After almost 2 years of not touching the game I finally picked up Siren (aka Forbidden Siren)again. And after looking at the looming list of missions that I have yet to even attempt, I felt the need to spill my thoughts about this game before I start taking crazy pills I guess you can take this as a micro review of sorts, or my impressions on the initial first two loop cycles of the game (the fact that I used the word "loop" should already concern you).

First off, I really, really want to love this game. I honestly do. Unfortunately it feels like for everything that Siren does right, it does something massively wrong. The game is made up of individual missions that are in theory very short, but in actuality you could spends hours simply trying to figure out how to get through the mission in order to progress to the next one. Life and stamina are low, and the monstrous shibito are always infinitely better aimed with their weapons than you are. Stealth is the objective of the games, which is fine by me, however the games will thrust into situations that require combat even though the combat engine is severely lacking because it's supposed to be a stealth game . What?

Adding on to the difficulty of simply trying to get through a mission is the fact that after a center point you will be thrown back into previous missions in order to complete new objectives and progress the story, and doubling the already mounting frustration. Rather than forcing people to replay missions against their will it would have probably been a much better idea to have this function optional and linked to multiple endings, or something. Instead it feels like the developers are trying to lengthen a rather short game and earning hatred from gamers like me in the process.

I'm not going to complete condemn the game before I have yet to finish it, but any game that requires constant consulting of an online strategy by a large majority of the players simply to get through the game has a very very very big problem.