Price: £19.99 Players: 1-online System requirements (mine): Windows 2000/XP/Me/98 (XP) Pentium 4/AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz (Pentium D Dual Core 830 3.0Ghz) Hard disk space: 3.5Gb Memory: 256Mb (1Gb) Other: Internet connection, DVD-ROM drive DirectX7 graphics card (nVidia GeForce 6700XL, DirectX 9.0c) If you thought awaiting a follow-up to Half Life 2 was a long enough delay then that's nothing compared to an additional two years for a sequel to SiN in SiN Episode 1: Emergence. Yes, it must be at least 9 years since I last took up position behind the gun as Colonel John R. Blade and as you start this brief game here the first thing you'll spot is that it looks rather similar to the aforementioned sequel to the Valve classic and that's because it uses the same game engine.

I guess there must be a plot here but it's not immediately apparent. Basically, it's a first-person shooter that requires you to make your way from A to B, onwards and upwards, blasting any baddies who get in the way of your objective which is... what exactly? Erm... well, there isn't time to worry about that because this release - and also the Half Life 2 spinoff - only lasts a handful of levels and is similarly short in gameplay time. In fact, as I get close to the end it feels a bit like a part-works magazine - it's nice in small parts but it's better to have the whole thing. And similarly, those part-works never complete, leaving you with an unfinished boat, if, say, you're planning to recreate the Mary Rose, so does that mean we'll have an unfinished story here? Let's take the good bits first. The main menu kicks off with a cracking theme tune that is very pleasing to the ears and which I'd quite like to be able to hear separate from this game. Like the original SiN game, this one follows suit in that it contains partially-destructible landscapes, depending on what the game-makers will let you shoot up. It's nice and violent, with a cool touch being to put a bullet through a window, partly shattering it, and performing melee attacks not only into the head of an enemy but also against broken glass so you can leap through it to continue on your mission. It also takes me back to the first game in that you needn't waste time pumping bullets into someone's chest when you can get a good, clean shot into their head. Yes, take 'em down in one easy move! However, don't get too trigger-happy as I found in a location containing several gas canisters, the idea being to give them a shot or three and they head off to clear a path, but, alas, I shot the wrong end of one and it ploughed backwards into me. I was just staring at it, waiting to die! Cool! SiN Episode 1: Emergence is a good old-fashioned FPS that gets you to shoot at 'people', not stupid aliens. The targetting is nice and pixel-perfect accurate for when you just have to look into the distance a bit to take out the trash. This package also includes the original SiN game as well as a Multiplayer version.

And, now, for some of the not-so-good things about it. First of all, it's very linear and, yet again there are too many scenes where you'll find baddies standing in front of explodable bins that just require a quick shot to make progress. In fact, the computer AI is always a bit weak with this type of game which makes it very easy, particularly with more than enough power-ups scattered about, not least of all those coming from the enemies about to push up daises since most of them drop a 10-point health canister when their brains have been forced to leave their cranium. On a couple of technical issues, when it came to using the Magnum weapon, I changed zoom key to an unused key since I wanted 'z' for crouching, so when it came to a point that I needed to use the function, I couldn't! I added in a different key for this and it still wouldn't bend for me. Similarly, I couldn't activate left/right turning on keyboard for no apparent reason, whatever I change them to. I tried the left and right arrows, then anything else but it just refused point blank to allow this, so I had to change them to strafing left/right which was a royal pain. why give the option if I can't bloody use it?! Oh, and despite the prettyness of the graphics, they do get a bit sticky at times and I found it crashing too often early on so SAVE FREQUENTLY! Later on, the game was occasionally crashing back to the desktop, even though I'm running on a Dual Core PC. That said, I was playing in a room with other A/V equipment at the hottest point in the year so far which makes me feel like I'm sat in the chamber of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor core, and I could hear the PC going ten-to-the-dozen with the fan and PSU so I can understand that didn't help either. And, finally, the biggest studpity ever to hit computer gaming - Steam. I was going to play Half Life 2: Episode 1 before this, but upon installing that it wanted to upgrade it in a process that would take far longer than I had time for the first night I played this. I've gone into more detail about this in my Half Life 2 PC review so take a look at that for more info. The lack of Dolby Digital 5.1 is also apparent here, as I select that option but am just not getting this through the SPDIF connection. This has behaved like this on two different PCs so I know it's not me and, thus, I'll once again only get my fix of multi-speaker action when the Xbox version comes out.

The graphics do look good, and most of the time run very fast on my Dual Core machine, but I wanted to select the widescreen option but it makes the picture go funny so I see a selected segment of the screen, not just a case of making it anamorphic and then displaying the result on a widescreen TV. I had this happen with Half Life 2 on two difference PCs, so I know it's not me, and Quake 4 worked fine in this mode on my PC so I have no idea what Valve are doing here. Overall, with all its problems aside, this is still an enjoyable blast for its short lifespan. If you like the HL2 game engine and want to return back to the world inhabited by Col. Blade then for £20 for a few hours of gameplay it's no more expensive or lengthy than a night out and you'll have had fun, even if it's not the best game you'll ever play. If you weren't totally enamoured by the previous games mentioned in this review then this release certainly won't change your mind.

GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ENJOYMENT OVERALL Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2006.