#145
Posted 19 January 2020 - 10:58 PM
Decided to go through Sin again.
I think it's a very interesting experiment in interactivity. They poured a lot of resources in making parts of the map open up or explode via scripting. It feels like the main goal with the project was to expand the interactivity in Duke 3D's maps by having things such as objectives encouraging you to destroy machinery or use DOS-style computers to open up doors or shut down security. There's a ton of love put into tearing parts of the map into pieces and playing with computers. Particular standout moments are all of Geothermal Plant and rendering the base inoperable in Underwater Passage.
Another standout feature is how what you do in one map affects the other. Destroying everything you can in Geothermal Plant floods parts of Jungle with lava and opens up a route to a brief secret level in Area 57. A secret in Abandoned Buildings unlocks another secret in Construction Site. Failing the objectives in Waterworks Part 2 leads to a second area in the Dam level instead of game overing you right then and there. Little touches like that help sell the idea that you're actually affecting the world instead of just carving through a maze filled with enemies and occasionally getting booted back to the load save screen for pressing the wrong button.
Combat is a bit more basic than you'd expect from some of the guys that worked on Duke 3D. The enemy damage area system that encourages you to go for headshots does spice up what is essentially shooting the same hitscan guy with bad AI over and over again. However, the game suffers from a seriously limited arsenal. The only practical weapons are the shotgun, assault rifle, chaingun (until you get the rocket launcher), rocket launcher, and sniper rifle (on the rare occasions you get ammo for it). The energy weapons are all pretty crap, despite one of them making you find the parts in order to use it. The "ultimate" weapon feels like Half-Life 1's Tau Cannon but worse in every way, and the Tau wasn't even HL1's ultimate weapon. You essentially spend the entire game shooting the game dude and his army of reskins and remodels with the same shotgun or assault rifle you picked up in the first three levels throughout the entire game.
The game tries to mix combat up with traditional monsters, but it doesn't really work. Their movement AI is erratic as hell, making it hard landing hits on them. Their actual attack range seems very inconsistent with length the attack animation implies, so there are several cases where you'll get hit even though you swear you were out of range when it attacked and vice versa. It makes fighting them feel like a coin toss instead of something you can predict and work with, like in other games.
The combat is really not for people that hate hitscan because of how much it plays into the game. Attempting to play it like Doom or Quake will get your ass handed to you quickly. However, if you enjoy juking enemies and gaming their AI so that you can micromanage their numbers, Sin's combat is quite fun.
Map design has some issues as far as playablity goes. It seems to struggle with going beyond exploring what feels like the same corridors and rooms, just with different textures and enemies. Biomech and Waterworks are the most egregious examples of this, since they feel like the same areas copy and pasted, just with different enemies standing around. Dam, despite the interesting premise, feels like the same areas copy and pasted as well, but it's not as bad as Biomech and Waterworks since the dam area that connects the samey areas is interesting.
This doesn't mean the maps are shit, though. Mansion Sinclair is amazing, despite its short length. It has a whole underbelly that can be skipped and the second part lets you infiltrate it from the ceiling, surprising the snipers that would otherwise make life hell. The Geothermal Plant has a very cool concept, letting you essentially destroy the entire hub, that is still pretty neat today. The Silo is a pretty simple area, but combat is really fun since it lets you let loose with the big guns like the rocket launcher and chaingun without worrying about your ammo, which doesn't happen too often in the game. The missile theft/launch scenario at the end is also clever and adds a sense of pressure that most of the game is missing. The underwater map is the only underwater level I can think of that's actually enjoyable to go through, since it takes advantage of the verticality swimming gives you by making you sim up or down a lot to proceed, along with objects falling on you, forcing you to watch your step as you swim.
It has some very cool brushwork. The Oil Rig, despite being very simple from a gameplay perspective, has some impressive brushwork that makes the place feel alive for a 1998 game (thanks Charlie!). Even HL1 doesn't manage that. The Xenomorphic Labs have some neat brushwork that sells the idea that you're really in an Alien-inspired lab well.
The early portions of the game have an odd focus on stealth and avoiding alarms being pulled, with the SinTek offices outright giving you a soft game over if the alarms are pressed. It feel fairly jarring for a game that's all about gunning dudes down. Why does Blade need to worry about sneaking around when he just shredded an entire gang of bank robbers into giblets? What's even stranger is that the alarm system essentially disappears once you complete the second chapter, only briefly reapparing in Mansion Sinclair near the end of the game. It feels like a semi-aborted concept that never panned out, so it was never done past the second chapter. As a completionist, it's a bit frustrating because I want to complete the levels without the alarms being raised as much as possible, even if it leads to constantly save loading or outright having to restart a level. But, that's a problem on my end, not the game's.
I also have a small gripe with how non-hostile NPCs are treated. Some non-hostiles will trip alarms, while others will not. However, if you kill one that can't trip an alarm, JC gets pissy at you for killing friendlies, even though you just killed the exact same-looking NPC that tried to pull an alarm in the previous room. If you don't know what NPCs can trip an alarm ahead of time, it feels like a crapshoot killing "friendly" NPCs. What's the point of having a system where JC chews you out for killing "friendlies" when he gets mad for killing an NPC in one room, then shrugs his shoulders and says nothing when you kill an NPC that looks exactly like the one you killed two rooms ago, but bolts to the alarm as soon as he sees you?
I did notice that the game is still a little bit buggy, despite the patch that improved it. I found that the objectives in Waterworks Part 2 tended to bug out a lot, with the game considering them not completed despite you actually using both switches and the game marking the objective as completed. It felt like it would be easier to fail the objectives there and go for the second part of the Dam instead of try to make game actually register the objectives as done via trial and error. There's also the Area 57 bug, where going through the Biomass Reclamation Center makes it impossible for the final test chamber in Area 57 to unlock, forcing you to noclip to proceed. It needed another cleanup, but was unfortunately unable to get one before the plug was pulled on development.
One thing that doesn't get enough praise is how pure 90s it is. The game looks, feels, and sounds like a so-called adult comic from the early 90s. It has lots of gore, tits everywhere, cheesy dialogue (including the loading screen briefs), a Saturday morning cartoon-tier plot that tries to be more serious than it really is, a wise-cracking badass made of pure muscle, big guns, corny-looking mutants, and a sexy antagonist that loves having her cleavage out. The only thing it's missing is a full-frontal nude shot of Elexis and a sex scene to truly feel like a dumb and edgy "mature" comic from the early 90s. It's a period piece, but in a good way.
Sound design needs some work. While most sounds are fine, weapon sounds are pretty pitiful, with most weapons feeling barely audible. It makes combat feel weaker than it should be as a result.
Even without the bugs and performance issues that plagued the original game, it would still be beat by HL1. Sin lacks the "wow" moments HL1 has, such as the tram intro, the resonance cascade, the rocket launch, the dam, and the cliffside run. HL1 doesn't run into the issue of samey areas that Sin tends to stumble into. Combat just isn't as interesting nor fun as HL1's due to the lack of weapons to play with and the very simple AI.
Despite it's flawed nature, Sin is still a good game. It feels like combat and some level design was sacrificed for all of the interactivity that the game prides itself on, though. There's little else out like it out there, with interactivity and choice affecting how the game plays and architecture looks instead of simply changing what voice clips characters use or swapping one set of NPCs out for another. I think the move towards "the player must be able to enjoy all of the content in the game in the first run" has killed attempts at evolving Sin's formula, at least in FPS games.
2
Help
Duke4.net
DNF #1
Duke 3D #1
Player Lin, on 10 July 2018 - 06:21 PM, said:
