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| Left: Airan Center: Achi Right: Saki |
Sin and Punishment
Ah, the n64, one of fondest memories of a kid from the 90's. The light at the end of the tunnel we call elementary school. Just coming home and seeing that n64 was enough to free you from the stresses of being a kid.
I never owned a n64 in the 90's, I must confess I played this on an emulator during high school and therefore the experience for me will never equal playing this game with a squareish television on the actual console. Actually come to think of it, this game would rarely have been played back then in North America because it was never localized; the Playstation was just on it's way to hit the market so that meant the n64 was already on it's last legs. Oh and this game came out in 2000 so that doesn't count as the 90's so..
...
I mean wha-
Anyways, Sin and Punishment!
Made by sweet, sweet Treasure best known for classics such as Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga and Gunstar Heroes. Bullets and frantic gameplay have never been done by a better company other than Cave, Irem, Taito, SNK Playmore, Team Shanghai Alice, Cactus, and many others..
..
Well, let's get started.
Essentially, Sin and Punishment is a rail shooter with a developed storyline and tight controls backed with excellent gameplay and replayability.
7/10
..
Wait, there should be more than that right?
Yep. Oh and spoiler warning; I hope you've played this game before!
Controls
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| Saki's dream Stage 0-0 |
There are three central characters; Saki, Airan and Achi. The player predominately plays as Saki and occasionally, the player will assume control of Airan; gameplay and controls don't change between the two. Gameplay consists of moving a cursor to shoot at enemies and moving the player character to avoid attacks to get into better positions. As the game is a rail shooter, forward movement is automated (except for two segments).
Here are the exact default button controls actually.
-The C pad provides the same controls as the D-Pad for us lefties
-The analog stick controls cursor movement
-The A button changes between blue and red firing modes (blue firing is weak but auto locks onto enemies while red is powerful but has to be manually aimed)
-B button is there to look pretty
-L and R shoulder buttons are to jump and double jump
-and Z (underside of the analog stick) is to fire and use your melee attack
As you can see, the controls are very intuitive and smooth as they left the A button just to change between firing modes so it doesn't get too much in the way of left and right movement. This however, poses a slight unavoidable issue for lefties however as you will need to take your right thumb off the C pad if you want to change firing modes. Shooting is full auto as long as you hold down the Z button. For enemies or objects that get too close, tapping the Z button will initiate your powerful melee attack (not unlike Metal Slug).
Right handed players also have the advantage of using a D-Pad since a D-Pad is treated by a player as a single button unlike the C-Pad which has two operable buttons for this game. To move from left to right on a D-Pad, the thumb can just simply tilt left and right, for the C-Pad, the instinctive thing to do is to lift up your thumb whenever you want to change directions. However, this all is completely irrelevant because lefties have no preference when it comes to operating controllers; switching from left to right on a traditional controller like this is absolutely no problem. (Sorry, I created this paragraph just to address that the developers took notice of their left handed audience and decided to work out controls for them).
Oh one more thing, the controls are remappable ingame in the options menu.
As stated before, I played this not on a n64 controller but on a freaking keyboard. It was awful because of two things: It's a board and I could only press four buttons at once. With diagonal cursor movement needing two keys to use, this obviously poses a huge limitation on what I could do ingame especially during some very unexpected gameplay change moments. Another disadvantage is similar to the left handed problem for the controller except the amount of fingers needed to operate your character is greatly increased (it's possible to avoid this careful button mapping but then you'll end up having stiff hands after playing..).
8/10
Gameplay
Gameplay is very fluid, occasionally during a stage, your character will stop and you will need to do some gallery-like shooting sequences in order to progress. Scattered throughout the levels will be yellow tags which are optional collectibles which serve nothing but to improve your score (probably one of the lesser of the things you'll be worried about) and these are usually placed at harder to reach areas so you'll have to play a stage several times in order to master getting all of them (just like many arcade style games). Enemies will be shooting and attacking you with either ranged or melee, some ranged attacks are slow bullet type attacks that can be reflected by timing a melee strike right before it makes contact with your character. Additionally, some monsters will appear in patterns where destroying these patterns will yield more points for the player.
One thing I like about this game is that there are no powerups since that makes the gameplay more static. Traditionally, if a player has permanent powerups, these are usually essential and more than helpful in progressing in a game; however, the player is most often stripped of them upon death. Sin and Punishment doesn't have that so that you won't feel like you absolutely need some sort of attack, defense or health bonuses in order to defeat your enemies. It also means that the game is more dependent on how good a player is in order to overcome the harder challenges in the game.
I remember several things that ticked me off.
-Every time your character got hit with a powerful attack, he or she would do a little spinning animation and drop to the floor for a half-second, this makes it incredibly annoying especially if you've found yourself caught in situations where you get hit a lot and where everything is a powerful hit.
-The timer on your heads up display would cause you to lose a life whenever it runs out of time. Now imagine getting hit a lot.
-While dashing was very useful as it cause your character to move from side to side very quickly with the added benefit of split second invulnerability, the timing is very sensitive. This can get annoying with attacks that can only be avoided by dashing. Now imagine this with the above.
-Some of the unexpected gameplay changes. And what I mean is when the game suddenly changes from a rail shooter to a run and gun side scrolling section or even a jumping over bottomless pits section. While some of the changes are very welcome as they bring variety to the game, if done wrong, they become a stain on the gamer's image on the game. Instead of remembering the game as a solid rail shooter, you remember that really annoying part where you're trying to run to the end of the stage before the timer runs out of time which instantly causes a lost life and ohmygodallthemonstersareknockingmedownthisgamewasnevermeanttobeasidescrollerandnowImdead.
Yep.
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| The second boss Radan |
As for the boss fights, they're incredibly cool because each one has a very distinct and different feel to it. Here's a description of some of them.
-The first boss is an aircraft which is a standard rail shooter boss encounter (you shoot at it, it shoots back at you in the same format as the stage you were playing in)
-Second boss suddenly shifts the perspective to a side to side where your left and right controls makes you advance towards or move back from the boss. During this fight, you constantly try to push the boss backwards with your melee attack so that you push it off the side for extra damage.
-The third boss is Saki partially transformed as the monsters you've been fighting and you fight a somewhat plot relevant character who has undergone the same transformation as you.
-The forth boss has the player fixed on a circular path where moving left or right moves you along the diameter of area. This allows you to chase the boss or avoid it during it's attacks.
-The last boss is a copy the Earth while you're protecting the real Earth from incoming attacks. You're also playing as transformed Saki. Nuff said.
One final note, using melee attacks to hit things is incredibly satisfying. It probably has to do with the one to two frame animation that displays just how fast the attack is going. It also doesn't depart from shooting too much since the short animation and recovery meshes so well with it.
7/10
Music
I have one word for the music.
Yes.
Now I have some more.
About the music, it's extremely well done especially the tracks with electric guitars. It really doesn't sound like typical n64 synthesizer and instead sounds more like a recorded track. The looping of the music is nicely done too where you don't notice it as you're playing the game. Very up to par of arcade games.
8/10
Presentation
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| D: Press Z to reflect that missile! |
This is the part where we take a step back and go 'is this really the Nintendo 64?'
The graphics are incredibly well done considering the capabilities of the system. Whatever Treasure did, they did it right. There are a lot of objects with detailed textures show at once ingame and lots of bullets and special effects happening at once as well. The graphics are obviously dated for today's standards but this almost rivals something that would be on the Dreamcast or the Playstation.
The options menu also has a good amount of features, some being unlockables in the form of extras. This includes a hard mode, frameskip mode (makes the game run at regular speed even with tons of bullets everywhere), turbo mode (doubles games speed), the option to listen to the game's OST, and other minor tweaks.
There's quite a good deal of replayability as well. The cutscenes are pretty fun to watch and are skippable which is an added plus. The gameplay isn't always the same on every level which mixes things up and the scoring keeps things competitive if you have a friend around. However, the game itself is very short and can be completed in just an hour.
I almost forgot to mention this but although it's never been localized, all of the voice acting (an added plus) is done entirely in English! The acting itself isn't so great (almost on par with House of the Death quality..) but since Treasure hired Americans to do the voice acting, there aren't any accents to deal with so the dialogue is fairly clear (just the script is weird).
7/10
Story
All of this is backstory:
-Monsters called Ruffians are attacking humanity
-A guy called Brad organizes the Volunteer Army to destroy them
-The Armed Volunteers causes problems for humaniy
-A strange girl called Achi who is regarded holy by many people can heal people through her blood and creates the Savior Group to fight the Ruffians AND the Volunteer Army
-Everyone in the Savior Group dies save for Saki, Airan and Achi
All this is found in the instruction booklet. Not exactly the best place to put that info (note that I had to find this out online and from more than one source).
This is what the player percieves as the story during the game:
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-Get confused at all aspects of the story that is presented
What actually happens in the story:
-Achi is actually the antagonist as the leader of the Ruffians
-Knowing this, the player is left to ponder the open ending and the actions of Achi prior to and during the game before her defeat
Since Sin and Punishment really just dives into gameplay as many arcade style games do, it's relatively hard to actually express the story unless gameplay and story is segregated by a pause in between stages which are occupied by cutscenes. This is one of my biggest gripes about arcade style games where the developers want fit a decently thought out story into it; it's challenging and it can be done wrong in so many ways. You see, action arcade games by design are meant to be as action packed as possible with an engaging score system. When that happens, players don't pay attention to anything else, especially the relationship of the characters and how it relates to whatever is going on at the moment or why the heck did you end up from fighting soldiers in an urban environment to fighting as a freaking 18 meter monster.
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| The attack on Brad's carrier |
Despite all of this, the imagery is incredibly powerful. The first stage is within Saki's dream where he fights an endless horde of monsters signifying their endless struggle which is inescapable no matter how far they run. The stage after that is somewhat a bait and switch because it seems to be a regular style rail shooter where you fight the generic soldiers and monsters in an urban setting. Immediately right after you defeat a powerful commander of the Armed Volunteers, Tokyo (which was where you were apparently fighting in), becomes completely immersed in blood which transforms Saki into a gigantic monster incapable of human speech or thought (shown as he tries to attack Airan and Achi who try to escape in an aircraft). Enraged by what they think is the Armed Volunteer's fault, Airan flies her ship to directly attack and successfully assassinate Brad who is stationed in an aircraft carrier.
Things only get more messed up at this point. Achi attempts to convert Airan into completely submitting to her will by attacking her mind with a realistic simulation of an uncertain future by placing her inside the transformed Saki (which fails). Saki somehow manages to gain his humanity back and together with Airan, they temporarily escape Achi.
At this point, Saki and Airan are now in a jungle like environment where they fend off an attack from Ruffians. The cutscene right after this part show the two eating a meal (made of Ruffian...) together; it somehow reminded me of the lone male and female having to live as the sole representatives of their species: sort of like Adam and Eve. Afterwards, things just go off the deep end as Achi transforms into a replica of the Earth and attacks the real Earth as the transformed Saki attempts to thwart the assault. We are then left with Airan having Saki's baby five years later unknown whatever the effects of the blood that transformed Saki will have on the child.
I give it points for trying to be weird and mind screwy but really, the story makes little sense and the presentation of it is just terrible because it requires the player, who wouldn't be very interested in the story in the first place, to actually look up the details him or herself.
5/10
Total Verdict
35/50 averaging a solid seven out of ten. I had a LOT of fun playing this game but the annoyances mentioned in the gameplay section does take away a bit from it's replayability. I'd still highly recommend anyone who has an interest in gaming to play this. This is one of the few games that truly pushed the n64 hardware to it's limits.
Oh and there's a sequel to Sin and Punishment for the Wii, I've never played it but it got pretty good reviews.
