Elexis Sinclair, the villain of Sin, managed to grab the attention of many a PC gamer during the ‘90s. Was her impressive, bouncy bosom part of the appeal? Sure. However, Sin also pushed Quake II’s engine hard and experimented a lot with level interactivity, while delivering the fast-paced action the genre demanded. Oh, and roughly 10 metric tons of tasty corn. Dialogue written by teens trapped in the bodies of 30-year-old geeks; sexy ladies in tight clothes; goofy, thick-necked goons with guns; a silly macho hero with a silly look and an endless supply of moronic one-liners; mutants, cyborgs…and, yes, even more sexy ladies in tight clothes.
Sadly, it also tried to do a lot – combat, stealth, exploration, adventuring, storytelling, for Barney Miller’s sake! – but it never did any of it particularly well. Still, it had a certain B-movie charm and could occasionally be quite enjoyable despite its flaws. Now, 28 years later, Nightdive Studios has decided to have a go at beautifying the mess with Sin Reloaded.
Sin Reloaded is, at least on paper, exactly what the original needed. Rather than simply slapping a new coat of paint over the old technology and calling it a day, Nightdive has moved the original over to its KEX Engine, improved the textures and models, modernised the controls and interface, worked quite a lot on sound quality and track mixing, and has even given some of the maps a light reworking.
The visual upgrade is the first thing one will notice. The improvements aren’t particularly radical, but they give the various locales room to breathe, while the upgraded 2D screens and menu artwork make the whole thing feel considerably less like something that escaped from a Windows 98 installation.
The remaster makes it easier to appreciate just how much effort Ritual Entertainment put into its environments. Generally, the lighting is better, the textures are better, and the typical id Tech 2 wobbliness of the models is gone. The UI is finally the right size, and there are plenty of options to tweak things to your liking. Nightdive has even killed the censor, leaving all kinds of naughty and/or crude things intact. Not that there was much to hide, but still, this is 2026 and apparently everything is verboten. The original visuals can also be switched on at any time with the push of a button, which is always a neat little feature when you’re dealing with a restored piece of ancient video game history.
Unfortunately, Sin’s biggest…sins (hehe) were never graphical. You could give every wall a texture worthy of a modern AAA production, but John R. Baddass (Blade for his friends) must still walk through the same annoying stages. On one hand, Sin’s level design is ambitious, especially by late ’90s standards. Even in the first simple run-and-shoot map, you are asked to do something besides pulling the trigger. Later stages have you hack computers, operate machinery, poke around security systems. There are even branching paths and choices that can alter what happens next. As ambitious as they are, objectives can be poorly signposted, making progression challenging for all the wrong reasons.
The problem is that Sin frequently lacks the ability to communicate what it needs from the player. The remaster has shed some light on many of the darker areas, added environmental clues, as well as some relatively subtle guidance, but it hasn’t performed open-heart surgery on the original layouts. You will still get lost. You will still wonder whether the thing you need is behind that room you missed five minutes ago. And you will still occasionally suspect that the level designer has personally decided you don’t deserve to leave. Oh, and there’s still the rare possibility that a door will kill you.
Long story short, while it’s great that this is a title that wants you to look around, interact with things and figure out what the hell is going on, it’s not as good as it should be with all that. The result is an oddly compelling mixture of genuinely clever environmental interaction and old-school obscurity that was aggravating even back then.
Has the actual shooting aged better? Well, while definitely the better part, it was never that good to begin with, with most enemies being annoying hitscaners with single-digit IQ, and a challenge that was all over the place. Terrible? No, just somewhat forgettable and lacking finesse when compared to its era’s greats.
If there is one thing this critic still loves about Sin it is that it is a part of a very specific era in video game development, where many games were creations of small teams with their own unique vision and style, and Ritual was exactly that kind of company, as it can been seen here, as well as with its other rough-around-the-edges title, Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 (soon to be reviewed on Cubed3). Yes, its terrible jokes are of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-level quality, and the plot, plus the heroes and their silicon-enhanced adversary, are way over the top – and it’s awesome! It should also be noted that even in its most generic areas, it looks quite good, with some maps having quite the strong atmosphere, enhanced by music that’s much better than most people give it credit for.
The real question, then, is whether this upgrade improves the experience or merely makes the original’s problems prettier. The answer is that Reloaded doesn’t magically turn Sin into a masterpiece. Levels remain an uneven, disjointed mess; gunplay is simplistic; most players will probably stick to a couple of weapons; most will curse the day they have to ride a vehicle; and some will undoubtedly enter a noclip code to escape the more tedious parts. And while Blade’s pursuit of Elexis Sinclair, the increasingly ridiculous schemes of SinTEK, and the escalation from terrorist attacks to genetically engineered horrors provide a semblance of a larger narrative, the story exists mainly to get the hero from one absurd set piece to the next.
Those with the necessary antibodies to survive its problems will find an enjoyably cheesy late ’90s action game about a ridiculously macho cop, an absurdly theatrical villain, lab-grown monsters, hacking and then even more hacking, explosions, and a storyline that takes itself much more serious than it has any right to. While there’s plenty of good here, however, it’s mostly a bowl full of mediocre, with a bit of bad sprinkled around. Of course, this isn’t a remake but a remaster, but even if it were a remake, this is one of those titles where the rough edges are so deeply intertwined with it that a completely clean reconstruction would essentially be a different experience altogether.
Essentially, what gives this remaster its value is that it’s a successful restoration – not of a classic, but of a title worth remembering. This is an ancient vase in a museum; dirty and full of cracks, but still something that will be appreciated by those who want to take a good look at a piece of history. What makes the whole package feel even more like an act of preservation than a straightforward technical upgrade is the Vault; an archive of development material, like artwork, renders, and all kind of cool things that fans (and not only) will love.
As of now, too, Nightdive’s restoration is simply the best way to experience Sin. Aside from the audiovisual upgrade, quality-of-life improvements and bug extermination, as well as the inclusion of the Wages of Sin expansion, Reloaded also provides a fantastic degree of control over how much of the modernisation you want.
Therefore, if you’re willing to take a chance on a diamond-in-the-very-rough, this is your time. It doesn’t redeem every bad idea, smooth every rough edge or transform Ritual’s ambitious mess into the classic it wanted to be. What it does is something almost as good: it makes it easy to play again, or at least admire the mess, which is now much prettier to look at.
