As it stands
there’s only one more Artifex Mundi game to go after this one which probably
means I’ll be picking up Outlast again
soon and addressing more challenging things in the gaming universe. Just not Crackdown 2. However, since I drafted
this paragraph another two games have been released so there’s actually three…
oh well.
Anyway, The Siren’s Call, sees you step back
into the shoes of the protagonist of the first Nightmares from the Deep game as a fish man comes to deliver a
package you are not expecting in the middle of the night. This in itself
contains a lot of questions. Why would this be happening? Why would you go to
such lengths to open the package without any explanation? Especially after the
last time this happened it didn’t go particularly well. As expected it all goes
horribly wrong and after the initial scenes, you go sailing off to Tortuga to
save the world from the Kraken. It couldn’t be more Pirates of the Caribbean if it tried.
My biggest
issue with the game is that of your sidekick who you have actually come to
Tortuga to help. He is completely useless, gets beaten up twice so you have to
save him and then, later in the game, he has the audacity to turn around and
say he can’t help you unless you go and get him a disguise. It’s the
most ridiculous storytelling ever. I get that it’s driven by the game but
seriously, did everyone forget you came here to help them? Fuck.
The gameplay
is the standard faire of hidden picture scenes and puzzles and there’s no real
new stuff. I did think there was a lot of backtracking required which was nice
as you didn’t know when you were fully done with some scenes. This is more in
keeping with the older Artifex Mundi games.
In addition
to the hidden picture scenes, you can also play Mahjong and this is where the
game being originally built for PCs suffers a bit. Having to move the
highlighted tile around was troublesome to the point where I couldn’t actually
select the one I wanted from time to time as it was in an isolated position and
the cursor wouldn’t go there.
Achievements – 1,000 Points – 30
Achievements
In terms of
the achievements, outside of the main game, hidden picture scenes, not using
hints, blah, blah, blah there are two things you need to do to get 100%.
The first
thing is collectibles. They have actually made this much more challenging than
previous games. You need to find three sets of collectibles which include
parrots which morph in and out of existence, octopi which are just normal
collectibles but are sometimes quite tricky to see and hidden seahorses. There
are only seven seahorses but in order to find them you have to click on things
you wouldn’t normally click on to get them to show up. And they break the
convention of having only one hidden item per scene – in one scene, there are
two seahorses to be found!
The other
thing is completing all of the Mahjong games which means two playthoughs of the
game are required. You also have to complete one of these puzzles in less than
1 minute and the only real way to do this is by switching to Mahjong after
finding the last item in a hidden picture scene. This tricks the game into
thinking you done a Mahjong game in under a minute.
Downloadable Content – N/A
Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren’s Call is
a relatively quick completion despite the second playthrough requirements. It’s
one of the better games in terms of gameplay too. The story is good despite the
questionable behaviour of some characters so all in all it’s a solid game as
well as an easy 1,000 Gamerscore.
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