"RayneJarre's Review"

SiN Episodes: Emergence is a first person shooter released in 2006, that is the sequel to SiN, a first person shooter released in October of 1998.

Gameplay - 9/10 - This system introduces a dynamic AI, essentially, if you start the game on easy, but manage to run around getting headshots all the time, the game will adjust accordingly. This was included to keep the pace up for anyone who plays the game. With this, however, initially came many complaints; the AI would sometimes scale higher than expected for some people, making the end of the game near impossible for them. A patch is going to fix this problem. My experience was perfectly fine; there was a long time at the end when I was sitting at 5hp on the edge of my seat, hoping that the stray enemy bullet would not hit me. I completed the game in a little over 7 hours, which was expected. There are only three weapons in the game, four with grenades, but they suited me just fine. Running on the source engine, and with Havok physics, blowing away an enemy at point-blank range with a shotgun has never felt so good.

Story - 6/10 - The story for this game is lacking, and requires at least a bit of back-story from the first game. In the SiN Universe, the world is set about 30-40 years into the future, the police force in the world has all but dissolved, being accused of being ineffective. With this, many large corporations began hiring internal police, and many mercenary groups arose. HardCORPs is one of these groups, however these groups do not get along very well, and there is a bit of tension among them. During SiN Episodes, you will slowly uncover a plot revolving the drug U4, which makes a return from the first SiN.

The Story is there, but unfortunately, not told well. Many people will probably be lacking the back-story from the first. However, which the purchase of SiN Episodes on Steam (At least, for me...I am not sure how long it will continue) You will also get a copy of SiN 1, so you can go back and learn the back-story if you like.

Graphics - 8/10 - The character modeling, level design, and texture design is very well done. The environments in this game are brighter than say, Half-life 2. However, it is created very well. The effects in the game are there, but they are not as impressive as the other First Person Shooters on the market today, playing through the game, I saw little that made me say "Wow! I haven't seen that before!” However, I personally also rank graphics lower than game play, and so I was not really looking around for visuals as much. What is neat is that the system allows you to shoot gas containers, explosive barrels, Gas canisters, and other destructible objects, which can create for some humor when faced with difficult encounters; and, at least in my game, there was a lot of fire going 'round.

Sound - 9/10 - The sound in this game was quite nice, coming from a musical background, I am usually critical on sounds in games. The opening theme is very nice, and the music in game flows nicely, minus some hiccups between track changes. The in-game ambiance is quite nice, and uses, from what I can tell, an environment map; for I had EAX disabled, but still had environmental audio, which was quite pleasing. The enemies have a variety of unique lines to keep them interesting, and it is fun to hear them yell, "Look out! Incendiary!" to "Ahhh! I'm burning!"

Play Time/Replay Value - 6/10 - The playtime is estimated (From Ritual) to be 6 hours, however, I put about 7 hours in. There is a bit of replay value in the game, as they give you a nice important stat monitor, so you can watch stats from how often you get headshots, to how many footsteps you have taken, to how many enemy grenades you have thrown back. The stats are _very_ detailed, and with good reasoning, as these stats are (optionally) uploaded to Ritual, which in turn is how they are going to develop the next games in the series. If they see people setting off traps to kill their foes much more than just running in and killing them, then they will structure future levels to incorporate that. It is a nice system, and allows players to run through and see how they are doing. There is also many secrets in this game, which for some people, adds in a lot of replay value to go find everything. I could not foresee me running through this game more than 3-4 times in succession, simply due to its FPS nature.

Final Recommendation - If you enjoy first person shooters, then I would say try this game. It retails (In stores and on STEAM) for only $19.99, which really is not too bad. If you don't like first person shooters however, I don't really foresee you liking this game either, it doesn't add enough away from the genre to draw in people who are looking for something more.

Overall Scoring:
Game play - 9/10
Story - 6/10
Graphics - 8/10
Sound - 9/10
Play Time/Replay value - 6/10
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Total: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/16/06