SiN Review

Respawning Enemies

Thresh's comments in BLACK

Kenn's comments in BLUE

Ever watch Mars Attacks?

I did find some flaws in level design as I progressed further in the game. To begin with, the game just stretched on a little bit too long, kinda like a decent three-hour movie that had boring parts in the middle. All of the levels in the early part of the game made sense. There was a purpose, a mission, and I was constantly encountering new scenery. However, near the middle to late parts of the game, I felt like Ritual just wanted to drag the game on longer. To make matters worse, they dragged it on even longer (and made it unrealistic) by spawning in enemy grunts and soldiers. As an example, on one level where you have to upload a virus to the computer, I swear I sat in a hallway for five minutes just shooting enemies that would magically reappear behind me, even though I had just cleaned out that area of the room. Realize that I'm talking about one room, and not one "area." So I'd kill everything in the room, turn around, and the next thing I know, three more enemies appeared behind me. It didn't make any sense. What started out as an awesome, flowing, immersive single player experience started deteriorating into a Quake-esque "kill bad guys, find key, find door, push button, exit level type game." Thankfully, these lackluster levels make up only a small portion (four or five total) of the many levels that Sin contains.

While I have to agree that the interactive elements made the game more fun, I did find it somewhat disappointing when some objects were not interactive, when they should have been for no reason but consistency. Some examples of this are a few of the bathroom sinks which couldn't be used (even though others could), and the lack of reflections in mirrors (even Duke had that). The helicopters also could not be reasonably destroyed, no matter how much you shoot at them - the first time I ended up depleting all of my ammunition just trying, only to end up reloading the level in frustration. I mention this because I thought one of the most satisfying things in Half-Life was blowing up one of the Apaches, and then watching it crash and burn. The animation sequence was absolutely kick-ass, and it being lacking in Sin was quite the downer.

Enemies pop out of the woodwork

I'm also glad you mentioned the scripted sequences. Again, while I agree that it enhanced the game overall, there were several areas where things weren't quite right - more specifically, the fact that they could be "broken." The grunt kicking over the table was really cool, but the first time I played it I shot and killed the grunt before he was able to move. No big deal, right? Well, a few seconds later, the table just rolled over by itself. I didn't understand the meaning of it until I replayed the level several days later. In another sequence, on the level where you become "you know what" (I don't want to spoil it for you guys), I obligingly killed several of the guards attacking me, only to find out that one of them was supposed to open the entrance to the tunnel for me. After half an hour, I ended up having to NOCLIP (cheat to walk through walls) through the tunnel so that I could continue on with the game. Only after reloading the game did I discover that I wasn't supposed to kill this one specific guard (while any number of the others were fair game). Great. Sometimes I wonder what kind of beta-testing Ritual subjected Sin to. These "broken sequences" ultimately became reminders that I was only playing a game, rather than playing in it.

No working pool table? For shame!