Sin Impressions

Ok, so Sinday came and went, I got tired and went to sleep.

Moday comes, I download it at work within a half-hour and uploaded it to my faster School account and go home. At home I play the Starcraft demo and wait the four hours for SiN to download, then I started it up.

The happy menu comes up, I configure all the stuff and start a game. The sound was choppy, so I asked around in IRC and I'm told to set the sound quality to 'low'. I do and it doesn't work, so on cue every open program systematically crashes and I have to reboot. "Oh no! I thought. The CIH virus", but thing came up fine and SiN started without any choppy sounds. So I watch the intro. Pretty funny stuff. The pigeons were kinda blocky, but if they had to spend more time on other areas, I'm glad they did.

I start playing and die partway into the level, because I can't play well at anything. Then I find some cheat codes at Ritualistic and cheat the rest of the way. I liked the fun things to do like the ATM machines and destructible everything.

The next day, I'm at work and I see a back-up in progress. "Oh no, I see the Sin_Demo.exe being backed-up with the rest of the library. So I run upstairs and delete any trace of the demo on the server.

Multiplayer was a blast. The lag wasn't bad when it was on a server with a fast line. Modem to cross-country modem wasn't the best. Even after most of the people left the server and I was left with someone I knew, DM turned into Rampage IRC where we chatted, destroyed things, saw where the hit specific areas were (Left/right arms, left/right legs, head, and torso), and explored the level. See some screens here.

Playtime vs. Download time

I think I've played it longer than I took time to download it. But I left my computer on so it didn't matter too much anyway.

Grafix

Very pretty. Breaking free of the fixed palette thingy, shows up very readily. There's no cool fractal effects here, but it makes a nice cartoonish feel. Which is good.

Playing

Anyone who was still clinging to Duke3d will come to SiN, I hope. That's what was runnign through my mind the whole time. All the Easter eggs had me wandering through the game trying to see them. And the DOS prompt was a very nice touch towards realism.

AI

Tactics were nice, like running behind pillars and ducking and stuff. I found a few bugs where I shot a guy with a rocket launcher and his buddy next to him didn't notice because he wasn't facing that direction. And I was fighting three guys, took out two and the third went back on patrol. Probably demo bugs, I hope.

Weapons

Very convincing. The sound and grafics, both on the weapon and the blood it created when hitting something made it look and feel like you were actually causing major damage. You weren't since it took two head shots and 3 rocket to take out a guy, but maybe in the full release it'll be different.

Do I have a right to complain

No