Sin and the Wages of Sin mission pack (also Emergence)

[Roguey]

I avoided this for the longest time because I was under the impression that only the first set of levels was any good. However, another poster here (I forgot who, and can't find the exchange) assured me that was not the case. Well, he was right. While it lacks the polish of Half-Life, almost all the levels are fun to go through, barring a few near the end with failed gimmicks (underwater maze, indestructible turrets that can only be turned off temporarily, enemies that spawn out of nowhere in plain sight). Oddly enough, the last few levels reverse course and deliver a frustration-free reward for having put up with all that nonsense (though it is a bit cheap how the final boss is an outright lift of Doom's cyberdemon). The alternate paths and C&C were nice, though it's a shame they contributed to its buggy release. Tim Cain would have approved given his thoughts on Quake 2.

Wages of Sin starts off a bit weaker with its damage sponge spiders, however once you get to fighting human enemies, it starts delivering Deus Ex-quality level design. I was impressed, and not at all surprised to see that the two guys mainly responsible went on to work on some of the most acclaimed cinematic shooters (Medal of Honor, CawwaDuty, Uncharted), even if those titles are perhaps not the best use of their talents. Unfortunately, the final boss is an utterly terrible series of damage sponges and I got so fed up with it that I just god-moded my way to see the ending cinematic. A lousy sour note to end such a high quality series of maps on.

At least Zak Belica's music remained great throughout. I wish this guy worked on more stuff I was interested in. My favorite tracks were Elexis's theme (love theremin-sounding synthesized operatic vocals) and Manero's Casino from the expansion (jazzy, makes the inevitable backtracking a pleasure).





It was nice to finally find a classic fps I could enjoy after so many disappointments. Not going bother with Emergence though, since it appears to be three hours of nothing (I'll make a note to listen to the soundtrack of course). (It was actually five and a half hours of okay.)

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Not going bother with Emergence though, since it appears to be three hours of nothing (I'll make a note to listen to the soundtrack of course).

Big mistake, great gaem (yet too short). It's worth just for excellent gunplay (so rare in age of decline) and terrific High Rise level (play at least that one using console command to choose that map).

One of the last PC-to-the-core fps games, truly underrated.

 

[Siveon]

If anyone is going to play this - use my mod. It works for both Steam and retail releases.

It's a shame the game was as rushed as it was. It's still very good regardless, but some of the later levels felt rather underdeveloped. Things like the xeno labs just felt outright unfinished. There's a lot of unused dialogue and omitted music, too. Apparently there were a lot more cut interactions, or at least certain levels were quite different.

Emergence is okay. I don't really remember much about it, but shooting people's heads off as fun enough for the couple of hours it lasts.

That's a really good mod.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

I've foud my screenshots of SIN:E from some other thread - game still looks gorgeus, better than any modern blurry mess released after Crysis 1.

 

[Siveon]

It's a shocker we haven't seen more indies try to recreate FPS games around this time. It's all survival open world games, Wolf3D clones, procedurally generated roguelite-dating sim-action-rpg nonsense.

 

[Spectacle]

Not going bother with Emergence though, since it appears to be three hours of nothing (I'll make a note to listen to the soundtrack of course).

Big mistake, great gaem (yet too short). It's worth just for excellent gunplay (so rare in age of decline) and terrific High Rise level (play at least that one using console command to choose that map).

One of the last PC-to-the-core fps games, truly underrated.

It's a fucking disgrace that they didn't get to make any more episodes for SIN Emergence. At the time we didn't realize what we had, and could have never predicted that a massive wave of popamole would drown out quality games in the coming years.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Wasn't impressed by those episodes at all. Original Sin was great though.

 

[Jezek]

I'm glad to see that Sin is getting recognized here. You are right that it's all about the great level design when it comes to Sin. It's what made the hit scan enemies tolerable.

The main reason that Sin's level design was so good was that Richard Grey "levelord" who made around half of the maps in Duke Nukem 3d worked on many of Sin's levels. To this day, I still cannot find a FPS that's emulates the speed and feel that the Quake 2 engine provided in that game along with its incredibly fun level design.

When talking about Levelord, I think Sin was sadly the last game in which he was really in his groove. I don't think he created that many levels for many of the games after Sin that Ritual made. From what I've gathered in interviews after Ritual turned into a casual games company, between technology becoming too much for him and for some games like Star Trek: Elite Force 2, despite it being a single player focused fps which was his forte obviously, he didn't work on it much because he wasn't into Star Trek. Which was a shame because that game could've been a lot better with his level wizardry.

 

[Jezek]

I'm glad to see that Sin is getting recognized here. You are right that it's all about the great level design when it comes to Sin. It's what made the hit scan enemies tolerable.

The main reason that Sin's level design was so good was that Richard Grey "levelord" who made around half of the maps in Duke Nukem 3d worked on many of Sin's levels. To this day, I still cannot find a FPS that's emulates the speed and feel that the Quake 2 engine provided in that game along with its incredibly fun level design.

http://www.ritualistic.com/games.php/sin/faq.php#sin_levels

It rather seems like he was mostly responsible for the weakest levels in the game, actually.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with hitscan enemies. Pretty much everything FPS ever has them in some form, and Sin is just one of the ones that uses them well enough.

That's a really good find. You're right that those aren't the best levels. I still want to assume though that he still had influence over the general level design that went into the game. In pretty much all interviews I could find for the game, he was the guy talking about the general level design philosophy.

I should've been more specific but Sin has some of the worst ones with the sniper enemies that appear later in the game but yeah Hitscan enemies can be fun to fight against if they aren't over powered. I did enjoy fighting against most of the enemies in Sin nonetheless.

I always prefer enemies that shoot projectiles though even if the projectile is too fast for you to actually see and dodge because I find myself on some level subconsciously being able to register the difference between hitscan and projectiles as I play the game and projectiles don't take me out of the game like Hitscan calculations do.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, the docks, jungle, the gorge, and area 57 were more frustrating than fun to me. The plant and the mansion were all right though, and I did like how the labs were mostly a showcase of weird stuff punctuated by easy enemies here and there after dealing with the frustration of the previous levels.

When it came to the snipers, they were at their best when a cautious and observant player could see and take them out without getting hit, and at their worst when they were positioned in such a way that there was no way to avoid it (either with or without metaknowledge). There was a mix of both, sometimes in the same level.

 

[DraQ]

Haven't played the expansion or anything after, but the original SiN was pretty awesome, if somewhat rough and ugly.

It didn't look as good as HL or Unreal, a lot of mechanics didn't work or feel as well as HL's (gunplay, half oldschool, half modern arsenal, etc.), but it's a competent, innovative shooter with fair degree of nonlinearity and C&C, tons of interactivity, locational damage (up to and including disarmament by shooting someone's gun out of their hand) tons of diverse and satisfying guns, and a lot of snark and witty banter.

A definite classic.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Main reason for SiN being so unpopular was one - Half-Life. People focused on that and missed most of other fps games 1998 year. Hell, '98 was one of the best years for this genre in history.

Top Five:
1. The Reckoning
2. Half-Life
3. Shogo: MAD
4. SiN
5. Unreal

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Ritual was one of them solid FPS companies, much like Raven.
It's also well worth looking into Elite Force 2 which though wasn't as innovative as SIN, has pretty good gunplay, atmosphere and pushed the Q3 engine.

 

[DraQ]

Top Five:
1. The Reckoning
2. Half-Life
3. Shogo: MAD
4. SiN
5. Unreal

The Reckoning? As in Quake 2: The Reckoning? Why is that number one?

I played Shogo for the first time very recently and it was only kind of mediocre. Bad fake anime with some repetitive and trivial shooting. Health barely means anything and you can always stunlock everyone. It's better than Blood 2, I guess, but it was actually less interesting to play.

Quake 2 was blah, but Shogo was at the very least decent. It had C&C too.

The best of 1998 were Unreal and HL (no specific order as it is really the matter of preference - both are awesome and each does completely different things horribly right) followed by SiN.

 

[Curratum]

excellent gunplay (so rare in age of decline)

Source engine, great gunplay.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

If anyone is going to play this - use my mod. It works for both Steam and retail releases.

I used the ultimate patch for SiN Gold version from GoG. Can your patch be added on top of him without any problems? Or is the widescreen already supported by your patch?

I replay the game with addon almost every year, although having memorized most of the sections and enemy placement makes it more like Virtua Cop right now. Great game, which was crushed by the success of Unreal and Half Life, and you had to install the patch from some cover disk added to the game mag to be able to load game way quicker than it was in the vanilla version. You need to play at least two or three times to find all the levels and their objectives, plus the secrets which are really cool, as they aren't mostly just simple extra supply rooms.

Roguey

If you liked Zak Belica's work you should also try Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2. He's got easily recognizable style when it comes to the structure of the compositions, likes to mix guitars with electronic and some vocals from time to time. They fit the games, and they still are good on their own.

 

[DraQ]

excellent gunplay (so rare in age of decline)

Source engine, great gunplay.

You're retarded if you think engine has much influence on gameplay (as long as the gameplay doesn't push boundaries of what is possible in that engine).
Sure, it's often used as an excuse, but that's only because game devs are often incompetent or lazy and can't be bothered to learn how to use an engine effectively or outright refuse to modify anything but superficial scripting and assets.

 

[Curratum]

Well, you're retarded if you consider any Source engine game as having "good gunplay", so yeah.

 

[lightbane]

Dunno why but Sin didn't work for my pc (the gog version at least), but this patch seemingly does the trick. Yay! As for Source Engine games with good gunplay... They're rare, but they exist. Example: EYE: Divine Cybermancy.

 

[DraQ]

Well, you're retarded if you consider any Source engine game as having "good gunplay", so yeah.

I have played a game made with Unity that was:

• 2D
• eye-watering gorgeous
• superbly responsive

Neither of which springs to mind when you think of Unity.

Unless you explain how you think gunplay mechanics and its look&feel specifically and intimately tie into engine being or not Source, I will resume treating you as clueless fool.
No hard feelings.

 

[DraQ]

and you had to install the patch from some cover disk added to the game mag to be able to load game way quicker than it was in the vanilla version.

Without the patch you also needed some +400MB free space for swap to load properly - and this was when HDs came in single digit GBs.

 

[Sceptic]

It was nice to finally find a classic fps I could enjoy after so many disappointments. Not going bother with Emergence though, since it appears to be three hours of nothing (I'll make a note to listen to the soundtrack of course).

The Emergence soundtrack is fantastic, you're in for a treat if you enjoyed Belica's music in the first games, many of the themes return and he makes great use of leitmotif. Unfortunately the game itself is garbage. Maybe by today's standards it'll come out as just ok but don't expect the level design or humour of the originals. The game is patterned after the HL episodes and it shows, in all the bad ways.

 

[Gragt]

Multiplayer was also pretty nice, with some great maps that offered a wide variety of environments and tricky spots. It might not have been balanced but it was fun.

 

[soulburner]

Thank you for reminding me about this game. I recall how my PC at the time could not handle the game at all - very, very long loading times and after everything loaded, it had the specific sound stuttering of Quake 1 and 2 engine games whenever they were below a certain level of performance. It was just a demo version, so I never finished it, now might be a good time to give it a shot. However, I think there's a significant sound delay, like, I don't know, about 200 ms after firing the sound comes up. Happens on both native Windows and on Linux with Wine.

Regarding Emergence, it was a time when episodic releases were thought to be the future of games. Developers would make money for another episode after selling a previous episode - but the idea only sounded good, because not only players weren't too interested in that sort of thing, but also it didn't really shorten the development time. If Sin episode 2 would be ready for release within just a few months after the first (as planned, I think they said it would be 3 to 6 months between releases?) - yeah, maybe it would catch on. But waiting a year or more for another part of the series simply could not succeed.

Probably only Half-Life 2 had enough of a name behind it to make its episodes successful in any way, and they were simply considered expansions or larger DLCs. Also, to many, Emergence looked like a Half-Life 2 rip off - it used the Source engine, it had a female companion, and even one of the enemies was similar to the headcrab. To top it all off, Blade became mute like Gordon. The reviews were pretty favorable, as far as I recall, so there still might be a good game there. But... if it ends in a way that makes you want to have the second part right away... it would probably cause too much frustration. Like watching a canceled tv series...

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Emergence looked like a Half-Life 2 rip off - it used the Source engine, it had a female companion, and even one of the enemies was similar to the headcrab. To top it all off, Blade became mute like Gordon.

Agree but still, HF2 is boring, overrated slog and SiN2 is extremely fun demo that brings apettite for moar.