SiN (1998)

I've just played the first level. So far, it's very Duke Nukem 3D in tone, with a quippy meat-head lead in a modern city setting, with lots of stuff to play about with and loads of pictures of topless women around (in a bank!). It's the Quake 2 engine, I think, so the enemies do lots of fun theatrical stuff, but the weapons feel a little more immediate although the enemies take a lot of hits. It's pretty damn hard already, I'm tempted to start again and knock it down to easy.

The developers obviously have cinematic aspirations and you can tell it's 1998 because the main tonal influences so far are Se7en and Heat. There's a nice intro where the camera follows a couple of pigeons following Blade's chopper all the way from the army base to the bank, only to get fragged by one of the robbers. Then it gives you a very short on rails bit as the first thing you do, before dropping you into FPS mode. So it has a cool, fast-paced feel already.

Another cool thing is that after SHOGO this is the second game in a row to have a non-Caucasian lead.

Loading times are fine, only a second or two. Also, I'm trying to remember if this is the first FPS so far to have an assistant giving you audio updates and commentary. SHOGO has people talking to you but this feels more like the start of a trope (I'm especially thinking of Far Cry 1).

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Uh oh, I'm doing that thing where as I get further and further it becomes more of a chore to start again and replay on Easy but the game keeps getting tougher!

It's still fun and there's loads of cool set-pieces, secrets and alternative routes to take, but it does feel a little fiddly at times - stealth and platform bits add variety but are pretty clunky and frustrating.

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I've given up. It just wasn't very much fun - endless bullet-sponges/wimpy weapons, fiddly level layouts and objectives, and not particularly interesting presentation/story. I might have pushed on a bit further but I got to a boss encounter which is just impossible - locked in a tiny room with two over-powered soldiers and no pick-ups. I checked a play-through to see if I was missing something and the guy took like an hour quick-loading over and over until he finally fluked his way through.

Rating: Red.