SiN Episodes: Emergence
Review
It's a solid FPS with run-and-gun quasi-tactical gameplay
by jdarksun
reviewed on PC
The setting
It's not just the characters that are exaggerated and humorous - Emergence doesn't take it's environment seriously, either. Safety posters adorn walls with slogans like "Pipes: The New Crates", or "Do Not Directly Inhale or Ingest Chemicals" with a picture of a purple liquid burning right through the stick figure drinking it. Posters also reference "The Terrible Secret of Space" and South Park. Warehouse workers make a Simpsons reference. Vending machines spout unlikely (but funny) slogans like "Grape - Ninjas Love It, and So Should You".
I'd normally go into a fair amount of length about graphics, sound, and various other bits - but this is the Steam engine. The physics are fairly good if a bit campy, the graphics are rather excellent (especially the water effects - the reflections amaze me), and the music is catchy without being terribly memorable. I had a few sound glitches (like the EAX was jacked way up), but toying with the drivers briefly fixed that right up. Of course, that means the environment isn't significantly changed by your actions, either - toss an incindiary grenade in the room, and you get a burn decal, but not lasting fire effects (or melted plastic). It's a good, pretty engine, but not jaw-dropping anymore.
The gameplay
The meat of the game - the actual shooting in first-person part - is rather serious. Emergence gives you a little bit of warm-up time, to ease into the game's controls and combat methodologies. Before you know it, you're into a tactical shooting match with a pretty decent enemy force. They won't astound you with amazing feats of intelligence, but the dynamic difficulty will keep it as hard or as easy as you like. This is a personal godsend - I'm not happy in these games unless I'm down to my last six shots, a sliver of health, and some giant unnamed horror is around the corner out for my blood. Emergence even tracks how well you do, and in what way it adjusts the difficulty - with graphs.
I love graphs. Love.
The gameplay is satisfyingly solid. Colonel Blade is tough enough that you feel decently beefy without being godly, and the enemies die in droves - while being dangerous enough that they can really hurt you if you're careless. The faceless bad guys get tougher as you learn how to play, and get sent at you in larger groups until the next tier of enemy appears. It's all fairly standard - you know generally what to expect if you've played any of the great FPSes of the last couple years. It's not revolutionary, but it keeps you on your toes and kept me happy. You only get three guns, but they cover the bases - pistol, shotgun, machine gun - and stay useful from first pickup to the credits.
The conclusion
...which, unfortunately, comes way too soon. It's episodic content - we knew that from the title. I just forgot how hard it is to wait for the rest of the story. The characters may be caricatures, but I wound up caring about them by the end of the game - and being left in the lurch is tough. It clocks in a little low on gamplay (5-10 hours, depending on difficulty level and if you like to replay), but it's only $20 (US), and comes with a Steam-compatible version of SiN 1 and SiN 1 multiplayer. There's also the promise of SiN Arena, which is a scorematch / play-until-you-die mode. Better entertainment than a movie, and cheaper (per hour) too.
Overall, I'm very satisfied, and looking forward to SiN Episodes: ...erm, the next one. And if they can stick to a quarterly release schedule, I know I'll be sticking with it until the end.
8.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
