What Would Matt Do

Not impressed. I played it through to near the end hoping something would surprise me and make me happy to have played it so far…then I played until the end because I was so close. The latest SiN is basically a complete throwback to oldschool FPS gaming. It proves that you can Source up an old game without learning anything about previous Source games gameplay while doing it. — From every single gun in the game being weak and broken, to lack of logical thought in the level design, to the forced interactions that made no sense. It's as if they never played Half Life 1 or 2.
My biggest complaints are as follows:
1) The guns. WTF? In the future are all guns required to fire slower? Give me some guns from CS:S or HL2 and I would have whooped up much better on these guys. Heck, give me some Doom 2 weapons. The alternate fire was useless except in specific cases on the first guns and the automatic weapon was bad. Fire it in normal mode, you literally had to push the mouse so keep the sites on your target. Apparently kick back on future weapons has gone way up. But wait, if you zoom in, there is little to no kick back with same gun firing the same amount. Well that makes….no sense at all! Every gun felt like it was dumbed down a bit so the game would be harder. 2) Completely uninspired level design (for most of it) with logic completely thrown out. For instance, you can't get through locked doors. Even though the first thing your boring sometimes companion does is picks a lock. Ok, fine, I can accept that's the way your world is. But wait…the bad guys (only through scripted events, of course) CAN blow throw doors…at one point you can…but only at one scripted point. That kinda of stuff kills me. The level design in general was very forgettable…except the very end. The building at the end was kind of cool, until you make it to the top. Two problems with the building…you are shown two elevators right next to each other. Do some playing around and searching where they want you to go and you'll find out that the elevators go to some different floors. ?!~?! That's completely retarded logic and it definitely wasn't the only instance. For instance…make it to the top of the building…and you're trapped on top. You literally go up a ladder that you have no way to get back down on. Yeah, that's great design both from an architectural standpoint ("Where the hell is Bob?" "I don't know boss, he went up to check on the systems on the roof and he never came back…") and from a logical level design point. 3) Forced cut scenes and random holographic cop outs. Know what you'll spend the first ten minutes of the game doing? Being handheld and then locked into cutscenes that explain nothing and are REALLY REALLY boring. There is a cool button when you start the game for skipping the cut scenes…but it was grayed out. Thanks for teasing me.
Things I liked:
1) The end building. If felt like a building as you went up down in the elevator trying to figure out how to get higher up and you later get to scale it from the outside and even though the whole way up is very scripted, it's pretty fun. 2) The use of real models for the boring side kick and the over done bad guy…why? Because it made them feel more real to me. I've heard that's just me. For others it increased the Valley of the Dolls effect. 3) The AI, for the most part. They often ducked back around and sometimes waited for back up. They almost always hollered out for me to come out if they knew I was there and would often work together or at least verbally sound like they were working together. My only complaints about the AI were small, a) that the AI didn't miss…ever. Not that big of deal since you can take a lot of shots and cover abounds, but still made me feel less like I was fighting people b) that the different kinds of AI, minus a couple of types, worked together with on problems. Some of them seemed they definitely shouldn't have.

Synopsis Overall, if you want a shooter that is just that, a shooter, then you'll probably like SiN Emergence. If you're looking for more HL2 in your game, this probably isn't the game for you. Addendum: As someone else mentioned the game didn't make him feel like he got pilfered for his $20, but that he's not very interested in the next episode after having played this one. That's exactly how I feel.