Multiplayer

Thresh's comments in BLACK

SinFest

Over the past few months, the same question has been lingering in all of our minds: How will the latest bad boy of the first-person shooter genre, Sin, stack up in the multiplayer arena against the granddaddies of online gaming, Quake and Quake II? Well pallies, you're about to find out. Kenn and I have spent a large portion of our testing time this past week playin' Sin multiplayer, or SinFest, to get a good grasp of what it has to offer. Through hours of rampaging random servers and beatin' up on a poor terrified lil' Kenny, I've come up with four words that best describes what I feel about SinFest: Not quite on target.

Sin is a fun game with interesting weapons and innovative new levels, but it just doesn't have that oomph to take it to the next level - the level that inspires people to take the leap of faith, to switch games, and never look back. Quake gave me that inspiration roughly two years ago when I was a Doom junkie, and while we've all been crossing our fingers for just one of these new games to replicate that phenomenon, I've come to realize that it just ain't happenin' yet. Okay, so SinFest isn't a show-stopper; but what it does have to offer is a nice change of pace, some amazingly cool deathmatch levels, and an interesting twist of fighting tactics.

Let's go through some of SinFest's characteristics:

Physics Model

The physics model Sin uses is fascinating one, and should satisfy both Quake and Quake 2 players alike. It has air acceleration, which allows the player to change direction while in mid-air (this should keep Quake players happy), but also allows strafe-jumping, the technique Quake 2 players use to strafe and jump at the same time to gain more forward momentum, though to a lesser degree. However, on a few Net servers I've played on, the settings seemed to be tweaked to a point where strafe-jumping was almost its effectiveness in Quake II. In addition, zig-zagging and wall-running are both still effective in Sin, which should further make Quake players feel like home. Also, the jumping in Sin is so strange that, if you keep jumping, you'll never make a footsteps sound. Bug or a feature? A free Kenn pin-up poster to the person who guesses correctly!