Joe - See Also…
Telltale Games aside, with their stellar Sam and Max series’ (of which I’ve admittedly yet to complete a single chapter), episodic content hasn’t convinced me of much. The Half-life episodes swaggered onto the scene with their promise of shorter development times and lower costs, but £20 RRP seems like a lot more money if anything for a third of a game, and I think Valve lost their grip on the idea of episodic content when they released episode 2 with four additional games attached. Sure, its recently been released stand-alone but again…£20?
What with Penny Arcade and American McGee bringing their own models of ‘canned’ gaming into the fore this coming year, it seems like the TV shows of the gaming world are not far off.
So spare a moment for Sin: Episodes - a first person shooter series you may never have heard of - developed using the source engine with the prospect of being released in nine episodes, of which only one ever came to fruition before the plug was pulled. Own3d.
I only remember the first episode - Emergence - because I can picture it vividly sitting on a shelf in Playtime (a second hand games store), £20 RRP price sticker attached. I found it the other day on some site, affixed with the word ‘UNCENSORED’ - surely the best kind of version. At 2.5 gigs it was asking a lot, but starved of FPS’s these days I took a chance.
The game loads up a main menu, complete with a randomly selected character from the game giving you a look and some badass tune (with lyrics!) playing in the background. Production values were high on this doomed project. The game boasts an adaptive difficulty slider, due to which I began to regret playing so competantly about halfway through when enemy AI was suddenly higher than my doobie smoking housemates.
The game loaded and BAM! lying under a big pair of exposed tits. Uncensored to be sure. I immensely regret uninstalling it now as it’s a screencap waiting to happen, but instead you’ll have to make do with the censored version, which is probably more true to the actual game:
Just imagine more flesh on the chick. Anyway, you get up and after a brief escape-the-mysterious-lab sequence find yourself in a nice little car ride cutscene, unrivalled in any game I’ve played. You can switch seats and lean out the window, which comes into play later in the game when you’ll be tearing through a construction site, guns blazing. The game proceeds to take you through a big boat, some sewers and a skyscraper, with some lovely moments thrown in that every Half-Life 2 player will appreciate.
It even improves on some elements that distance it from its big brother. One is the inclusion of canisters for health machines. You have to load a canister before you can start restoring health. Otherwise, shoot the canister and you can inhale the vapor without the need for a machine (although you’ll heal less). Also there are phones, and the game is generous with posters ordained with numbers to call, upon which you will recieve little more than a message, but its still a nice touch. The game is also nice and gorey; a well placed headshot with a pistol will fracture skulls and send grey matter flying.
By the end of the episode its hard to see where things went wrong. a quick browse of google will see a strong cult community/cosplay, and the dawn of Steam distribution should have seen decent sales, but alas.
It’s a no bullshit shooter, with only 3 guns throughout (pistol, shotgun, machine gun) and although it has moments of repetition it stands up there with the best of ‘em. If you only make one Steam purchase ($15)/pilfer one torrent this year, make it this one. I’m sure Ritual Entertainment will be thrilled; at least their greek tragedy of a game series won’t be forgotten.
R.I.P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiN_Episodes
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