SiN Episodes: Emergence

Gra krótka, z przyjemnym strzelaniem, napakowana akcją i fajną muzyką. Z uwagi, że nie ma i nie będzie kolejnych części, to wiele elementów gry nie miało szansy się rozwinąć i wykazać. Mowa tu między innymi o fabule, dostępnych broniach, czy większej różnorodności oponentów.

This year's likeliest winner of the Yeah It's Nice (Throwback Edition) award. The last couple of levels are a pair of nutcrackers to say the least - I caved and used ol' reliable (impulse 101) a couple of times after I gave up on tackling the finale proper - but overall, what's here [i]is[/i] neat, and I [i]am[/i] sad that Ritual never got to do anything else with this, even if for just another episode or two. I'd also argue that Ritual made [b]astonishingly[/b] good use of the Source Engine to the extent that I feel they outdid Valve themselves in any number of aspects. In interactivity, at the least. Relevant example: Healing in this game functions similarly to Half-Life 2. You have small spray-dispensing pickups found in supply boxes + on the bodies of fallen grunts (usually; I think they only drop if your HP is below a certain value), and you have wall-mounted HP stations. The former isn't particularly interesting. The latter is. Healing stations operate on disposable canisters - again akin to HL2, where you can only heal for as long as the station has its 'charge'. The difference is that SiN allows you to [i]eject[/i] the canister, and if there's a fresh (or mostly full) one nearby, you can slot that one in and keep going as necessary. That's neat enough on its own, but now let's assume for the sake of the argument that you have a full canister next to you. You do NOT, however, have a healing station in the room. Say it's a few doors away and there's like five grunts between here and there, and your HP's not looking great as-is. In which case, you can [i]break the canister open and allow the spray to disperse,[/i] healing you for about half the value that the station would. This also allows for bits of minor, but tense decision-making in certain parts later on - if you're low on health and chance upon a canister but no station, and there's a good chance that the game'll sic some more grunts on you soon, do you break the canister there and take your chances with a lower return on health, or do you carry it around for a while in the hopes you can get the most out of it? This is all just one part of the core gameplay, bear in mind. A lot of what's there, in that regard, feels like HL2 But A Bit More Interesting, imo. Like you only get three weapons (pistol, shotgun, AR), but each one has its use at any given point and they all have secondary firing modes which use their own sort of ammo. There's iron sights that display an orange reticle around the sight itself whenever you're pointing at an enemy from any distance so that you have a better idea of when to fire, instead of potentially wasting your bullet(s) on an obstacle or wall. Melee is embedded in the guns themselves; you hit Q to bash at will. Your incendiary grenades are proper throwables instead of being a separate entity, predictably set to G. So on and so forth. These details and design decisions aren't particularly ground-breaking or anything, but I do think they make for an experience that plays better than if it were based entirely on the HL2 framework. I won't say much about the story since I think it's a fun little B-movie romp best experienced blind on your own time (with or without knowledge of what happened in the prior SiN entries; I've yet to play those myself, but I didn't have an issue following along), but I do have a few passing comments: [olist] [*]How the hell did they bag Jen Taylor for the semi-obligatory 'preppy heroine' role while she was between Halo 2 and Halo 3? [*]The reviews calling the game horny or pornographic because Elexis is a femme fatale that shows up like four or five times throughout the whole thing is equally funny and squint-inducing. [*]The Radek boss fight that would've been in like Episode 3 or 4 would've been awesome. Alas. [/olist] Unfortunate that things turned out the way they did. A year after they put this lovely little piece out, Ritual was bought out and folded into MumboJumbo, who went defunct in 2018 and (visibly) did nothing with the IP in all the years in between. It's not the first company to suffer such a fate and it's hardly the last, either. What's the world come to?

+It's okay. get it on sale. -some cutscenes have really fast fades out, not even giving your eyes time to adjust at what the hell is happening. -sometimes you get an absurd amount of tanky enemies thrown in your face.

Worth a whirl, pretty short. SiN in Half Life 2

if i had been 15 or 16 years old back in 2006, i would have nutted all over the room.

Fun stuff, shame we'll probably never get a sequel

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