SiN Episodes: Emergence
You are John Blade, commander of HardCorps, an elite security force dedicated to protecting the people of Freeport City. Four years have passed since your first battle with Elexis Sinclaire, a beautiful, brilliant, and ruthless scientist who is out to remake humanity according to her own twisted vision. The law has failed to bring Elexis and her multi-billion dollar empire, SiNTEK, to justice, so Blade is determined to take matters into his own hands. Joining Blade on his mission are JC – a hacker with a secret to keep – and Jessica Cannon, a fiery rookie who can find her way into any secure facility.
Enter the living, breathing world of Freeport City, a futuristic collision of New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. As Freeport continues to suffer from mutant attacks, you must now bring down Sinclaire before she can set her deadly plan in motion and alter the shape of humanity forever.
SiN Episodes™: Emergence launches the new era of episodic gaming. A first person shooter powered by Valve’s award-winning Source™ technology, SiN Episodes offers unprecedented interactivity, an engrossing story, and a revolutionary dynamic difficulty system that provides a custom experience based on your skill level and play style.
- Intense Combat: Face off against ruthless enemies, like jetpack soldiers and mutants that evolve as you fight them. Witness enemies that adapt to your actions and truly work as a team, as they cover each other and help fallen comrades to get back on their feet.
Outsmart your opponents by using your surroundings to your advantage as you set up traps using lethal elements of the environment. Location-based damage rewards accuracy while melee combat moves enable you to get up-close and personal.
- Unprecedented Interactivity: Blast your way through highly interactive environments powered by an enhanced version of the Source engine. Characters dynamically react to what you’re looking at and the environment. Target and shoot off specific vehicle parts and literally blow cars to pieces. Experience the next level of vehicle combat with a flexible positioning system enabling you to move around the interior with an unprecedented degree of freedom, allowing you to pick the ideal position to attack that enemy position up ahead.
- Personal Challenge System™: Driven by one of the most elaborate statistics systems ever created, SiN Episodes will constantly adapt to your playing style and offers a challenge that is custom-tailored to your skill level.
- Episodic Delivery: Buy as little or as much of the game as you want, with each installment offering 3 – 6 hours of action-packed gameplay. But tread lightly, as the choices you make may influence future episodes in unforeseen ways.
- Source Powered: Utilizing the same engine that powered Half-life® 2, Emergence gives you stunningly gorgeous graphics and intense physics-based gameplay.
Game Discussion
Steam User 17
Great game much better than half life I love the big tits of the antagonist just for her sake I complete this game.
Steam User 7
TLDR: A must-play for anyone who loves Half-Likes and that particular indescribable but magic vibe all good Source Engine games seem to share. However, my recommendation is to buy on sale because this game is short - took me under 3 hours to complete it.
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SiN Episodes is a huge improvement on the first SiN - it retains the same world and goofy Austin Powers style of humour, but the level design is vastly improved. You can see your final destination right from the start of the game and vice versa, but the route to get there is weaving and intricate. This kind of cohesive level design really adds to immersion as you get a sense of believable scale when you can see exactly how far you've climbed through the landscape.
Gameplay is much like Half Life 2 but with a heavier emphasis on combat and only some very basic environmental puzzles.
The really sad thing about SiN Episodes is (also much like HL2 in fact) - they never finished the story. The episodic format of game releases was a huge fad in the late 00s, but clearly failed as a business model for many developers. For this reason, you have to go into this game knowing in advance it never got finished. I would guess the one Episode we got is only a third, perhaps even a quarter or a fifth, of the "full" game the devs planned. It's such a shame as this was a really fun title and one of the best Source engine games you can play aside from HL2 itself.
Steam User 8
This game is what Half-Life would have been if it was shorter, cheesier, had a B-rated movie story, jiggle physics and was still as action packed.
As I finished this short but fun experience, I raise a toast.. to the sequel that was teased, but never released!
Steam User 5
dont be sad because its over, be miserable because we are never getting a sequel
Steam User 3
"Save me the seat at the sequel, Blade" :(
The fate of SiN is really unfortunate. First game came out 2 weeks before Half-Life, which caused it flop and remain in obscurity. The fact that we even have a sequel to this game at all is in itself a miracle. It was one of the first games outside of Valve's portfolio to debut on Steam (just look at the SteamID in the store page's URL) and is an important part of this platform's history, even if very sad one.
Gameplay
The game took me just over 3.5h to finish, but not a second of it was wasted. It gave me a Ratatouille-style flashback to when I played Half-Life 2 for the first time, which is perhaps one of the greatest praises I can give to a video game. Because it is just one episode, the developers wanted to cram as many mechanics as possible, to show what's in store for the player. Shooting feels punchy and satisfying, with decent amount of variation, slow-mo gas absolutely slaps, puzzles are... they are there. The game also has a huge amount of secrets - 43 according to the stats screen (yes, the game tracks tons of different stats - one of the few boomer-shooter traits this game has), and some of them are much more than just some bonus items - just pay attention to your surroundings.
Graphics
The game is very pretty, and I'm not talking only about female character models. Source engine really shows its muscles and the game definitely holds up in that department. The later parts of the game really give a sense of scale. Enemy design is cool and can be further enhanced with a proper amount of lead - gore in this game is what was missing for me in HL2.
Sound "What's the world come to..."
SiN Episodes: Emergence, in my opinion, has the best main menu music in all of gaming. Zak Belica's opus magnum, with Sarah Revenscroft killing it on the vocals. Really can bring a tear to a man's eye. Rest of the music is competent, huge upgrade from the first game anyway. Voice acting is also really good, which took me by surprise after playing SiN: Gold for a dozen hours. Source engine's sound propagation is utilized even better than in Half-Life 2 - overall A+.
Story
SiN: Source is a much different game than the first installment and it is particularly apparent in its writing. The story is more serious and toned down. John Blade is an (almost) silent protagonist now, which means, most of the one-liners now come from redhead Alyx Vance - Jessica Canon, and those are still rather rare and more thought-out. The setting is more grounded and SiN: Gold's boom-shoot DNA is mostly gone. Although I would appreciate a sequel that stays true to the original's attitude, the direction that Episodes took is also good. Unfortunately, just like Half-Life 2, it ends with a cliffhanger, which has been unresolved for over 17 years :(.
All in all, I really enjoyed my time with Episodes, although I can see how not everyone may feel the same way, especially if they didn't play SiN: Gold. 8€ may also seem a bit much for a 3-hour game, but I think the secrets give it a good replay value (I found only a quarter of them and will be definitely coming back for more) and it sometimes goes on a reasonable discount (I managed to get it for just 2€). Worst thing about this game is definitely knowing there will never be more, but it makes me appreciate what we got even more.
Steam User 2
that was short beat it in three hours, only three weapons but they do have alt fire, story is mid but since it's only episode 1 it's incomplete maybe they'll make episode 2 by the 20th anniversary. Graphics look alright for 2006 but the level design isn't really that inspired.
All in all it doesn't really hook you with just it's first episode, oh well Jessica and Elexis are cute though.
Steam User 6
A good Half-Like, and on Brutal difficulty, this gets super intense.
Sadly we wont be getting another Episode :(