SiN Gold

I really miss games from this era. the over top action, bad ass and cool main character, no mtx, Elexis Sinclaire is a interesting and unique villain with brains and beauty and interesting game play mechanics ( interacting with the game world and Armour mechanics ). If you liked Duke Nukem 3d, you will love this game. The worst thing about this game is that it will make you wish more FPS were interesting like this.

The game starts nicely, but gets too confusing and generic along the run. There are too many bugs, the bosses need "cheating", driving parts are horrendous, "invisible" snipers are annoying, loading times are perplexing, menus are bad, sounds are awful, main vilain is "meh". Finishing this game was a matter of honor. "Damn", I tried to like this game, but I don't recommend it. Fairly forgotten.

I remember when the demo for SiN came out and it could barely run on my computer. It took something like 2 minutes to load the level, and on top of that it chugged like a mofo. Nevertheless, my young 14 year old self walked away thinking "wow, that was pretty cool! I wonder if I'll ever be able to run it." Well, it's been 26 years and I basically have a super computer now, so I started dusting off some of the old dreams and seeing what I missed out on. I guess I'm just glad I didn't drop a $50 on it, way back when. What this game has going for it is enormous ambition. There are vehicles, a ton of guns, a lot of interactivity (at least early on), and a huge variety in the level design. You go from a bank, to a construction site, to a dam, to a waste treatment plant, to an underwater base, to a jungle, to a secret laboratory, and that's just the stuff I remember. You even get turned into a mutant at one point and have to do this mutant combat thing. There's a firing range mini game, branching levels, on and on and on. It's very much an attempt to bring the blockbuster sense of possibility that Build engine games had into the 3D era, and it's hard to not be kind of impressed that they were doing all of this stuff in 1997. The downside is that the gameplay itself is extremely tedious. The levels just stretch on and on, the driving is difficult to control, the interactivity is distracting when you're just trying to figure out what switch or item you need to fiddle with to progress, the guns are uninteresting and the combat is bland, and the monster thing ended up being more of a hassle than anything else. I played it early this year and I'm not sure if I even beat it! I think I got to a point where I thought I was about to beat it and then another 6 levels showed up, and I realized that this game was never going to get fun, and that there were other old demos and dreams that I was more excited to follow up on. My advice: avoid unless you're doing idTech2 research.

I can remember SiN received a fair bit of coverage in games magazines back when it was released. However it was something that I had skipped over until now. All you need to know is that it's a FPS from the late 90s/early 2000s. This should put it within the same cultural sphere as games like Kingpin and Deus Ex, seeing as they also utilize the Quake 2 engine. The game pretty much plays like Quake 2 with a change of aesthetic. You play as Blade who is aided by your hacker friend, and your purpose within the game is to take down the Sintek corporation. Gameplay is fast, and the levels often have an element of puzzle to them -- get the filtration system working; find key; etc etc. Where it fails is that if lacks the variety and creativity that are in games like Kingpin and Deus Ex. Environments are bland, and are initially set in offices and labs. The voice work and cutscenes do make things interesting, but I found it a chore, for the most part, to play through the levels. I think a game like this could do with less levels (there are around 30), and should have focussed on quality of levels instead. If you're into the Quake 2 era of FPS gaming, this might be something for you as it is certainly borne from that era. However I think it shouldn't be a first choice, as there are better options available from the same cloth.

The sexy villain and the ridiculous story and writing can be charming for a while, but the game has a lot of issues, like: - unsatisfying gunplay, - frustrating controls, especially ladder climbing, jumping, opening doors and containers can all suffer from jank, - you can get killed by furniture doors or get stuck in the environment quite often. - The enemy AI and animations are really bad and fighting some of the faster enemies can be very frustrating, although I got better at killing the enemies I never felt any satisfaction from the fights, which is a major issue for a game of this genre. - There are some really boring parts where I had no fun at all (all the underwater parts). - Lackluster final boss fight (very easy to cheese). Some levels had interesting elements, like using computers to disable security systems or infiltrating an area in disguise, but they are interrupted with cheap nonsense that is thrown your way, like a part where you control a vehicle, that has really awful controls or enemies spawning around you endlessly. Overall I do not recommend this game unless you really need an FPS and you have played all the better ones already. That being said some people really seem to have enjoyed the game, so maybe it is just not my gem.