the game. One of the maidens, Maria, can act as a playable character. She takes more damage than Richter but her animal based attacks are a bit overpowered to compensate. Unlike Super Castlevania IV Richter can only whip in one direction but has moderate control while jumping. It makes the game less frustrating than the NES games but the whip is not so overpowered that subweapons become useless like in Super Castlevania.

 

Overall Rondo of Blood is one of the best games of the 16-bit era. While I prefer Dracula’s Curse and Super Castlevania IV it’s still one of the very best Castlevania games. It looks gorgeous, level design is superb and there are a huge amount of alternative routes and stages to discover which gives the game replayability that previous linear Castlevania games couldn’t provide. It also has some of the best boss battles of the series.

The main game on Dracula X Chronicles is a remake of Rondo of Blood. While in many ways I feel it’s an excellent remake there is one problem with the game. While Rondo of Blood is one of the best looking games ever made with some of the best pixel art to grace any game the remake uses 3D visuals that are less colourful and dull in comparison. Thankfully it’s not all bad news. The remake adds its own subtle improvements to Rondo of Blood differentiating it from the original and thus making the remake worth playing. Many of the stages have received subtle additions and changes that will surprise veterans of the PC-Engine original. Bosses as well have been tweaked to keep them challenging and fresh. There are some big changes as well. The alternative stage 5 has been completely replaced with a brand new stage. In the original game this stage seemed like a bit of an afterthought and didn’t even have a boss. The new stage is much better with a boss battle that might just be the highlight of the remake. Another new boss has been added just before the final fight with Dracula if you don’t find all the maidens before the end of the game. This one is also great so is worth experiencing. If you do find all the maidens you can skip this boss. However the final fight with Dracula adds new a rock hard third form to the boss battle. Not present in the original.

Usually I’d be against changes being made to the original games vision but in this case since the original game is included I’m much more receptive. The extra bosses are a welcome addition and the new alternative stage 5 is an improvement over the original game. I’d go so far to say that if the remake had the gorgeous 2D art of the original then it would be the better game. One small complaint I have about the original is that the 2D graphics don’t really suit the PSP-1000 screen. Blurring is much more noticeable than in the 3D remake.  I didn’t really play SotN but it’s a nice addition. If you haven’t played Symphony of the Night then it’s a great way to experience it, it really is one of the greatest game ever made. The emulation of Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night isn’t perfect but it’s more than serviceable and if you are a stickler for good emulation then the Virtual console version of Rondo is the one to go for.

Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles is pretty much a must own for Castlevania fans and PSP owners. You can’t go wrong with two of the best games ever made and an excellent remake of Rondo of Blood in the same package.