SiN Episodes: Emergence Gameplay Movie

[Oddmaker]

Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com) has a new movie which contains whole new Gameplay Footage of the SiN Episodes: Emergence.

SiN Episodes expands on the role of Colonel John R. Blade, a battle worn hero in charge of HardCorps, an elite strike force with a long history of conflict with SinTEK, a powerful multibillion dollar empire headed up by Elexis Sinclaire, a beautiful, brilliant, and ruthless scientist who is out to remake humanity according to her own twisted vision. Joining Blade on his mission are JC, a HardCorps hacker with a secret to keep, and Jessica Cannon, a fiery rookie who can find her way into any secure facility.
Watch or Grab the 145MB file from Gamespot here (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/sinepisodes1/media.html).

[Varsity]

Uncapped download (http://www.1up.com/do/download?cId=3139884).

There's some very shakey content in there, but then (apart from the rubbish voice acting and flat writing) it's not finished yet. The actual mechanics look decent enough.

[Oddmaker]

Thanks. Evil Avatar has been slow with news latley, Yes yes i know everyone's busy :)

[fitbabits]

Thanks. Evil Avatar has been slow with news latley, Yes yes i know everyone's busy :)
Hey, there's games to be played and numerous dubious news submissions to go through before we get to the decent ones - like yours. We're trying. :o

[sebastard]

yeah the writing and voice acting is terrible.. I hope it gets better, because a shooter is a shooter is a shooter, Source engine or not..

[GrimSanto]

I liked the first Sin a lot. It had the misfortune of coming out around Half-life. The Kiss of death.

[Somefool]

It also had the misfortune of being made by people with a poor concept of level design :(

[dojoteef]

Yeah it came out just after Half-life. I'm a big SiN fan and I'm glad that they are finally able to make a more modern sequel. The game had some fun gameplay and fresh game mechanics for the time. I think it got overlooked with the buzz surrounding Half-life, especially because Half-life was a more polished product than SiN.

[spacerat100]

sin did have quite a few bugs in it. I remember some kind of major savegame problem...

[Oddmaker]

Hey, there's games to be played and numerous dubious news submissions to go through before we get to the decent ones - like yours. We're trying. :o

I know fitbabits ;) only messing around hehe

Also to be honest it doesnt look that good the game :(

[EGO]

Yeah, all of the roughness of the original Sin, crap level designers and ridiculous load times killed it as soon as the Half-Life demo came out.

I was all in to play it, depsite the problems, but then along came Half-Lif eand the rest is history.

[thecrazyd]

I know I played SiN, but have next to no memories of it. Weird. Wonder how many other games are a void in my head.

[EGO]

I've got movies that are like that, like "The Forgotten". Outside of the stuff shown in the trailer, I can't remember a thing about it.

So, looked at the video. Looks "okay". Looks like "Perfect Half Zero Dark Life Lite". Since I like the look of PDZ on X360, but don't like some of the "Rare-isms", I might give this one a shot, so I can play that game minus the things I don't like. ;)

[thecrazyd]

Looks like its got a bit of a HL2 meets FEAR vibe going for it. And it is sure to win the game of the year for "Most Exploding Barrels." Might be interesting.

[Paranoia]

At least they will have Cortana. ;-)

[earthworm48]

I have my old PC still loading the first level of SiN. Its only at 80% now, 1.4 years left!

I would say to get the video from 1up, its generally a better quality vid, apart from some guys arm that appears in front of the screen occasionally.

(The old cop guy in that vid - ARRRGH, he looks like something from a Quake 2 engine game.)

[Nameback]

I only looked at 1up's video, please tell me that is indeed some guys hand and not actually in the game? I found it extremely annoying. It seems like with all the exploding barrels and people getting set on fire that its looking like the sounds are going to get very old very fast. Before I was looking foward to this game, now, not so sure.

[earthworm48]

Its a guys arm for sure. (I found it funny when you said hard, some guy waving his "hard" around in front of the screen. heh.) Well there are lots of rough looking bits (the old guy, the truck, the repetitive locales) that I wouldn't expect to see, (oh and I didn't like the orangey pinkness of the waterside level's sunset) and it looks pretty repetitive (lots of games are though) but it could be fun. I'd like a demo myself though, even if the episode will be quite cheap I'd rather save the money if I can. I can't remember if there is a demo planned or not, and I was on Ritual's SiN eps site which had that question in a FAQ or something about 15 mins ago but I just can't remember.

[Anju]

Wow if I wanted to get hyped up about this game I shouldn't have watched this video. That voice acting is pretty piss poor; I'm letting it go on account of it being in development.

That said, did anyone else get the huge feeling this is just Half-Life 2 in another skin? Especially when you watch how the soliders move around, just standing there waiting to get shot?

I mean yes it's the Source engine but technically Half-life (the first one) was modified off of Quake 1, and I'm pretty sure the enemies in Quake never behaved like the marines in said game. Let's hope they decide to revamp that in the future. I do like the melee attacks though, even if that is pretty standardfare nowadays (I sorely missed that in HL2. Hitting people with a crowbar is fun and all, but the Halo/Call of Duty mechanics of just rushing and bashing without needing to change to another weapon really appeal to me).

Kudos to the huge cleavage shot when Blade is lying on the table. I guess it IS possible to hide the bland human emotion with a good ole shot of sex.

[BenN1ce]

The A.I. looks god awful

[MasterKwan]

I'm pretty damn excited about this. I liked Sin and I think I'll like this. Original Sin required a 30 megs patch to be playable. This is back in dialup days too so, it WAS the kiss of death.

[F3nyx]

There's a lot of content in there that's taken straight from Half-life 2. The "ears ringing" sound (that plays when something explodes close to you) is the same, and I think I recognize the blood splatters and the "I'm on fire!" animation. The voice acting is extremely cheesy. Physics need a lot of tweaking -- pistol-whipping and kicking objects and ragdolls propels them much too far.

[Draft]

Unimpressive.

[Captain Awesome]

There's a lot of content in there that's taken straight from Half-life 2. The "ears ringing" sound (that plays when something explodes close to you) is the same, and I think I recognize the blood splatters and the "I'm on fire!" animation. The voice acting is extremely cheesy. Physics need a lot of tweaking -- pistol-whipping and kicking objects and ragdolls propels them much too far.

As much as I love HL2 and its mods. The ear-ringing sound-effect and simulated deafness was around before HL2. As for them taking it from HL2 as you say, grenades actually do that. Much like the flashbang grenades. The blood splatter isnt the same, its just the same stylized monitor effect.

I dont understand what you mean by the "Im on fire animation" comment? Is there any other way someone or somethign should animate while on fire. Sin was never about realism, which is what made the original so good. Its like shoving comicbook sensibility into an FPS. I thought people would pick up on that by the gun-switch/flipping animations and exaggerated action, which I loved in the video.

There are a few things id say need to be tweaked by they're minor. I still want to see hands doing the actions, instead of the effect being performed for me. It still bugs me that I can't look down and see my own legs, feet and appendages doing what im making them do, in game. And the AI to perform a bit more randomly. But that's it, I promise :p

So far its looking excellent, i'd like to know how much of the driving/FPS design there is in the game and how versatile it can be.

[Furtive]

Ouch. I was soooo looking forward to this game but that video did NOTHING for it. The physics were over the top. The ai was god awful. Everything about it felt like "My First HL2 Mod(TM)" I pray that ritual gets it together before the release. And that they release a new vid or demo that convinces me to give it another chance.

[Rafer]

That said, did anyone else get the huge feeling this is just Half-Life 2 in another skin? Especially when you watch how the soliders move around, just standing there waiting to get shot?

Besides the afore mentioned hearing loss effect just like HL2, where those headcrabs jumping around? Also that big monster's shape and movement reminded me of Dog.

[F3nyx]

wordsMaybe I wasn't being clear. I don't mean that they took the ideas for those things from Half-life 2 -- I mean that they're using sound files and blood splatter sprites and animations that were included in Half-life 2. Since they're licensing the engine, they can reuse those resources. Doing so isn't quite unusual (Pariah, which used Unreal Engine 2.0/2.5, included UT2003 bloodsprays and pain-grunts, at least at first), but most well-made games use completely original content.

[StoneGut]

Well... I'll get it.. looks decent enough and will probably be a bit better...

[Worldcrafter]

I wasn't terribly impressed either, which is too bad. As for HL2 content, yeah, there was quite a bit. I'd say the most obvious examples were the outdoors harbor area textures and models. The pile of girders that swings into a fence? I swear both the fence and girders are straight from HL2.

The nice thing about it coming out in episodes is the authors can, if they fulfil their promises, take the comments people make about EP1, and improve the game for EP2.

[The Iron Weasel]

Its almost upsetting how bad that looks, seriously its like they took every level section from HL2 and just put them in different places.

[UnderHero5]

I was actually going to purchase this as soon as it was released, but I think I'll wait and see how it comes out now.

The gameplay looks extremely generic and I know it's using the Source engine, but I'm seeing way too much stuff re-used from HL2 (has the same blood sprites, some of the art assets (groups of girders that smash through fence door), and the ear buzz when a nade goes off close to you).

If they are going to make an entire game they should at least make ALL of their own content. There's also some big generator things that are reused from HL2. the flame sprites (which I personally think suck) from HL2.... All things they COULD/SHOULD change to their own stuff.

Plus I heard the same death noises from the baddies enough just in that 10 minute video to last me the rest of the week...

guess I'll wait until it's done before I make up my mind though.

[KarmaGhost]

Looks like a HL2 mod, which I guess in a way it really is. Not impressed.

[Anju]

Looks like a HL2 mod, which I guess in a way it really is. Not impressed.

Too bad you'll have to pay for it.

[Liquidize105]

The game looks solid; my concerns are always the with gameplay. Take the exploding canisters, they seem to be at every turn, on every shelf, by every choke...

The dialogues are amateurish and the voiceovers are over the top - is it because of the carryover storyline from the 90s, back when "game story" is an oxymoron?

[Emabulator]

It looks like HL2's source code has crash landed in the middle of a Uwe Boll film.

[TKO]

The dialogues are amateurish and the voiceovers are over the top - is it because of the carryover storyline from the 90s, back when "game story" is an oxymoron?
Y'know, except for a very few big-budget highly-polished cases, I really feel speech in games is a bad thing. Why do people get it so wrong all the time? If they can't be bothered paying a few local actors (with reasonably neutral accents) to do it well, just don't bother. Put subtitles and spare us the pain.

Another nice alternative (in less-serious titles) is sim-lish nonsence-talk combined with subtitles. Loved the way that was done in "Pirates!" ..but even that can be screwed up. "The Movies" implementation of it is just repetitive (which is a shame, because huge effort was put into everything else.)

[Subbacultcha]

... and 7 years hence people will be reminicing on Evilavatar how Sin: Episodes was a rough diamond with a heart of gold.

[AspectVoid]

The game looks solid; my concerns are always the with gameplay. Take the exploding canisters, they seem to be at every turn, on every shelf, by every choke...

The dialogues are amateurish and the voiceovers are over the top - is it because of the carryover storyline from the 90s, back when "game story" is an oxymoron?

Personally, I liked the cheesy dialogue. It made me think of the corny Sci-fi movies I love watching. To me, that's just what Sin is, a cheesy sci-fi/action flick.

You know, its really nice having low standards. You should try it sometime. :D

[AspectVoid]

Y'know, except for a very few big-budget highly-polished cases, I really feel speech in games is a bad thing. Why do people get it so wrong all the time? If they can't be bothered paying a few local actors (with reasonably neutral accents) to do it well, just don't bother.

Actually, that's not the problem. The problem is that the US really doesn't have a voice actor industry. What the game companies do is get some local actors and pay a fee, and this is the quality we get because the actors don't care.

If you look at Japan, the reason their games are so well voice acted is because they have an industry of proffessional voice actors who really care about the work they do. That's really what the US needs to get right now.

[Draft]

... and 7 years hence people will be reminicing on Evilavatar how Sin: Episodes was a rough diamond with a heart of gold.Hahaha, I know. Where are all the people from the first SIN threads who were creaming their jeans over the sequel to the woefully unappreciated SIN?

[AversionFX]

Jessica Cannon? What a stupidly generic name.

[Dr Quincy]

Is the Source engine designed to make everything but HL2 look like a poor HL2?

[The Iron Weasel]

Is the Source engine designed to make everything but HL2 look like a poor HL2?

It would seem so.