SiN Gold

Picked up this old title out of curiosity. A cheesy premise with a mad scientist dressed as a dominatrix trying to turn humanity into a bunch of ugly mutants, with some stolen nuclear warheads thrown into the bargain because why not. Yikes. Still, once you get over the b-movie quality of the story, the game itself is quite fun for a while. I also appreciated the fact you can skip the cutscenes; if you are replaying a level you don't really care about watching it again (what with the now dated graphics...). Gameplay-wise I enjoyed the first half better, plenty of gunfights against thugs, and alternative ways of solving each level, and sometimes your actions in one level can affect the next one, so there is some replay value. However, towards the end the game becomes rather frustrating for a number of reasons: some levels are very dark, to the point all you see is a black screen in certain areas and you can't tell if you are facing a tunnel or a wall. Snipers are annoying as hell, they are often practically invisible in the dark and you have to scan the darkness with your cursor and shoot at anything that makes it turn green, just in case. Movement is also quite iffy and it's hard to move around carefully, or even get up a ladder in a straight line--it felt like gliding on ice rather than walking, regardless of the surface. Last but not least, the game feels confusing and rushed, especially towards the end; at times I wasn't even sure why I'm doing what I'm doing anymore, and some levels were so short they felt incomplete. Eventually, all of it got so tedious I resorted to cheating just to get it over with. Overall, not a bad game, but not one I would want to play over and over.

I finally finished SiN's main campaign over the past week or two, and while I don't think it's the best, it wasn't all that bad. (I was going to do the Wages of SiN expansion, but it's just not my thing. Maybe I'll come back and do it.) The story is pretty good, although there were times I really wasn't able to pay attention because an enemy or boss was trying to kill me. The gameplay is relatively fine, though the SMG spray is deceptive (because it's a hitscan weapon but it looks like it has spread) and the movement on "Always Run" is a bit too slidy, but the latter might be general Quake engine physics. The enemies were confusing and tough in the beginning, but I got better and they became less of an issue. The final boss fight is actually pretty good, even if you can cheese it. And the music is pretty great when I notice it, so there's that too. I personally found SiN to be a little too tedious, but it was an interesting adventure to go on and I'm reasonably glad I bought it. Though don't be discouraged from buying it, you might enjoy SiN more than I have.

Why would you remove the 3D audio in this game? It could've been re-implemented in OpenAL like with System Shock 2 or had both DSOAL and A3D-ALchemy in the installation and let a native installation of OpenAL do the rest.

Its a solid action shooter that speaks to the 15 year old boy within me. I would not call it the best, but it is still rather good. Nice variety of weapons, good audio, visuals are ok for the time. Kinda neat to blow limbs off. Would earn a 4 star if it were not for the jumping puzzle for that one scene. You will know it when it comes.

This is one of the most underrated and underappreciated shooters of the late 90s. I just hope now that its out people will come up with a widescreen patch and/or gamepad support and make some graphical updates.