News
‘Siren’, ‘Gone Home’ Free This Month On PS Plus
Sony has revealed the next batch of free games that will be made available to PS Plus subscribers in June, and among them are all twelve episodes of the chilling PS3 survival horror game Siren: Blood Curse. Siren never found the audience it deserved during its short run that began on the PS2 back in 2004. How such a smart and unnervingly atmospheric series managed to fly almost completely under the radar twice is beyond me.
At least it Blood Curse didn’t die alone. 2004 was lousy with underappreciated horror games. Siren released about a month after Resident Evil Outbreak and The Suffering, then there was Silent Hill 4 in September. So the next time you or someone you see curses the rise of action horror — which began the following year with Resident Evil 4 — remember, all that was our fault.
Anyway, here’s the full line-up for June, courtesy of the PlayStation Blog:
NBA 2K16, PS4
Gone Home: Console Edition, PS4
Echochrome, PS3
Siren: Blood Curse (Episodes 1-12), PS3
God of War: Chains of Olympus, PS Vita
Little Deviants, PS Vita
And since we’re talking about Siren, if you missed this video tour of Shiraiwa, you should fix that immediately. Shiraiwa is a ghost town nestled in the mountains north of Tokyo, Japan that served as the inspiration for Siren’s Shibito-infested village of Hanuda.
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war, but it was a cheerful illustrator from England who helped to define the terrifying war-torn imagery that inspired what we now know as Grimdark (a hybrid genre combining horror with sci-fi/fantasy).
Unfortunately for fans of Warhammer 40,000, Trench Crusade and countless other sources of Grimdark thrills, veteran artist John Blanche passed away this week after struggling with health issues for the past few years.
While the artist retired back in 2023, he leaves us with an enormous legacy of iconic artwork that continues to inspire gamers and storytellers around the world to this very day.
The news is especially gloomy as it was only last year that Daniel Lowman and Napoleon Dynamite himself Jon Heder released The Grim & the Dark: The Search for John Blanche, a documentary following Heder’s exploration of the Grimdark genre culminating in a heartwarming encounter with Blanche in his own home.
Below is one of my favorite pieces by Blanche, his highly influential depiction of Warhammer 40k’s God-Emperor of Mankind on his Golden Throne.
We send our deepest condolences to John Blanche’s family, friends, and fans.
You must be logged in to post a comment.