Video Game / Siren: Blood Curse

European and Australian cover.

Asian cover.

Siren: Blood Curse is a PlayStation 3 game released worldwide in 2008. The game adds Americans to a roster that are composite expies of the original cast members in a re-imagining of Siren 1, a likely Shout-Out to Western adaptations of classic J-Horror films like Ringu/The Ring and Ju On/The Grudge.

On August 2, 2007, an American film crew trying to conduct filming on a documentary in Hanuda stumbles on an Mana ceremony where a woman was being dragged to be killed. A foreigner was seen rescuing her from her executioner. But while this deed saved her, it led to the the loud siren noises, cutting off the village from the rest of the outside world.

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Siren: Blood Curse provides examples of:

• Abandoned Hospital: The Saiga Hospital.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The final boss battle in Blood Curse is quite seizuriffic.
• Anvil on Head: Blood Curse lets you drop a neon sign from the second floor on a Shibito early in the game.
• Artificial Brilliance: A small addition is that companions, if between you and an enemy, will duck so you can shoot over them at the enemy.
• Backtracking: It's a bit like the first Siren game, but it starts in the second half of the game due to it being the second loop; everyone starts where they originally did, and must go to where they're meant to go, which often means going back through the same areas.
• Bittersweet Ending: It's the same deal as the first game. Kaiko and Amana are dead, Hanuda is once again destroyed, and the rest of the cast is dead, but things are slightly better- Howard manages to live, and returns to the village to exact revenge upon the Shibito and rid the world of them once and for all. He's also not stuck in their dimension, and the game ends on a montage of him butchering the village and saving the world. Sam, on the other hand, is stuck in the past, and must act on the Stable Time Loop that brings Howard to the village in the first place.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Howard and Sam are the only survivors. However, the former is still in Hanuda, intent on fulfilling his promise to destroy the village; while the latter is dropped in the real world in 1972, the year Hanuda vanished, which allows him to draw Howard to the area and secure the time loop.
• Breakable Weapons: The "Sake", "Beer" and "Whisky" bottles as well as the "Chamber Pot" and "Fluorescent Bulb" weapons all smash upon being used but function slightly differently:
  • Sake/Whisky bottles, Chamber pots and Fluorescent bulbs all break into nothing after a single hit and cannot be used afterwards, Sake bottles do very little damage but the Chamber pot and Fluorescent bulbs are strong enough to at least down the Shibito you hit with it.
  • The Beer bottle meanwhile breaks into a "broken bottle" weapon that can be used indefinitely afterwards.
• Cherry Tapping: Like Forbidden Siren 2, all characters can do a melee attack. Unlike the shove from that game, all characters in Blood Curse can instead start punching the Shibito. This deals very little damage (And the Shibito can block and counter attack if you keep doing full combo on them) but with the right strategy, it is possible to kill a Shibito with them, though it takes so long that you're better off only punching to stun them then running.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Two small instances of this are present:
  • In the very first stage, Shuji will eventually automatically kill Howard with a finisher if you try to fight him before you're supposed to.
  • There is a mechanic where if you stop right behind a Shibito, they will "hear" something and automatically turn around and spot you, notable becuase bumping into Shibito when crouched doesn't alert them but stopping behind them will.
• The Flatwoods Monster: Archive file #25, titled The Gojaku Giant, tells of the arrival of a 9-foot tall alien on August 25th, 1856, near Mount Gojaku. It tried to communicate with the locals, but its foul smell knocked out anyone near it. The accompanying drawing is of the Flatwoods Monster re-envisioned by 19th Century Japanese art standards.
• Foreshadowing: Archive 1 is a much-copied version of Bella's notebook (Archive 11). Note the letters on the cover, the occasional spiders in the upper corner and at one point a face that corresponds to the goth girl on the lower corner. They even kept the purple borders, and an approximation of the wire on the spine.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • This happens to the policeman-type shibito, leading to him running around with a stick in his chest for the rest of the game.
  • Unarmed Shibito will sometimes do a finisher where they punch straight through your chest.
• Kill It with Fire: The Uryen (宇理炎) is a cube-like device that casts blue "purging flames".
• Leitmotif: There's a certain melody that's heard when playing as Amand and Bella. It serves as a subtle hint towards the connection between the two characters.
• Market-Based Title: Throughout Asia, it's known as Siren: New Translation.
• Mythology Gag: Miyako whacks her pursuer over the head with a stick in the original Siren. It doesn't work in Blood Curse.
• Neck Snap: The Shibito use this instead of strangling, either by shoving you to the ground and requring a QTE to break out of or as a finisher when they kill you in melee.
• Shout-Out: The game is made in the style of a Western J-Horror remake, with a composite Expy cast that includes Americans who decide to pay that quaint little village of Hanuda a visit.
  • A couple archive items in the first level of Blood Curse name the producer for Melissa and Sol's show as one John Titor. It's appropriate, considering one of Blood Curse's main twists.
  • Another archive item in Blood Curse discusses a fictional handheld game system, the "Network King", and how an attempted follow-up system flopped hard, leaving the creators with a mountain of unsold units they ended up burying in an "undiscovered location" before a chain reaction of bankruptcies erupted through the entire toy industry - a clear reference to Atari burying unsold stocks of the infamous E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial immediately before the American video game industry crashed.
• Split Screen: Sight-Jacking is now visualized this way, with your view on the left and the view of your enemy on the right, notably your three shortcut sight-jack views will show up when you sight-jack, meaning up to four screens can be shown. (You on the left and the three sight-jacked views that you decided to shortcut.)
• Stable Time Loop: In the remake, one of the characters has to set everything into motion by e-mailing another one from 1973 after the town goes whacked again. As well Amana, meet Bella. Bella, meet Amana.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: In Blood Curse, it's more of a Cube of Plot Advancement, though both the Uryen and the Homuranagi are needed for Howard to kill Kaiko.
• Tactical Door Use: The player can "Brace" doors to hold them shut and prevent a Shibito entering, if successful it will force the Shibito to either give up or find an alternative path to the player.
• Unreliable Narrator: A player should feel suspicious when playing Bella again, suddenly sneaking through a flower-overgrown mountain bathed in golden sunlight, even though she just barely escaped a hospital in the middle of the night. Cue seeing that person bang at the window as a fully transformed Shibito later.