The Case

A long long time ago I played a game called Sin, I still remember moments from it but those moments are very brief. Now I know that it was a very ambitious project and it got “overshadowed” by Half Life. This time Sin episodes embraced Half Life 2. Ritual Entertainment licenced the Source engine and, by the game design, you can notice a lot of similarities to HL2 like interactive objects or elements.

The Trial

The game starts with you - Colonel John R. Blade, lying on the operating table, with two main antagonists overlooking you and discussing what to do with you. The first thing that will get your attention is the cleavage that is taking up one third of the screen. That’s the main villain Elexis Sinclair, the sexy but ruthless CEO of SinTEK corporation, which is trying to take over the world. The other baddy is Victor Radek. He is the leader of an organized crime syndicate called the Cartel and is Miss Sinclair’s right hand man.

After a short while on the table and admiring Elexis’… ummm... assets, a fire fight erupts and Radek runs off. That’s when you meet your new ally - by new I mean she wasn’t in the previous game. Jessica Cannon has come to your rescue and apparently being tied to the table isn’t all that has been done to you. You’ve been injected with something. Now you not only have to stop Elexis and Radek, but figure out what has infested into your system as well. And this is where our game starts.

The levels are quite varied and you will be going through different environments from sewers to offices. One of the locations I could even actually remember from the first game which was a really nice touch. Usually the levels are very straight forward, but in a few cases you have multiple ways to progress. These aren’t just different routes, they also seem to have more or less enemies depending on which way you go, but there is no real way to know what is in front of you.

The weapons and enemies are a bit of a drawback in this game. There are only three weapons and just not enough variety in the foes you are killing. All the weapons – pistol, shotgun and assault rifle have secondary fire and it’s a nice touch, but the assault rifle just comes into play too close to the end. There are just a handful of enemies, but they are quite different so it’s still fun to fight them.

Sin Episodes has one quite unique thing – stat tracking. These statistics are probably the most thorough I have seen to date. It tracks all your bullets and steps, displayed as raw numbers and graphs. With the help of this tracking comes auto difficulty balancing. The game tries to be challenging, but fair. If you perform very poorly it will ease down on you – the enemies will be slower and less accurate. If you are very good at the game you will see more grenades flying towards you, enemies moving a lot and taking cover. All this happens dynamically, but when you start a new game you can adjust the difficulty level and the rate that change kicks in, or loosens down.

In addition to the story mode there is an Arena mode, where you can compete for high scores in the leader board. This mode mainly consists of recycled single player levels, where you fight waves of enemies with constant AI balancing to keep the best challenge for you possible.

Visually, Sin looks like Half Life 2, which is because it uses the exact same engine – the Source engine. So if you think HL2 is still good looking you have your answer for Sin ep Emergence. To be honest, I think that, in today’s market filled with console ports that have washed out textures, it looks rather good. A bit bulky, but still detailed enough to be pretty. The animations aren’t the smoothest, but they do the job and considering that it was a low budget game and was done in 2006, it’s rather good. Similar applies to sound and music. It’s not the best but does the job just fine. The main characters are voiced brilliantly, but the supporting staff sound just…weird. The menu music will instantly get your attention because it stands out from most games you’ve played – it’s a song.

The Verdict

This venture into Freeport City will take you about 4-5 hours and that should have been a short episodic game. Even though it has mechanics of modern games like iron sights, it’s still better played old school. The game isn’t too heavy on the story, but it keeps rolling and, as the first episode, it should have been just an introduction in the overall plot. Environments change and thanks to the dynamic AI balancing the passing and challenge is kept quite steady. Overall this game is very average in a best possible way, but what increases its value even more is the inclusion of the original Sin. In the same pack, for no extra cost. Unfortunately this game wasn’t a commercial success so it’s quite unlikely that we will see the rest of the episodes, and there were 10 of them planned in total. Never the less it has a great value and the game is fun despite all the shortcomings.

Case Review