Sin Episodes: Emergence Review (PC)

Age Rating: PEGI 18+ for swearing and violence.

What is it?
First-person shooter with a humongous-boobed supervillain. The first in a planned series of episodes, so it’s quite short.

Is it fun?
Yep. Most definitely.

Is it worth the money? US$14.95 via Steam or £14.99
Via Steam, yes. I was charged £9.54 by Barclays. You could do worse with a tenner.
There’s not really enough game for £15 if you’re an experienced FPS player. Maybe if you dial the difficulty up to the maximum.

Why?
‘Tis fun! The AI is nowhere near as pedestrian as some reviews would have you believe. It’s better than the AI in Black and I love the way you can throw a grenade into the middle of a group, watch them scatter and hear the screams of “Incendiary! Aaaaaah, aaah, it burns!” Shooting down people using jet packs has much the same effect as well. Love it! Pity that the agonised screams are better voice-acted than the main characters.

It’s a bit less fun when you’re standing on a very small balcony and they throw grenades at you.

Gameplay-wise it’s a fairly generic FPS with a rather uninspired premise, though the level designers have done a pretty good job of making a corridor look like a fully-fledged dockyard environment. Even so, I still enjoyed the later levels even though I was never quite sure what the heck I was meant to be doing or why. The repetitive battling of the same enemy units was saved by a ready availability of grenades and environmental objects that blow up with a satisfying whoosh.

The writing ain’t great and they seem to have missed the point that there should be some kind of internal resolution within an episode. I didn’t feel like I’d achieved much at all by the end. Shot a bunch of stuff yes, but as far as plotline goes it was unsatisfying. I really hope they’re not going for some kind of Lost reveal-many-questions-but-few-answers style of writing. It’s immensely frustrating and at least with Lost you get character development and back-story every week. Since Ritual Entertainment are going for episodic releases, the plotline really needs to be properly developed to give players a reason to buy another episode of this instead of just downloading one of a million FPS maps available free on the Interweb.

Keep an eye open for the details on posters and container labels. They’re…. *a-hem* interesting, to say the least.

The Arena mode is worth a look if you’re into personal challenges. It’s a set of single-player maps where the difficulty adjusts depending on how well or how badly you’re doing. I like the one where you’re 6-inches high in a science lab, but not for the gameplay. I just enjoy laughing at really tiny grenades. :)

Links:
Some advice for John Blade
Sin Episodes Official Site
Ritual Entertainment
The Music

Screenshots:

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