Despite the lack of a number in it's name, Siren Blood Curse is actually the third Siren game,  the previous two titles having appeared on the Playstation 2. Blood Curse is a remake  of the first game, so you don't need to have played either of the other games to enjoy it.

Blood Curse sees you taking control of a variety of seven characters, the majority of whom are part of a TV crew making a documentary about a village  that disappeared many years ago. I think you can see where this is going. Not only do they find Hanuda, the village in question, but they also end up being pursued by the village's now undead inhabitants.

Yes it's survival horror time again. Only this time, stealth, not shoot-em-up action is the order of the day. Because while you can pick up a variety of weapons, your enemies, the Shibito, are more than capable of kicking your behind. Especially when you start encountering some of their nastier forms. But you do have one distinct  advantage over these gruesome foes - a nifty little feature called sightjacking. For reasons that are never quite explained, you can see through the eyes of any of the Shibito, split screen fashion, making it easier to  avoid them. Though hearing them muttering to themselves in their strange language will make you more than a  little uneasy.

Siren's: Blood Curse is split up into a number of chapters, each of which is subdivided into three or four parts.  It actually works quite well, making the game feel like some kind of TV serial. And you can in fact play through the chapters in any order, though it makes things a little confusing should you choose to do that. Especially if you jump in half way through. How so? Well, because around the half way mark, something odd happens, something  which I consider one of the game's few negative points. If you don't want to hear what amounts to a minor spoiler, you should probably stop reading now.

Still with me? Okay. What happens is that the game switches to some alternate timeline and you get to go through the various levels again, following a different set of events. This isn't as annoying as it sounds - certainly not as annoying as it was in Silent Hill 4 - but it does mean everything you've done up to that point means precisely nothing. Admittedly, this is explained by the game's storyline,  though, which, by the way, has more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at. It helps that the game was created, as was the original Siren game, with the participation of many of the Silent Hill team. Unlike Silent Hill  5, which has been farmed out to an entirely different team.

It's hard to find much fault with the game itself. The graphics are pretty good, and the voice acting is top notch, which is a relief given how shocking the voice acting was on the original game. And I know I'll be playing it  through at least once more, if only to pick up the story items that I missed last time round. I would take issue with the game's method of distribution, though. At the moment, the most direct way to get it is to download it off the Playstation Network, though given the game is 9 gigs in size, so it can take up a huge chunk of your Playstation's hard disk. If you're in Europe, there will be a disc release later, but if you're in the USA or some other non European country you have to import it from Play Asia or elsewhere. Or alternately, buy it from the Playstation  Network for about twenty pounds or equivalent and be left with something you can't sell when you're done with it.

That gripe aside, whether you wait for a disc release or not, it's well worth getting your hands on Siren. It's great fun to play, it's both scary and unsettling, and is one of the best survival horror titles in recent years.