"Blade is back!"

Although there's quite a bit of history behind SiN, the bottom line is that it was largely overlooked in favor of Valve's classic Half Life. Now many years later with Half Life 2 already wowing the fans Ritual Entertainment has decided to take a different approach. Instead of competing directly with Valve they've instead turned to them for help and as such Emergence is based on the Source engine and will be distributed on STEAM. Also Emergence is just the first part of a nine part series that will continue directly after the events of the original SiN.

Those that missed out on SiN the first time round might be a bit confused as to what exactly is going on, a fact that isn't helped much by the fact that the game comes with no manual. You once again take the role of John Blade, a member of Hardcorps, the elite security force that's tasked with protecting the people of Freeport. Blade had a bit of a run-in with Elexis Sinclaire, the beautiful but twisted head of Sintek industries in the original game as she dabbled with genetic mutation using the public as test subjects. Now four years after the events of the original game Sintek is bigger and more powerful than ever and they even control certain zones of Freeport. Things don't start out that well for Blade as he wakes up strapped to a table while Alexis and her lackey Radek gloats over him. Blade also gets injected with an unhealthy looking green substance but fellow Hardcorp agent and newcomer to the series, Jessica Cannon, soon comes to his rescue and from there it's a race to track down Radek and find out just exactly what they've done to Blade. Not much is done with the plot after that but it's a good enough excuse to kick some ass and Emergence has plenty of that.

Since it uses the Source engine Emergence looks good but unfortunately not quite as good as Half Life 2. Character models look a little less detailed but are still nice (especially Alexis who waste no opportunity to show off her well endowed body). Most of your enemies are generic soldiers who reminded me a bit of the poor grunts in Metal Gear Solid 2 but you'll also run into the odd mutant or security drone. Worse of all however is the heavily armed and armored machine gun soldiers who can cut you to shreds in just a few seconds. Environments are good looking and while there isn't that many of them each one is nicely detailed and entertaining enough to traverse. You get to explore the Freeport docks, Radeks lair and even the Sintek building but the whole experience is sadly very short lived. Then again this is only the first part of what looks to be a very long series so I'm sure there's plenty more interesting places to come. The stages may not be as destructible as some recent games but you can still have a lot of fun especially with the explosive barrels. The fire effects look excellent and since all your grenades are incendiary you'll get to see it a lot. There's also a rather interesting looking effect whenever Blade inhales a certain type of gas resulting in everything running in slow-motion (they had to get that in there somehow…)

The audio wasn't that spectacular and apart from a rather cool tune on the title screen I barely noticed any of the background music. Sound effects are nice though as is the ambient noises. The speech is also rather good and nothing beats hearing your enemies screaming as they catch fire or the yells of the jetpack soldiers as you destroy their means of flying. Controls are a breeze but I was rather disappointed by the limited weapon selection. You have your trademark handgun, a shotgun and a machine gun which apart from your grenades is your entire arsenal. Granted each weapon does have a secondary attack but still three weapons? I guess we'll have to wait for future installments to get access to more goodies.

While Emergence is fun to play it does have a couple of rough patches and unfortunately also a bug or two. The much hyped “challenge” setting which auto adjusts the games difficulty level depending on your skill has a tendency to go a bit crazy at times resulting in hordes of deadly enemies mowing you down time after time. I'm sure I wasn't good enough to warrant that kind of retaliation so ultimately it was way more frustrating than it was challenging. I also hit a game stopping bug at one point which could only be sorted out by accessing the games console, hardly an elegant solution.

Having prior knowledge of the series is nice but not essential to have fun with this one so don't let that stop you from trying out Emergence. It's a straightforward; all out action packed shooter that while not exactly groundbreaking makes for a nice title to play when you feel like this type of game but don't have weeks to finish it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/26/06