SINCLAIRSPECTRUM
After clearing the stealth mission
though, SiN’s digressions from the
corridor shooting vogue of the time
are fewer. Levels within Sinclair’s
wicked facility can come and go
with little imprint on the memory.
There’s a sense that after the
freewheeling nature of its opening
levels, any further conversations that
began, “It’d be cool if...” ended with,
“Yeah, but we ship in two months.”
Laboratories give way to warehouses
and sewage works that might be
visiting from any number of other
shooters from that period, before
SiN seems to remember itself again
and start flinging absurdly and
hilariously disparate locations at
you. Oil rigs. Jungle. The ocean floor.
All perfectly reasonable places for a
policeman to visit in pursuit of an
evil biotech boss.
While the cohesion of its levels
ebbs and flows in the moment,
Ritual’s commitment to interactive
toys is a constant. Computer
consoles are a particular highlight,
offering the odd moment of
proto-immersive sim problem-
solving. Then and now, the kick of
disabling a whole area’s cameras or
turrets from within a security room
hits beautifully. You might even pad
Blade’s bank balance out by
transferring funds from any number
of Freeport City Bank’s customers,
including one Billge Yeates and
Elexis Sinclaire herself. Evidently
nobody told her about company
accounts. Twenty-three years laterit’s still unclear what the advantage
is of doing this, or why Ritual saw fit
to include it in the game. Like so
many of SiN’s extraneous touches,
I’m glad they did.
Most lavish of all is the training
facility, a lovingly constructed
tutorial area that many players
would wilfully breeze past on the
way to a new game, or fail to spot on
the main menu screen. Anyone who
does would miss out on the skeet
shooting and sniping ranges, the
shooting galleries where cardboard
terrorists and civilians pop up, and
the inconspicuous buttons on the
wall that deploy bleachers from the
wall, as if all of John’s buddies are
about to down tools and watch his
mastery. Before you even get on the
helicopter to that bank, you’re sold
on the future-cop fantasy.BLADE RUNNER
Before you install the game, in fact.
SiN’s manual sets the scene before
disc ever meets disc tray, detailing
Blade’s troubled dreams and
disturbed visions in diary form. A
life on the beat, it appears, has taken
its toll on the man’s psyche, and the
appearance of a new street drug that
makes monsters of people has done
nothing to take the load off.BRINGING LEXY BACKWhatMsSinclaire did nextWAGES OF SIN 1999
An expansion pack that pits John
Blade against a crime boss who
wants to take over Freeport.SIN: THE MOVIE 2000
Despite carrying the name, the
animated movie adaptation plays
pretty fast and loose with canon.SIN: EPISODES 2006
An episodic sequel with only one
episode, titled ‘Emergence’. Poor
sales did for the rest.SIN RELOADED 2022?
A Night Dive remake running on
the studio’s Kex Engine, coming
out soon.OLD GAMES, NEW PERSPECTIVES
REINSTALLNah, don’t mourn
them. They knew who
they were working for.ABOVE: (^) Mancini was
no looker even before
the mutation.
Where are your quips
now we’re in the same
room, huhJC?