An old game review

This is an old review I wrote on the Gamespot user reviews way back in 06 for the first (and only) SiN Episodes game and felt like posting it. It's one of my better (not to mention shorter) reviews I've written but far off from perfect.

Almost a pity we never saw more of SiN episodes because it may just have been something. Maybe.

Is this all you get?

Sin Episodes is supposed to be the forefront of the new episodic gaming fad. The whole idea is to give a couple hours of gaming for a decent prize. But if Emergence is supposed to be the first of many parts, things aren’t that bright.

The game opens with John Blade (a.k.a. you) being tied down to a medical table and has been injected by something. This just rang cliché bells, as these things usually signal that you suddenly receive weird powers in the end. But now it merely causes you to faint a couple of times, and inducing some weird dream sequences. One which screams of fan service (Elexis in a bikini anyone?)

But before your end is near, your new pal Jessica busts you out from where you're captured and you get away from wherever you were. From here the games rolls on with this story. Which is what exactly? Because that's one thing you don’t hear so much of a story when you play. You get hints here and there, but nothing conclusive on what's going on with Elexis and her new found friend the russian-ish drug lord. The only real evidence you see is the very big mutants that you face two times in the game.

The AI puts up a good fight, even if they usually just stand there and shoot at you most of the time. While some throw grenades at you, but most of the time they just stand there and shoot. Half-Life 2 had a bit more mobile AI, but this can probably be decided through the difficulty settings, which feel a bit uneven, as I got the feeling that they didn’t adapt after my play stile. As after I while I started dying quite a bit on some areas, but the AI seemed unchanged as they shot at me. And then I played it post-patch where the AI was even harder.

The weapons in the game aren’t that much to look at. It’s the standard three weapons of FPS games, a pistol, a shotgun and a SMG. They aren’t that special from other games, they spit bullet at different rates of fire and have their own typical special attacks. Nothing that impressive. Hopefully, further episodes will expand your arsenal with something more diverse, doing all episodes with the same weapons will most probably get dull. Ironsights are also in, but they are mostly unused anyway. There is also a melee attack, but that's more because there is a lack of a crowbar or knife for all the supply boxes.

One thing that I noticed from the beginning was that the fabled car scene was gone. As some of us do remember, Ritual boasted about their opening car scene that was supposed to be free flowing and could change from play to play. But this scene was apparently removed at a later date, which doesn't surprise me, as the other (few) car scenes in the game is more or less on the rail, you just sit there and get from point A to B on a rail. Maybe this scene will return in a later episode, but the boast has already fallen flat on its face.

Ritual also promised that you would be able to have finger in what was going to happen in the next episode. But the thing is that, this doesn't happen in Emergence. At one part you come across a situation where the bad guys have your partner under the gun. The first thing I thought was "Hey, I should put a stop to this. I should wait until I get a good moment to pull the shot." And then the game just automatically lowers the weapon for me as if I was talking to a friendly NPC, making me unable to throw of a single shot. And instead of a moment where I very well could change how the scene plays, Instead you are treated with another exposition scene which in the end leaves me with the same ending, despite how many times I try the same scene. So once again, I feel slightly cheated by Ritual, as the promised changeable content is not visible, especially in such an important moment where I should more or less as promised, be able to change what was going to happen.

One sad change is that John Blade now plays the Freeman card. He is more or less mute in the game. In total he speaks 4-5 lines. This consists of one or two words in total. He speaks more in one of the trailers than in the entire first episode. While others around you speak like waterfalls. Especially Elexis loves to talk when she's around you. So many bits of the game more or less consists of you standing there, silent as a log, hearing others talk to you. And keeping in line with the lack of decent plot available, this comes out like gibberish in many cases, as they try to be aloof and not to expose too much. Especially Elexis loves to mention that you have powers to unlock (once again, the cliché bells are ringing about superpowers.) This in the end gets dull and long drawn. Hopefully, these things will either become shorter or scarcer in later episodes.

On the graphical front, the game looks good. Being driven by the source engine and all. The game has slightly shorter loading times than Half Life 2, which is good. As on a slow computer, those can become aggravating in the end. But here, the loading times are a bit more slimmed.

On the sound part, the only surprise for me was the quite good song in the main menu. Quite worth to dig up from the game files and play on your media player. Other than that song, the music was quite oblivious, can't say I remembered it that much. In comparison to Half Life 2 which has some quite memorable songs, such as Triage at Dawn (opening of the Sand Traps) and CP Violation (beginning of the game) the music in Emergence was either not just there or passed away very quickly. The weapon sounds were okay in my meaning, nothing that mentionable as they sounded as such weapons are supposed to sound.

The voices, where okay. Elexis had that seductive undertone to her voice which was quite fitting to her. While Jessica sounded a bit too similar to Alyx in some aspects.

To be short, the game is a letdown. It can be finished way too fast. I made it through in fewer than 5 or 6 hours, or perhaps even less, this in the "medium" setting. So for the price of the game I got more or less a whole day of gaming with almost no replay value, not even finding the rest of the secrets are that much of an enticement to do it. As it feels like an incomplete product without the other episodes to back up its story. Also the lack of being able to change things is sad to see. One would at least want to explore other options in certain situations, as you were promised. Instead you are ushered from one non-revealing exposition to another with no way of doing it otherwise. The ending is a let down too, all you get is something that can be classified as a boss fight, or two succeeding boss fights to be correct, which are post-patch not even that hard to do if you know how to do it. And after that, there's just a teaser for episode 2 which seems to promise an expansion of the story, but for that we have to wait and see. In the end, Emergence is nothing but a teaser of what's to follow in Episode 2. As nothing really spectacular happens throughout the entire episode. If this is to be classified as the pilot for the future Sin Episodes, I wouldn't be the least interested in the rest of the series.