Sex, Violence, Adult Language, and the American way!!! Review

Sex, Violence, Adult Language, and the American way!!!

Sinners beware!! Repent for your day of judgment is near! Step aside Duke Nukem,

cause Blade is in the house and, as Blade likes to say, “I’m gonna make you

my bitch!”

Alas, Sin

is but another installment into the over-saturated, typically ultra-violent

world of the 3-D shooter. The question which is probably perplexing the minds

of you 3-D shooter fans out there is: does Sin measure up to the competition?

With so many other games hitting the market like Half-Life and Prey,

where should I spend my money?

In Sin, you are super-cop and hero of the day, expert in security and

protection, Colonel John R. Blade, fighting crime in the super violent 21st

century. What starts out as a seemingly typical bank robbery in Freeport turns

out to be much more. The plot slowly unravels to reveal connections with the

recent violent crime increase in the cold city, finally exposing acts of unholy

genetic research and plots to rule the world!

Sin also has its fair share of gratuitous sex (oh baby). The nemesis

to Blade, and all around bad gal, is none other than the buxom temptress Ms.

Sinclair. Ms. Sinclair, who is the boss at Sintek Genetic Research, also serves

up the game’s FDA recommended daily allowance of T & A, essential to the proper

production of testosterone in every red blooded American male playing games

alone on a Saturday night.

Sound exciting? Getting a rise yet?

The graphics in Sin are really good. It uses the Quake

II engine if that gives you any clue, and it does a good job with smooth

flowing frame rates and interesting, fast paced scenery and characters. It even

looks good without 3D acceleration. With 3Dfx, Sin is pure eye candy.

The game looks like a Japanese Anime, filled with lots of cool techno structures,

corridors and gritty, back-alley cityscapes.

What else is nice

is that you can play Sin in the typical, very functional first person

or switch to a Tomb Raider style third person perspective.

The third person is merely a novelty, as it is difficult to play this way due

to bad camera angles. But it’s a nice feature for impressing the yokels.

The music and sound effects are good, but typical with nothing new or even

above average. It is exactly what you would expect from a game of this genre.

The game play is also very good, but again, nothing really new . The environment

is very interactive, you can shoot almost everything and use almost everything:

from the ATM machines at the bank to the faucets and urinals in the Men’s and

Women’s restrooms. However that’s very similar to Duke Nukem 3D and nothing

that hasn’t been done before.

About the only original bit of gameplay is that you can drive and operate

vehicles in the game. Which is pretty cool, but isn’t done as well as it could

have been. When in a vehicle you are simply invulnerable, running over every

pedestrian in sight.

The artificial intelligence is moderate. Sin’s evil denizens are no match

for the Skaarj of Unreal. A nice touch, though, is that the enemies in Sin

are so heavily armored that you really have to aim for the head to make a quick

kill. Sin allows you to target specific body parts, adding to the realism

of the kill. You can shoot the guns out of your enemies’ hands or shoot at their

kneecaps (which doesn’t do much come to think of it), or just splatter their

brains on the wall.

Instead of the typical look-for-the-card-key puzzle to get to the next level,

Sin shows a little more innovation. Computers supply passwords to unlock

keypad opened doors or turn off security cameras. The levels in Sin are

also more goal oriented as opposed to the all too familiar, go in and kill everything

that moves scenario. There is even a level, where you break into a bio research

lab to steal a drug sample, where stealth is the key. Body count is your last

priority.

Sin‘s got a good arsenal of weapons from silencers to sniper rifles.

However, having played so many 3D shooters already, I can’t really say there

was anything that mentionable. Let’s just say you get the standard array.

Multiplayer in

Sin is very good, with deathmatch, team play, and capture the flag. Sin

is well geared to quickly locate a net game for you.

The major problem with Sin, is that it is buggy. Loading time between

games is as slow as molasses in January. You can literally start loading a level,

go and grab a quick snack, use the bathroom, call your girlfriend, and still

have some time to spare.

Also, you can’t save games if you play by starting at the splash screen that

comes on when you pop the CD in. Instead, you have to remember to play from

the desktop icon or the START menu in order to be able to save games. Careless

programming at best.

Throughout the game, you will sometimes encounter moments where it will stop

at a certain location. You can still continue to play, but you can’t progress.

What I discovered was that you have to reload an earlier game because certain

triggered events didn’t occur the first time around, and therefore the game

can’t continue and you have to restart.

For example, there is one level where you’re chasing this mutant through an abandoned subway, and he’s supposed to break through a wall for you to go through opening up to the next level. One time, the mutant simply disappeared through the wall, and I couldn’t go any further.

I guess this is all attributable to Activision wanting to get this game out

before the Christmas rush. I’m sure they’ll have plenty of patches coming out

within the weeks following its release, but that’s no excuse.

Sporting plenty of gratuitous sex and violence, which are staple hallmarks

in every successful American movie, does Sin measure up? Yes. I have

to admit, I liked this game, and have had loads of fun playing it. Is it better

than Half-Life? No way.

Sin is a good tongue in cheek, futuristic, sexy, shoot-em-up. But serious

programming bugs and stiff competition keep it from greatness.