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 5
for a pound its good you can carry a couch to the end of the game and sit on it in the elevator cup of tea in the lounge
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 3
great game, sad what happened to the studio behind it
Steam User 5
A bit derivative and overly streamlined but a solid take on modernizing SIN's design and gameplay. Shame the rest of the episodes where never made.
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.