I happened to see
this review for Siren and the way it was reviewed was surprising. Focusing on how it's worth playing because it gives you a glimpse into someone else's world rather than because it's fun. Seems a Notgames-ish type of thing.
Not sure how I managed to miss this thread, as the Forbidden Siren series is one of my favorites and one of my greatest influences as a creator. The first two games were catastrophically inaccessible and demanded great (and often boring) work from the player. You never "reached" the next level, you had to UNLOCK it by replaying old chapters in new ways. You're never told the story, you get to piece it together from clues you may or may not find, and sometimes from the assumptions based on those clues, or the assumptions based on those assumptions. There are some pretty effective revelations to be had down that rabbit hole. As a work of interactive storytelling I admire this detective work that it makes the player do. Rather than being told in a linear fashion, it sort of starts in the middle and then expands outwards until the player is satisfied that he's understood enough. There isn't much of a determined order of things, the credits roll early and often, and mean nothing. You're never immersed in the belief that you are the characters for long, rather the player becomes this journalistic entity that gets to share the perspectives of all characters in order to piece the puzzle together. The story is the fundamental challenge. You might wish it was the only one, but there's something to be said for the (hideous) difficulty level that makes every morsel all the more valuable. It's a great game to play with a co-pilot to discuss things with. As a horror game, it gets some points for the stealth focus (at least the first one), but ten minus for killing you all the time. It's usually fair though, and as long as you can maintain an extremely careful playstyle (in order not to die) it's a chilling experience. But I believe no one can do that for long.
I usually don't recommend these game to anyone though. If anyone asks, I usually tell them to play Siren: Blood Curse for the PS3 instead, which is a watered-down remake (remake as the word is used among movies, not games). The developers actually said that if the original was to be considered a true story, then Blood Curse was to be the american movie based on that true story. So the documentary vibe is gone, and the story has been linearized. It's a lot more accessible and fair and GOOD, but also quite a bit less interesting.
