I’ve always had a soft spot for the SiN games and it isn’t just because of the boobs in it. The original SiN was released around the same time as I started to move from being regular gamer to a real hardcore enthusiast. I’d been playing games most of my life, but it was around that time that I really started to get involved in games as a serious hobby.
That’s not to say that the original SiN was a great game though, far from it. It was buggier than a hobo’s mattress, uglier than the brown stains there-upon and cruder than the manners of the owner. It did however have an incredibly alluring and bountifully endowed villainess though, plus a lot of swearing and explosions and that was enough for my brother to cave in and buy it.
While the low-poly cleavage definitely helped sustain my attention in the game when I started playing it shortly after my brother the thing that really grabbed my interest was the branching storyline. Every time I played through the game it seemed different and I probably played it a good ten or so times (each time with God mode on though as it was a horrendously difficult game). Levels linked together intricately and by completing optional objectives early in the game you could end up visiting wholly new locations and exposing new plot lines later. One game might see you assaulting Elexis Sinclaire on her off-shore oil rig, or her underground geothermal plant, while others had you storm her house or follow her to an observatory.
[break]
Sin Episodes: I love it, but nobody else does
The other thing I loved about the original SiN was the huge number of easter-eggs and secrets hidden throughout the game, as well as the fact that you could interact with the gameworld. Everything from phones to vending machines could be used throughout. It wasn’t a world altering thing, but to me it was a revelation. Most of the FPS games I’d played up until that point had had bland and uninteresting worlds, such as Quake.
I don’t want to give you too good an impression of the game though because, make no mistake, even playing it by the standards of yesteryear was a chore. It was so buggy that I was unable to play it with full sound and had constant graphical issues. Cheat codes were essential and, unless you followed the spiralling plot closely and had a walkthrough to hand, you’d likely never know what the hell was going on in later levels.
I was impressed enough by the game to pick up Sin Episodes when it came out though and, even though the series was quickly cancelled after the pilot, I still have an affinity for that game too. In fact, back when I was a foolish freelancer, I even gave it my vote for Game of the Year at Videogamer.com. Like SiN, Episodes isn’t a perfect game. Again, the graphics are a bit dated, it utterly fails to establish a solid setting and there’s only a handful of enemy types to actually fight.
A lot of content was cut from the full game
On the plus side though, to me at least, the combat feels so finely honed that I’m in constant danger of cutting myself on it. I’ve heard people talk before about certain games that they just innately understand and resonate with on a mechanical level. Like the videos you see on YouTube of seven year old children who just get games such as Guitar Hero and can bust out riffs with very little effort, I just understand Sin Episodes. The guns, the movement speeds, the layouts of the levels, the time delay and way the grenades bounce around – I didn’t need to learn these things, I’ve just always known them. When it comes to Sin Episodes I am the machine.
I fly round corners, pistol in hand, exploding heads like watermelons with single pistol rounds. I pop the tops off of gas canisters and send them flying across the room into enemies before they explode. I love it and as an added bonus I can check out my stats at the end of it all because the game tracks every shot and scales the difficulty to match, adding helmets to counter your headshots and so forth.
Really, a LOT of content was cut
There’s not a lot of reasons to play Sin Episodes. It’s short, plain, immature and the storyline will likely never, ever be completed now that Ritual has been bought out. Still, it’s one of my favourite games and something I enjoy playing whenever I’ve had a couple of beers (typically alone on the Friday nights when my girlfriend is working and when I’m not replaying Hitman: Blood Money) and I want to stretch my gaming legs without engaging my brain. I just skip the intro levels, enable HardCorps Mode (which disables saves) and go. Turns out that being SiNful is a lot more fun than playing Messiah.
Random Trivia: One of the scrolling signs over a weapons detector contains a nod to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, quoting in order the lines of a guard at the Sherrif’s castle. After telling you not to carry guns it later says “No blades, no bows – leave your weapons here.”
Number of Times Completed: Many, many times for both of them. It really is sickening how much time I’ve spent on games that actually aren’t objectively all that good.
That’s not to say that the original SiN was a great game though, far from it. It was buggier than a hobo’s mattress, uglier than the brown stains there-upon and cruder than the manners of the owner. It did however have an incredibly alluring and bountifully endowed villainess though, plus a lot of swearing and explosions and that was enough for my brother to cave in and buy it.
While the low-poly cleavage definitely helped sustain my attention in the game when I started playing it shortly after my brother the thing that really grabbed my interest was the branching storyline. Every time I played through the game it seemed different and I probably played it a good ten or so times (each time with God mode on though as it was a horrendously difficult game). Levels linked together intricately and by completing optional objectives early in the game you could end up visiting wholly new locations and exposing new plot lines later. One game might see you assaulting Elexis Sinclaire on her off-shore oil rig, or her underground geothermal plant, while others had you storm her house or follow her to an observatory.
[break]
Sin Episodes: I love it, but nobody else does
The other thing I loved about the original SiN was the huge number of easter-eggs and secrets hidden throughout the game, as well as the fact that you could interact with the gameworld. Everything from phones to vending machines could be used throughout. It wasn’t a world altering thing, but to me it was a revelation. Most of the FPS games I’d played up until that point had had bland and uninteresting worlds, such as Quake.
I don’t want to give you too good an impression of the game though because, make no mistake, even playing it by the standards of yesteryear was a chore. It was so buggy that I was unable to play it with full sound and had constant graphical issues. Cheat codes were essential and, unless you followed the spiralling plot closely and had a walkthrough to hand, you’d likely never know what the hell was going on in later levels.
I was impressed enough by the game to pick up Sin Episode
A lot of content was cut from the full game
On the plus side though, to me at least, the combat feels so finely honed that I’m in constant danger of cutting myself on it. I’ve heard people talk before about certain games that they just innately understand and resonate with on a mechanical level. Like the videos you see on YouTube of seven year old children who just get games such as Guitar Hero and can bust out riffs with very little effort, I just understand Sin Episodes. The guns, the movement speeds, the layouts of the levels, the time delay and way the grenades bounce around – I didn’t need to learn these things, I’ve just always known them. When it comes to Sin Episodes I am the machine.
I fly round corners, pistol in hand, exploding heads like watermelons with single pistol rounds. I pop the tops off of gas canisters and send them flying across the room into enemies before they explode. I love it and as an added bonus I can check out my stats at the end of it all because the game tracks every shot and scales the difficulty to match, adding helmets to counter your headshots and so forth.
Really, a LOT of content was cut
There’s not a lot of reasons to play Sin Episodes. It’s short, plain, immature and the storyline will likely never, ever be completed now that Ritual has been bought out. Still, it’s one of my favourite games and something I enjoy playing whenever I’ve had a couple of beers (typically alone on the Friday nights when my girlfriend is working and when I’m not replaying Hitman: Blood Money) and I want to stretch my gaming legs without engaging my brain. I just skip the intro levels, enable HardCorps Mode (which disables saves) and go. Turns out that being SiNful is a lot more fun than playing Messiah.
Random Trivia: One of the scrolling signs over a weapons detector contains a nod to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, quoting in order the lines of a guard at the Sherrif’s castle. After telling you not to carry guns it later says “No blades, no bows – leave your weapons here.”
Number of Times Completed: Many, many times for both of them. It really is sickening how much time I’ve spent on games that actually aren’t objectively all that good.
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October 14 2021 | 15:04
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