♫ Music: The Buster ♫
~Winner of the "Best Game I Played With My Partner This Year" Award~
This might be one of the most player-unfriendly yet quality games I've played, I keep surprising myself by how much I like it and think about it. I do wish the enemies were a tiny bit less aggressive, and that the developers didn't lean so much on snipers to the point they feel like a design crutch, and a few other little things, but man this game is just so cool. The way the story unfolds across the perspectives of over a dozen different characters, with you playing as ten of them, in little snippets over the course of the three longest days you've ever known, playing and replaying levels in a purgatorial funk as you try something that might change things and allow another character to try something different themself, uncovering cryptic clues about the history of the cursed village you're trapped in, it's such an engrossing experience. In some ways this is because of the difficulty. I actually really like how the in-game map doesn't tell you where you are, just which direction you're facing, so you have to navigate by learning various landmarks and recognizing sometimes subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle changes over time. While some characters have access to guns and useful melee implements, your greatest weapon is your sight. Every playable character can Sightjack nearby enemies, allowing you to see through their eyes and learn their route, what kind of enemy they are, and their relative position to you. This information should be very empowering, and it is, but the static and grossly intimate breathing noises you get make the out-of-body mechanic an appropriately unpleasant experience, and more practically speaking, time does not stop while you are sightjacking. You haven't really played Siren until you've watched yourself die through the eyes of your killer.
Platform: PS2
