Now playing: Sin

I haven't really done one of these articles in a while... but there's sort of a good reason. I was going to do one for carnivores 2 and Watch Dogs at the same time, but renting and entertainment purposes pressured me to stay on Watch Dogs rather than type about it and Carnivores 2... well I stopped playing it when that article was being worked on, so yeah not such a great topic. I may come back to it later though, my dino hunting wasn't over. After that incident, I went to a flea market and snagged a bunch of good games. This included:

-Halo 2 on PC. Score!

-Dragon Age origins. Started it and already like it more than the PS3 version, but I really don't know if I'll see my adventure through or become reminded of why I abandoned it the first and second go.

-Dawn of War Platinum. I own it through steam, but for a 3rd of a dallor this game is worth more than owning in material form. Plus the manual is thick, and it comes with a hefty disc full of old THQ demos.

-Half-life GOTY edition. Funny story about this one. I typed in the key code just to see what happened and suddenly my game went from Half-life 1 and TFC to the entire half-life history of mods and the main game. Looks like I'll finally be able to play blue-shift. Who says 2nd hand gaming can't work with steam? It enhances it.

-Sitting ducks on PS2. Hey, I barely knew it existed, loved the show, and it called itself "open world". Turns out you can still go wrong, but oh well its a novelty to say I have it.

-C&C tiberium wars. I barely know anything about C&C other than that it isn't my main preference of RTS. However it was worth a shot, and I'm sure I can sink my teeth into it later down the line.

However a bunch of good games in one place means backlogging rather than straight up playing them until the sun rises. So yeah there wasn't much to focus on... at least not until GOG put up Sin gold on summer sale, and I'm trying to force myself to see it through. I'm..... not sure how that's going to go.

Now from a core gameplay and atmospheric presence, Sin is a game I absolutely love. Heavy weaponry, mutant filled story, awesome music and cheesy characters, and old school shooter mechanics that hit right around the same time Half-life was becoming a massive thing. It was trying to be different and lift up the 90's shooter style a bit by taking about everything good about it and giving it more story, upgrading the armor system and hit detection, and adding in stealth sequences on top of multiple objectives and path systems. That's pretty awesome, and while I like the era of gaming that followed after half-life I have to wonder what would have happened if Sin took over instead. However I think there are a couple of reasons it didn't, and among them is the fact that Sin just feels kind of clunky.... ok, really clunky.

Don't get me wrong now, its enjoyable, but to say its buggy is an understatement. Crouch jumping is much harder than it should be, stealth and disguise systems are extremely primitive and wreck weirdly (getting hurt by clipping into a wall will blow your cover), the sound is almost comically repetitive, the pick-up system is wacky, and to wrap it all up there are just parts that come off as half-functional. Its down to the point where you'll be reloading saves potentially a few times because one spot will randomly stick you there or fail you in some way, especially if you want to beat side objectives. At one point I was around an abandoned subway station with the secondary mission to protect civilian hobos. This got harder as they were grouped closer to the bad guys, but at one point I noticed a really nice opportunity. Alongside the typical hobo theme there are of course flaming barrels, and with barrels in an old school shooter... they tend to explode. The only civilian in sight was one right beside me with his own barrel. The barrel I was looking to shoot and test this theory on was on another floor level down some steps with two villains firing at me. Well my plan worked, I shot the barrel, and had a weird little flare flash take over the model and kill the guy.... only another barrel several feet parallel to the one I shot exploded as well, and one just out of my view on the same floor judging by a funky flash, and the one right beside me that the hobo was staying by. It killed everyone like a hit some magical remote detonation. Fine I get it, splash damage happens, but with the spacing and the horribly laughable effect that took place there is no way one barrel was supposed to detonate the whole room! The optional mission was of course failed, but I said screw it to the idea of loading up the save and redoing that crap just because the game glitched it all up.

That's really nearly all I can say about the game. Its amazing how much time feels stolen from me trying to simply play the game right, and on easy difficulty to. With that being said though, when the action and guns are going it is a ton of fun, and has a lot of charm to it. Its very sad to know how underrated, overshadowed, and unappreciated this game has had it. Heck its difficult to even find images for it. Its own unfinished episodic sequel has more images floating around, and that's probably just because its newer and had more coverage left out there (well that and it catered more to pervert fantasies, I really hate it when games do that). It might be buggy and clunky, but I can see a lot of heart and charm was poured into a mechanically amazing shooter. I'm not sure how much I'd agree that it was the "last of its kind" but it deserves more recognition. I really hope I can hold back any frustration and win this game, I would love to continue enjoying this.