SiN

When the CEO of SinTek Industries starts pumping the streets of Freeport full of a DNA-altering drug, things have officially gone past normal corporate evil and into comic-book supervillain territory.

You play as Colonel John R. Blade, commander of a special security force and owner of HardCorps. Blade has made a career, and apparently a religion, out of the security business. Now Elexis Sinclaire, SinTek’s twisted bio-chemist CEO, is building an army of genetically engineered mutants and aiming a little higher than quarterly profits. So yes, it is time to make her pay for her SiNs. Subtle? Not even close. Fun setup for a shooter? Absolutely.

SiN is a new first-person shooter from Ritual Entertainment, published by Activision, and powered by an enhanced Quake II engine. The game is scheduled for a September 1998 release, and after spending time with the demo, this one is firmly on my radar.

Getting the demo was an adventure all by itself. After waiting around most of Sunday during the IRC release party, the demo finally dropped a few hours late because of last-minute bug testing. Then came the real battle: downloading a 34 MB file overnight on a 28.8 modem. Modern players will never understand the spiritual journey of hoping nobody picks up the phone at 3 AM and murders your download.

The demo includes two single-player levels and two multiplayer levels. I played it on a Pentium II 266 with a Monster 3D II 12 MB card, and the results were impressive.

The demo opens strong. Blade returns to headquarters, only to find out there is a bank robbery with hostages in progress. He jumps into a chopper and heads to the scene. The first playable sequence is excellent. The chopper flies up near the bank, and two robbers are positioned on a building across the street. From the chopper, you get a unique first-person shooting sequence before landing on the rooftop and shifting into the normal shooter view. It is a great way to start a demo. It immediately says, “Yes, this is another shooter, but we are not just dumping you in a hallway with a pistol and calling it innovation.”

The first level takes place in a massive bank, and it is packed with details that make it feel like an actual place instead of a boxy level pretending to be a building. Graphically, SiN looks much better than I expected from a Quake II engine game. Using the Voodoo 2, I ran it at 800×600 and did not get any real slowdown or jerking during play. In fact, it ran smoother on my system than Unreal, which is not something I expected to say.

The AI in SiN is some of the best I have seen so far in a shooter. The bank robbers do not just stand there waiting to be shot like cardboard targets with guns. They dodge, take cover, run behind objects, and come back firing. It makes the action feel much less predictable. There are also scripted events that happen as you move through the level, like robbers crashing through glass skylights on ropes. These moments make the world feel active, and they add a lot to the pacing. Instead of simply clearing room after room, you get situations that feel staged in a good way, almost like an action movie. That is exactly the kind of thing shooters need more of.

SiN multiplayer is just as fun as the single-player demo. Finding a server was easy, especially now that GameSpy supports SiN. I played on the WarZone/SiNTimes server on the SiNCity level with 12 people. Even on my 28.8 modem, it was playable. There were a few small jerks here and there, but nothing that ruined the match.

The SiN demo is a must-download, even at 34 MB. Yes, that is a painful download if you are still on a 28.8 modem, but start it before bed, pray nobody touches the phone, and wake up to one of the better shooter demos of the year. I played this demo for hours and kept going back to it. The graphics are smooth and realistic, the single-player has real personality, the AI is impressive, and the multiplayer is just plain fun.

SiN looks like it could be one of the strongest first-person shooters of 1998. Keep an eye on this one.