SiN Episodes: Emergence

"Like Half-Life 2, only not boring"

I was wary of this game at first, because as a single-player game based on Valve's Source Engine, I was afraid of the game being a reskin and story mod of Half Life 2 (which I did not enjoy). But it turned surprisingly good, and I did enjoy it much more than HL2.


Graphics 9/10
The graphics are pretty standard as far as the Source Engine goes. If you have low settings, a lot of the game looks rather pixelated, blurry, or jagged, especially without antialiasing. But that is the price to be paid for high framerates. I played the game on low resolution with medium settings. It looked perfectly acceptable to me, but I value gameplay more than I do graphics.

Frames may drop when shader-heavy things happen, like when the incendiary grenades go off. Also, with low settings, some of the random textures on the wall are illegible.


Sound 9.5/10
There's a song during the beginning, and it's pretty good. The lyrics correspond to various motifs in the game. I am pretty much the opposite of an audiophile (audiophobe?) so I really don't notice much difference between in-game music between this and say, HL2. They both have drum-type tunes when fighting enemies, otherwise it's just ambient or silent when nothing's happening.

I guess it's 9.5 because there really wasn't anything sound-wise to catch my attention in-game. The guns all sound like guns, I don't have much more as an expectation.


Storyline 8/10
What really turned me off of the storyline was the sort of repetition that a lot of FPS games have. Zombies in the middle. In Halo, you got to the middle and met the Flood, zombies. In Half-Life 2, you got to the middle and had to go through Ravenholm, where there were headcrab zombies. In Doom, Resident Evil, Quake, and all, there are invariably crazed zombies that charge you without consideration for their own lives. In this game, they're "mutants," which act a lot like HL2s headcrab zombies, in that they rush you quickly and melee attack you.

It would be nice not to have to fight zombies, because they act rather formulaically, and attack without regard for their own welfare. They don't take cover or retreat or anything.

Otherwise, the story is somewhat interesting. You are injected with something. Let's go find the guy who injected you and see what it is. It doesn't try to overstep its bounds with something like SAVE THE UNIVERSE, SAVE HUMANITY, DESTROY THE DEATH STAR. One of the antagonists has a Russian accent and the other one has massively large breasts. Just to keep things interesting.


Gameplay 9.5/10
This is definitely the shining point of the game, and the reason for this review's title. Half-Life 2 was not enjoyable to me, due to the short bursts of action being interrupted by monotonous gravity puzzles or "go find the switch that opens this door by climbing on rails and going in to another room." I like my shooters to be about shooting, not arbitrary door-open puzzles. Sin: Emergence doesn't put you through any of that. There aren't any puzzles, and you won't waste time trying to find the switch to a door.

The game is pretty linear. There are generally enemies somewhere in front of you (occasionally behind or above, if you like surprises) and you have to shoot them until they die. But many spaces are relatively open, and the enemy can run around to flank you. You know, because they say things like, "I'll take him from the right!" The enemies aren't stupid, usually. They're supposed to be tailored to your skill level.

The guns are balanced nicely. There are only three, and each one has its selling points. The pistol is great at long-range, and each shot is relatively powerful, and it holds 20 shots. The shotgun does a lot of damage at close range, but is slow and crappy at long range. The assault rifle is good at medium range, but has murderously bad recoil, so aiming is difficult. The guns aren't really redundant, it's not like a lot of shooters where one gun is just another with better rate of fire or more ammo.

I have a few gripes about it which take away from what would be the 10/10 laurels.

1. There are only three guns. They have interesting secondary fire abilities (superbullet/supershells/grenade launcher) but it doesn't make up for their small number.

2. The game's melee attack is not implemented well. It's a lot better than HL2, where you actually have to select the crowbar to do a melee attack, but getting into melee distance and trying to aim a melee attack is too difficult. If you charge an enemy, and if you aren't directly aimed at him, you seem to run past him when the blow lands, resulting in no hit. I found it much easier just to charge while firing a gun because the by the time I got to melee range anyway, the other guy was dead.

After the campaign, there's also an Arena mode, which is sort of like a deathmatch, but against the computer. A bunch of enemies randomly spawn, and you have to run around a level killing them. They are infinite in number, and their skill matches yours, so you'll probably die eventually. It gives you stats so you can see how you do in great detail, which I've always enjoyed.


Conclusion 9/10
This game is a very well-done shooter, and its metacritic score of 75 doesn't really do it justice. It's pretty cheap on Steam, I would recommend it to you if you liked the shooting part of HL2, but wanted more of it, or wanted it to be more intense.


Random complaint
Originally planned for many episodes, Ritual, who made the game, was bought by a company of casual gamers, so they're not really doing SiN games anymore, instead churning out different flavors of bejewled or tetris for a mainstream audience. ick.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/14/08

Game Release: SiN Episodes: Emergence (US, 05/09/06)