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Ok, so you already know the game’s going to be short.  So the question on everybody’s mind has got to be is SiN: Emergence worth 20 bucks.  It’s a fair question with a not so simple answer.

For the hardworking staff here at X-Play, it often comes down to quality and entertainment value over something as arbitrary as game length, so we were more than willing to give SiN a fair shake right off the bat.  And from the very beginning, the game comes of as extremely promising. 

Know your Roots

As many of you surely remember, the “original SiN” (heh) was a violently entertaining little shooter from Ritual Entertainment. It was a game fondly remembered as “the one that had the evil chick with the huge knockers.”  The rest of the game was typical videogame fare: a near-future run by mega-corporations, lust for power, and all kinds of genetic hoo-haws thrown in for good measure.

Sinful Beginnings

With that in mind, know that SiN: Emergence opens with a shot of Alexis Sinclair (that’s the evil chick) and her enormous bosom hanging gently over your virtual face bouncing and swaying because that, my friends, is why God created physics.  Half-a-cutscene later, your cop buddies show up, inform you that you’ve been injected with some blue goo, and you escape from her clutches.

It’s really a nice beginning that sets a sort of “no apologies” tone.  Boobs. Profanity. Violence.  It’s got summertime action flick written all over it.  And that’s ok.  What’s not ok is what happens once you’re given a gun and told to start playing the game.

Point and Shoot
 
There’s just no getting around it.  The gameplay in SiN: Emergence is really kinda dull.  The levels are competently designed, but it all quickly falls into a “been there, done that” zone.  Environments look like they’ve been cut and pasted from shooters we’ve been playing for that last 5 years.  Industrial harbors, warehouses, laboratories filled with computer screens, steam pipes, valves, water, ducts, exploding barrels, and several varieties of crates.

That, in and of itself, wouldn’t be too big a deal.  After all, we don’t think SiN was looking to break any new ground here, but the combat that ensues within these environments never becomes terribly exciting.  You just wander around and shoot everyone you see in the face.  Enemy AI will occasionally surprise you by acting smart, but more often than not, they’re as dumb as posts.  Things get a bit more engaging once you’re about halfway through the episode. That’s great, but come on; the game is only about 5 hours long.  Pacing is a huge issue in shooters and more so if the shooter is a short one.

Why Am I Not Kicking Ass?

And that’s the thing Ritual is going to have to figure out for future episodes.  There’s nothing off-base about offering a shorter game at a lower price, but if you’re only getting a few hours of gameplay, those few hours better be full of great set pieces.  It had better be wall to wall ass kicking.  For such a short game, SiN: Emergence sure does feel like a whole lot of filler.

But again, the issue here has to be is the game worth your hard earned cash.  That depends on a lot of things that are up in the air at the moment.  Are you willing to invest your money now on a relatively inexpensive, but average game with the hopes that the developers will learn for their mistakes and improve the concept?  And just how long are you willing to wait for each new episode? True quality takes time, and good games aren’t easy.  Hopefully Ritual will be able to get these things out the door quickly enough so as to keep riding the momentum.

The Price of Quality

The cost of a game usually doesn’t factor in to our ratings that much, but in the case of this relatively new frontier of episodic content we feel it does matter quite a bit.  Gamers are now faced with the prospect of realistically committing a generous chunk of change to a series over a period of time if they have any hope of experiencing the “complete story.”  In our minds, the quality of SiN: Emergence in no way warrants a 20-dollar price tag.  We’d have felt better about our game experience if it was priced in the 12 to 15-dollar range.

The jury’s still out on this whole episodic content thing.  Maybe, SiN will deserve some absolution by the time episode 2 rolls around.

Review By: Greg Bemis
Video Produced By: Adam Sessler