Why the fuck has /v/ never talked about how fucking good Forbidden Siren 2 is?
I know it was never released in the US at all, and only a limited release in the EU at a time before digital sales but its amazing to me that a game as well made as Silent Hill 1 or Gravity Rush 2 by the same guy is so unknown and little talked about.
I had known about it for years but never actually played it. Last weekend at a con i saw it for £6 and picked it up as im building up my PS2 collection now prices crashed again and threw it in to test it and the next thing i knew 6 hours had gone by.
Right from the off its a full on sequel instead of 'lets repackage the same shit different day'. The game starts with a kid being tucked in by his dad who goes off to investigate a noise. You then take on the role of the child in first person. You can almost see out the windows that somethings going on, but you don't know what. You explore the room then head down to see your father dead with a man and his dog standing in front of him. Terrified your character runs down the hall to escape.
Smash cut to elsewhere and the same man and dog are on a small boat in the sea off the coast of an island according to the info on screen. There is a strange assortment of people on the ship all riding to the island but then a huge 'something' goes by the window outside and a siren sounds, the ocean turns red and the boat capsizes. The game proper begins with what you assume is the ship captain waking up on a run down old dock on an island that looks like its been through a war, a hurricane or a bit of both. You start to explore and learn the new controls, new techniques like breaking open windows to unlock doors at the risk of alerting the Shibito the islands residents have turned into and so on. Everything is faster but not action speed. Maps are no longer a mess and the 'real photos as textures on ps2 models' looks better than the first.
It gripped me and kept be playing. It was tense, the use of sound, tight corners and a faux 1990's j horror film grain makes it really atmospheric. The game continues and introduces a new type of enemy thats far more inhuman than even the shibito that started to turn into something from a Junji Ito manga and only got weirder from there.
Thats when i took a break and thought "this is fucking stellar, of all the horror threads on /v/ why does nobody ever talk about this!?". It can't just be no US release. Though releasing late in the lifespan of the console when its library was overflowing with games surely didn't help.
Still its a crying shame it looks like barely anyone has play it at this point. With PS2 emulators stable and the library of roms growing theres no no reason limited physical copies can hinder survival horror fans exploring games like this and it is such a damn shame that its been completely forgotten, even by SCE after the critical dud of Siren Blood Curse on PS3.
Did ANYONE else play Forbidden Siren 2? anyone at all?