He’s quite a talented sketch artist
too, is John. The nightmare visions
he puts into form, all bulging eyes
and blood vessels, are expertly
drawn, if partially obscured by the
manual’s faux coffee rings.
Quite why Elexis Sinclaire wants
to make monsters of people, all
bulging eyes and blood vessels, is a
question SiN barely scratches. She’s
evil. She’s super-rich. Her eyebrows
arch at an especially cruel angle.
That’s all the insight as we get into
the chief antagonist, which is as
much of a shame as the asphyxiating
latex she’s almost always wearing.
As if a buttoned up blouse and
pantsuit would have been the
difference between playing it and
leaving it on the shelf.
Blade and JC fare much better
under deeper character scrutiny. In
keeping the cocksure young hacker
away from the action and thus safe
to chip in frequent jibes at his
enormous boss, SiN finds a way to
bring in some buddy cop comedy
and make it the game’s own.
Having JC there to observe the
extraordinary events you’re shooting
through and then banter with you
elevates the story beyond its prosaic
plotting. Without a spiky haired
white hat watching, Blade would get
away with donning a lab tech’s
yellow overalls to disguise himself
without ridicule. And that would be
infinitely duller. As a helpful
objective reminder and mechanic
explainer, he’s there to address the
player as much as the protagonist,
but in the end it’s JC’s warm and
insouciant bro-ing out with Blade
that stands as one of the game’s
more enduring components.AGE OF INNOCENCE
It’s natural to feel nostalgic for this
halcyon period of PC gaming,
particularly since it’s been so adept
at archiving and updating itself over
the years – Night Dive just released
a Gold version to Steam featuring
the Wages of SiN expansion, and
plans a full remaster soon. But the
exact nature of what was so good
about those days anyway can be
hard to pinpoint.
Enter a wobbly Quake II engine
shooter, all ideas and precious little
polish, that serves a handy reminderthat a crucial player in the PC
gaming golden age was naivety.
Ideas, set-pieces, and mechanics
thrown in with reckless vigour and
scant regard for timelines. Modern
game dev is smart and efficient. SiN
had fully animated bleachers in the
skeet shooting range of its optional
police training level.
Not that we lavished praise on
this game and its ilk for their
generosity at the time, you
understand. This extravagance is
something you can only get a sense
of by playing a game now. No, at the
time everybody was much too
annoyed by the absurdly long load
times – and subsequently bewitched
by Half-Life – to appreciate SiN for
what it was. The last luddite shooter
before the industrial age, happy just
to give you a handgun bigger than
your entire forearm, a screen full of
identical goons, and a driveable JCB
you operate for five seconds then
park up forever.
Night Dive’s typically sterling
work means it’s perfectly preserved
for modern systems and, finally, easy
to run on widescreen monitors. But
Ritual’s plaudits are long overdue for
crafting a shooter whose charms and
replayability far exceed our
estimations in 1 998.SIN FINDS A WAY TO BRING INBUDDYCOP COMEDYANDMAKE IT THE GAME’S OWNEXTRA LIFENOW PLAYING (^) IUPDATE (^) IMOD SPOTLIGHT (^) IHOW TO (^) I DIARY (^) I WHY I LOVE (^) I REINSTALL (^) IMUST PLAY
Just another day for
this guy down the
mutant warehouse.