To recap on last month’s review of the opening three episodes of Sony’s downloadable survival horror remake: it was very dark and unsettling, the controls were clumsy in an effective but avoidable way, and the story was confusingly told but well supported by a sharply designed interactive archive. It was scary, inexpensive and recommended – the only question was whether the game could sustain its quality over the remaining episodes.

The answer is a more or less a straightforward yes. Some elements develop just as hoped. The shibito, for instance, evolve beyond their initial bleeding-eye zombie form into ever more gruesome insectoid mutations (David Cronenberg’s The Fly hovers menacingly over the distended hybrid horrors as an obvious influence), which varies play – enemies can fly and walk on ceilings – as well as making things generally more horrific.

Other areas are revealed to be as weak as feared. An unhappy knock-on effect of the new enemies is that, as the limits of the game are tested more fully, the flaws in the controls become more noticeable, especially during combat. With shibito no longer anchored to the ground, players may find themselves relying more heavily on the optional first-person perspective rather than the cumbersome default camera, and the resulting comparison with FPS games is unflattering.

On balance, Siren is still a remarkable achievement. Not the technological breakthrough Sony was initially hoping for, perhaps – the announcement of an eventual Blu-ray release signals the end of that – but it’s still a very effective and, at £20 (ed: in the US, episodes 5-12 go for $30 total), attractively priced horror game.

8/10