Sin and Punishment: Successor of the Earth

"Treasure's best 3D game, and the Nintendo 64's wonderful swansong."

Sin and Punishment is best described as what would happen if Starfox, Time Crisis, House of the Dead, and Jet Force Gemini all got together and had a beautiful love child. I suppose now is as good a time as ever to acknowledge this great game, considering it does take place in 2007 despite being made in 2000. Why you never got to play this game is sadly unknown. It was translated into English. Hell, the voice acting was originally in English anyway, don't ask why, so all the nitty gritty was already done with, and the only thing left to really do was release it. It never happened. I guess it could have been due to a lack of interest, considering this was right on the line between the birth of the Gamecube and the death of the Nintendo 64. In any case, you have been robbed of one of the finest games the N64 has to offer. Regardless of your language capabilities, playing this game is awesome, even if you have to import it for a ridiculous price and carefully saw off some bits of plastic so that it will fit into your inferior American console. Dammit, you deserve better. You pay your taxes, and you are a respectable citizen, so why the heck wouldn't Nintendo just push through all the paper and do whatever minuscule work it required to release this? I don't know. Sin and Punishment is friggin awesome, just about as badass of a shooter as you will find on the console and great mesh of different elements of third person shooters. It isn't without it's little issues, but the fun factor is through the roof.

The game is a futuristic third person shooter that moves along on “rails,” that is, you don't choose where you move but instead how you aim and sidestep while going along that set path. The two main characters are Saki and Arain, two brave, sensible rebels, and you control them through the games several levels. You are expected to be a walking army with very few weapons, namely a police issue laser gun and a sword built into it. This may seem simple for some peoples tastes, but adding anything more would just ruin everything. It's really all you need, and you never find yourself wishing you had other weapons in the game. Learning to use both of these weapons efficiently is key; the gun has two modes of aim, one manual and one less powerful lock-on, and they both have their time and place. The key to playing this game effectively is being able to move, aim, and shoot at the same time, and it can get pretty difficult. There are a lot of buttons used in this game, for sure. You need to sidestep, roll, jump, aim, and dodge bullets in rapid succession, so you've got enough on your mind to worry about without having many weapons to chose from. The sword is used for close combat only, and it is initiated by tapping Z very quickly when something is near enough. If you can manage to master it, you can end up doing a lot of damage, saving a lot of aiming, and quickly taking down stages with greater efficiency.

Sin and Punishment is, like most games by Treasure, short but sweet. It's over just as you have gotten pumped enough to enjoy a game three times bigger. Fortunately, the game is so packed with action and fun that it doesn't really matter. There are several difficulty levels and reason enough to play through the game several times. The sound can be a bit annoying. There is this great scene where Arain is battling her way through a monster infested subway in the dark and it is so ruined by the background music. As far as backgrounds go, the graphics are stunning and great for the N64, but the character designs are presented very poorly. It may be a mixed bag on the outside, but it's interior is solid. It really does remind me of Time Crisis and other similar arcade games where the player has to deal with enemies jumping down from places and sidestepping into different positions that you have to be aware of. Particularly memorable is a scene where Arain takes down an entire Navy in a matter of about two minutes flying around at dizzying speeds on a piece of jagged metal controlled by a psychic friend. It may seem a shame that this game ends so soon, but it's worth playing over and over again. I just can't stomach that we never got it officially, at least until the Virtual Console. It's a real shame. But all is well that ends well, and everyone with a Wii and some spare cash, or the will to find the original cartridge, should definitely get their hands on this one.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/24/08

Game Release: Tsumi to Batsu: Hoshi no Keishousha (JP, 11/21/00)