Siren: Blood Curse

But rather than end the episode abruptly, the action switches to Howard, with a task of escaping to another village, Karuwari, with a long-haired teenage girl called Amana. Again, for reasons not adequately explained, she's wandering like a loser in the dark as well, but has some curious powers that you can take advantage of - namely Sight Jacking, the game's key unique innovation that made the original duo so memorable. In a nutshell, Sight Jacking is the ability to literally see through your enemies' eyes, and Siren: Blood Curse makes the whole process somewhat more user-friendly.

Previously, the right analogue stick acted as a kind of radio tuner, and dialling into the Shibito's perspective was relative to their direction. So, for example, if Shibito were standing at six o'clock on a rooftop with a sniper rifle, you'd hit the Sight Jack button and rotate the stick downwards until it 'tuned in'. Then you'd sit and wait until they were looking the other way, go back to your own viewpoint and dart off (hopefully) out of sight. This time around it's a lot simpler: you hit L2, and flick between the various Shibito in the vicinity with left and right on the d-pad, and a vertical split-screen view allows you to see both their perspective and your own, making it a whole lot less risky in the process. That said, at this stage in the game, there aren't too many points where you really need to study what the Shibito monsters can observe, so we'll have to wait and see how it really pans out once we has access to all 12 episodes.

Eventually, the need to simply avoid these nightmarish souls changes, and you do get access to your first firearm. With one armed Shibito somewhat preoccupied, you creep up, smack him over the back of the head with a blunt instrument and snatch his pistol. When his mates decide to investigate, you've got a few pellets of hot lead waiting for them. Elsewhere, you're given a chance to use one-off items to your advantage, such as alarm bells, rotten trees, rickety signs, or even deadly mantraps, which is particularly satisfying. All-round the game does a far better job of making it clear what your aims are, and only a modicum of trial-and-error appears to be necessary to move things on. Whether it'll remain this straightforward later on is another thing.

One thing the game is very good at is changing the rules repeatedly, and it's a clear sign that variety is high on the agenda. Part of the third episode of this sneak preview illustrates that point perfectly, with Bella Monroe tasked with escaping from Saiga Hospital. In what amounts to pure survival-horror stealth, you can't risk poor little Bella even being confronted by beasties, as she simply curls up into a ball with fright. But such harsh Game Over penalties aren't as frustrating as they might have been, with smart checkpointing and quick reloads launching you back into the action in seconds.

In a presentational sense, the episodic nature of the gameplay not only tightens up the narrative thread immensely, but gives Sony Japan Studio the chance to cut together TV-style 'next on Siren: Blood Curse' previews which offer tantalising glimpses of what horrors you're about to face. Some residual control clunkiness remains as one of the only niggles that has carried over from the previous games in the series, but on the plus side, the combat appears to be largely trouble-free, and much of the hassle of performing more complicated actions has been resolved by a host of context-sensitive tweaks.

With immense improvements in the voice acting, an intense atmosphere, fantastic audio and some of the best visuals to grace the PS3, there's every reason to look forward to this episodic onslaught. Check back soon for the full review.