PS3 Fanboy

Have you tried Siren: Blood Curse? The survival horror game is a PlayStation Network title here in the States, but over in Asia, it can be found on Blu-ray. You can download the series for $40 here, or you can buy an import copy of the Blu-ray for only $25 (plus shipping). Now, you may be saying "I don't speak Japanese!" No worries. The Asian version of the game includes English voice acting and subtitles. Intrigued?

[Via CAG]

Holding out on downloading Siren: Blood Curse in hopes of a Blu-ray release? If you are in the US, don't bother. Sony has spoken to MTV Multiplayer, reiterating that there are no plans for a North American release on of Siren in disc form "at this time." The Sony representative reminds us that "you are able to delete and then re-download episodes since the purchase is linked to your PSN account. The developers kept this functionality in mind knowing that the episodes were fairly beefy."

MTV speculates that Sony may simply be testing the waters in terms of Siren's sales before releasing a retail version. Either way, if you really want the game on Blu-ray, you can always just import it from Europe.

If you are enjoying SIREN: Blood Curse, maybe the artist in you is thinking of designing your own Shibito. Fortunately, you'll get a chance to do so with the Siren "Shibito" Design Competition Sony is having to celebrate the launch of the game. You can submit a depiction of your Shibito in JPG format plus a profile less than 500 words. Unfortunately, the contest is in Hong Kong and Singapore only.

What really caught our attention is the following: a producer of SIREN: New Translation (the title's name in Asia) will hand-select the winners, and the "masterpiece design may have the chance to become one of the major Shibito characters in the next title of SIREN!" Does this mean more SIREN is on the way soon?

The winners also get a producer signed copy of the game plus a cash prize ranging from about $13-$64 USD, so this contest certainly won't make you rich beyond your dreams. The deadline for submission is August 24th. Check out the contest here.

[Via Siliconera]

Did you buy Siren Blood Curse from the PlayStation Store? If so, you might have noticed the game takes up a ludicrous 9 gigabytes of space and comes in the form of 12 separate files to download and install. What a hassle. Thankfully, SCEE has announced today that it will be bringing the game to the European region on Blu-ray this Autumn. It doesn't look like there'll be any extra features, unless you count saving hours of your life not having to download and install 9GB of data.

Siren Blood Curse is a decent survival horror game, though it's not without its issues. We'll have a review for you sometime soon. Thankfully, a Blu-ray release solves our biggest qualm with the game. If you haven't grabbed it already, it's worth waiting for the Autumn re-release.

[Via Press Release]

Just wait for it ... wait for it.

The Japanese ad for SIREN: Blood Curse (now available) is rather shocking. We don't want to ruin the surprise for you, so please just watch. Would an ad like this work in the States? We say: yes.

Playable Content

• Siren Blood Curse full game (£19.99/€29.99)
• Gangs of London full PSP game (£14.99/€19.99)
• Echochrome demo (free)
• Siren Blood Curse Chapters 1-4 (£6.99/€9.99 each)

Add-on Content

• Guitar Hero III "Guitar Virtuoso" track pack (£3.99/€5.99)

Videos

• E3 PlayStation Family Compilation trailer
• E3 Compilation trailer
• E3 PSN Compilation trailer
• PixelJunk Eden trailer
• Linger In Shadows trailer
• Movement Episode 2 "Munich" part 2 (8 videos)
• Siren Blood Curse "characters" trailer
• Siren Blood Curse "Hanuda" trailer

Wallpapers and Themes

• PixelJunk Eden "red" wallpaper
• PixelJunk Eden "black" wallpaper

Don't forget to keep your eyes out for the American PSN update later today, where a PixelJunk Eden demo will be made available. In the meantime, give Echochrome a go or watch a few trailers. There's plenty of stuff to sink your teeth into, this week.

Looking forward to Siren: Blood Curse? Good, because it's going to have a budget release on PSN later this week. The survival horror game will be downloadable for a discount price of only $40 for the entire game ... or $15 for each episode pack. Each episode pack will contain four episodes, with each episode averaging about an hour or two of gameplay each. That's 4-8 hours of gameplay for $15 each. Buy all three episode packs and save $5.

We love seeing this rather innovative pricing scheme for consoles. Will you try Siren piece by piece, or will you take the plunge and buy it all at once? (New trailer, after the cut.)

ThreeSpeech has the scoop on when we can expect Siren: Blood Curse to hit the European PSN Store, as well as how much we will be spending on this episodic horror. We're not sure what Sony's understanding of "episodic" is, but we were expecting something a little bit different to what's been described. Siren will be split into four chapters, each containing three episodes of the game, but the strange part is that all four chapters will be made available on the same day -- July 24th.

I guess we can't complain now that we know we won't have to wait in between episodes, but we can't help but wonder why they've bothered with splitting the game up at all. Why not just release it all as one? When the game releases you'll be able to pick up each chapter for £4.99 (no sign of a price in Euros, sorry!), with all four chapters bundled together for £19.99. Pro tip: Buy them all separately and you'll save 3p. That's three penny sweets!

In a preview from ThreeSpeech, there's a coy mention of file size for Siren: Blood Curse and its episodic content. It appears each episode will average around 600 MB each. As stated in the preview, the episodes will obviously have varying range but shouldn't be too far from the average.

Considering that there are 12 episodes in total, expect to set aside a good 7.2 GB if you want to keep them all on your system. However, ThreeSpeech reminds you in the article that it is completely possible to delete an episode and then redownload it whenever you feel like. So space shouldn't be that much of an issue. Siren: Blood Curse is still set for release this summer for both North America and Europe.

Sony is trying to redefine the scope of a digitally distributed game. Warhawk and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue are both great PSN offerings that combine high production values and a low retail cost. The upcoming episodic survival horror game, SIREN: Blood Curse, looks to continue this trend.

A new batch of screenshots were released by SCEA, and they look stunning. With WipEout HD and SOCOM Confrontation also in the works, it looks like PSN will have some truly big heavy-hitters this year.

For those of you who need a little more information about Siren: Blood Curse, like if it's a remake, a retelling, or a whole new game in the franchise, the PlayStation Blog has posted up a nice Q&A with the series' creator, Keiichiro Toyama, to ease you into the lore of the game. First thing's first: this is not a sequel nor a remake, he says. It's an adaptation/dramatization of the original, or as he put it, if the original game happened in real life, Blood Curse would be a "movie based on a true story".

Adding Western characters is to add to the feelings of isolation and terror -- when a Japanese and Westerner get stuck together, communication trouble is inevitable and only adds to your situational frustrations. The release structure as episodes is to give players the feeling of participating in an event; a TV drama they play.

As for gameplay, sight-jacking is a split-screen affair now. You can move your character while checking out the enemy positions at the same time. Unlike other survival horror games, Siren is keeping itself away from "action" and more towards "survival" -- that is, scares and story. The difficulty has been toned down, since the first was infuriatingly difficult. There's a ton of more information to read up on if you're interested as well as some of Toyama's personal opinions on the horror genre, influences, and what scares him the most.

Siren: Blood Curse looks set to terrify PlayStation 3 owners when it launches this Summer in the US and Europe. Tsubasa Inaba, Senior Producer for the game, has posted a new trailer up on the PlayStation Blog for all of you phobophiles out there. This video is different from the one on the European PSN Store but is easily as, if not more, scary. We hope to hearing more about this episodic scare-a-thon on the PlayStation Blog soon, including the release date for the first episode. We're hoping soon.

The English language release of SIREN: Blood Curse is being released episodically on the PLAYSTATION Network this Summer. Digital episodic distribution is a brand new territory for survival horror games, one we're intrigued by. Although no pricing information has been set, we did discover that each of the twelve episodes should last about an hour or two in length each, making each episode slightly longer than your standard TV serial.

We can't wait to find out more about Blood Curse. Until then, feast your eyes on these brand new screens. Trailer attached, after the cut.

SCEE has announced, via their PlayStation Day asset disc, that Siren Blood Curse will be made available this Summer in Europe. Blood Curse will be an episodic, downloadable experience via the PlayStation Network and promises to be "the most terrifying game in the Siren series to date." While the twelve episode series begins this Summer, there's no word on how often new episodes will be made available.

The story takes place "in the Japanese village of Hanuda, where a TV crew from America arrive to research the legend of the 'Vanished Village' where human sacrifice is said to have taken place thirty years ago." Players will be able to utilise the "unique Sight-Jack system to view events from the angle of your undead pursuers." That all sounds great, but why wasn't this announced during the keynote speech? Episodic gaming via the PSN is definitely something we would like to see more of and would have made Killzone 2's delay just that little bit less hard to take.