Siren: Blood Curse was supposed to be released in 12 episodes available for download over a period of time, similar to a season for a TV show. With its splintered narrative and multiple characters, this would have been ideal for some interesting cliff hangers. Between episodes, players could engage in water cooler talk about what's going on.

But at the last minute, Sony decided to make it all available at once. Well, I'm not having any part of that. This game diary series will review an episode every day. I'll start with general comments and then enter spoiler territory after the jump to simulate what a water cooler conversation would sound like if you had to wait a week between episodes.

The first episode of Siren opens without any exposition. You get a couple of title cards and then you watch some people in the woods filming a ritual that goes awry. After engaging in some very basic hiding from zombies (there's about fifteen minutes of gameplay, tops), you can read over your archive items, which include footage from a camera left running, a TV show proposal, some phone messages, and an ancient text. The idea seems to be that you play the game to find these archive items, which explain who's who and what's going on. Over the course of the game, you're filling in a sheet with spaces for fifty archive items.

All in all, it's a pretty underwhelming first episode. Its main point seems to be that zombies don't make very good policemen, which I found out 20 years ago when I saw Joe Piscopo in Dead Heat. But Siren helpfully points out that undead Japanese policemen have just as little regard for proper police procedure as other countries' undead policemen. And then it abruptly ends with a teaser for episode two. I'd call this more of a prologue than an episode.

Story spoilers after the jump...

Did I catch something weird about Sam's mother being dead, but still influencing Sam? I'm not clear what the point was there. Just husband/wife bickering, or will Sam's mother's ghost make a guest appearance? I like the ambiguity.

Also, it seems like Melissa's being set up as an awfully unsympathetic character. When Sol leaves the camera on and captures Sam and Melissa fighting, you can hear Bella sobbing near the mic. Melissa breaks off the argument not to comfort Bella, but to tell her to stop chewing her fingernails. Whoa. Rhymes with witch! I went to check my character development handbook, and I found that being mean to kids is the #2 way to establish that your character is a jerk, just behind uttering a racial epithet.

Also, if you played the first Siren, the Howard Wright storyline is going to look awfully familiar. If there's one thing I remember from the original Siren, it's that zombie cop. It seems like Howard's plotline might be directly repeated from the first game.

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