The Silent Hill style contrivances are starting to muscle their way front and center. First there's a contrived point-by-point handheld trip through a cramped area clogged with zombies, then there's a contrived point-by-point handheld trip through an open area clogged with zombies. In both instances, you're doing something either entirely contrived or utterly nonsensical. As of episode 5, Siren is having a hard time striking a balance between spelling everything out and leaving a sense of exploration or mystery. Instead, it just spells everything out and doesn't worry much about making sense.

Also, there's a point where you need to reach some characters on the other side of a locked door. Doing this requires a convoluted set of tasks culminating in calling them on the phone. Why not just yell through the door to ask them to unlock it and let you in, particularly since you can hear them talking over there? Furthermore, in episode 3, one of the characters simply called out to everyone from a PA system. In this episode, why not use the same PA system to alert the characters behind the locked door instead of going through several steps to telephone them?

Whatever, man. Games.

If you simply must know what the heck is in that wheelchair up there, you can read the spoilers after the jump.

So I'm told to find a weapon in a ruined hospital, and it seems the only options are the poker in the incinerator room and the knife in the kitchen, both of which happen to be way down in the basement. Since eligible weapons up to now have included things like a kettle, a flute, and a guitar, it's a bit jarring to have to fumble around looking for exactly the right thing. This is a ruined place full of rusty pipes, crumbling bricks, stray crutches, and lord knows how many scalpels. And I have to go all the way down to the basement?

Also, the goals give away a bit too much. When the shibito brain was revealed in the wheelchair, it was a great 'what the heck is that?' moment. But when a subgoal immediately flashes onscreen – "kill the shibito brain to disable the shibito spiders" – it loses a lot of the mystery. I guess the alternative is a frustrated fumbling around trying to figure out what to do, being jumped by spider-crawling zombie nurses at every turn. But it would have been nice if your goals had been built into the story somehow instead of spoonfed to you, subgoal by subgoal.

I'm pretty lost in terms of what's going on with the storyline. So Bella has been separated from her parents, Sol is a zombie, Howard Wright and Miyako are running around, Amana has some past memories that lead her to solve two puzzle locks to a open a door, and...

...whoa, cool twist with the Seigo storyline, I guess. Not that I'm very clear on what happened. He was a doctor, yet he's somehow concerned with Miyako being cursed, and he kills himself right after "putting down" Yukie, the nurse who loved him, who might have been a bridesmaid to Miyako? And isn't he going to turn into a zombie after killing himself? And isn't Yukie going to get right back up, like all the shibito do?

By the way, is it just me, or is the discordant horn blare during the next episode teaser straight out of Lost?

(Click here for the previous Siren game diary.)
(Click here for the next Siren game diary.)