Um Jammer Heather

now that is a fucking light shaft. with the gradient! the sharp edges! unreal could NEVER! mostly because unreal's lighting was better BUT STILL!

it's like jelly!

SiN's so forward-thinking in many ways but in the sense of discovering a famous song's rough demo: it is... not refined fjfk.

stealth is delightfully rubbish for one, it's impossible to do any "infiltration" level without save-scumming it to pieces. enemies dont have vision cones, they have vision walls - a straight line across their face - and can spot a pixel through two windows. the only reason SiN isnt unplayable is due to this being optional (and more fun to ignore).

still, the organic implementation in an action-oriented shooter, as opposed to dedicated fare like Thief, is a fascinating blueprint. SiN is a melting pot of little tricks and ideas loads of future shooters would use, sprinkled throughout a classic quake 2 engine FPS. its the type of game you appreciate more after becoming familiar with the genre's history.

there's even location-based damage! which actually affects combat and the player! take that valve! it's 1998 and half-life definitely won't outsell us!

SiN is so potently late 90s that playing it feels wrong without a pizza, coke and PC magazines strewn about the floor.

time capsule of a man. he's so specifically 1998 that ageing him a single day would turn him into dust.