Game Reviews

Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren's Call

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Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren's Call

We humans understand distressingly little about the oceans, even though they cover the majority of our planet. And when science falls sort of decoding what exactly lies beneath the water's sun-speckled, dancing surface, legend fills in the blanks. ("Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!")

Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren's Call by G5 Entertainment is an adventure / hidden object game that offers just one more yarn about the demons and beauties that paddle through the briny depths.

The Siren's Call is a follow-up to the successful Nightmares from the Deep: The Cursed Heart, though you needn't play the latter to enjoy the former. Just dive right in, so to speak.

You play through The Siren's Call as Sarah Black, a curator at a Caribbean naval museum. One stormy night, Sarah receives a visit from a strange man bearing an odd statuette. Before she's able to get a clear understanding of what her visitor wants, a team of shark-men break into the museum and grab the figurine.

Sarah is drawn into the chase and rapidly finds herself in an adventure involving a mysterious island, a half-reformed band of pirates, and a strange curse inflicted by Davy Jones, the demon of the seas.

Adventure time

The story for The Siren's Call is interesting to follow, which is good news for a game that takes you from place to place according to story cues. In order for Sarah to unravel the dark history behind the island of Kingsmouth, she needs to work her way through a series of hidden object scenes and puzzles.

Fans of adventure games won't be surprised to learn the puzzle solutions in The Siren's Call are rarely straightforward. "Put out that fire!" doesn't mean "Fill up a bucket of water and throw it on the flames." No, it means finding the key to the hose storage, finding an object to safely pick up the scalding hose, finding the water hook-up, and then finding the valve to the water hook-up.

You're then allowed to move the hose around while it puts out the flames, which is a pretty satisfying way to cap off the chain of events.

Submerge yourself

While The Siren's Call isn't a wildly innovative adventure game, all its pieces fit together snugly and make for a pleasant experience. The game's difficulty is adjustable, so newcomers can take advantage of a generous hint system (and hardcore players can ditch it).

The traditional puzzles are broken up by varied hidden object scenes, and even these can be switched out for games of Mahjong. The Mahjong option is great for players who don't relish hidden object scenes (namely, players confined to a phone screen as opposed to a tablet).

The Siren's Call boasts top-notch presentation, too. The graphics are lovely (the rain-slick streets of Kingsmouth particularly lend the game a moody, mysterious atmosphere), and the voice acting is decent. It's fun to paw through the game's scenery just to observe how good everything looks.

If you enjoyed The Cursed Heart, or if you're cruising for a solid adventure / hidden object game, Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren's Call is a worthy play. It's rated "Arrr" for "Righteous".

Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren's Call

Nightmares from the Deep: The Siren's Call is a grand adventure / hidden object experience for fans of The Cursed Heart as well as newcomers to the series
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