SiN

According to the plot of the game ten years ago, in 2027 , the city of Freeport was on the verge of collapse. Inefficient and understaffed police forces lost in the long and difficult fight against crime. The city needed help, but the government could not cope with maintaining order on the streets. Therefore, a draft law was proposed, giving private corporations the right to form their own police - security forces, and they, in turn, should provide protection to companies and citizens of the city. This bill was passed, and so a new rule of law was established.

Separate police departments were reorganized into one single and powerful structure, called HardCorps , which became the main in the investigation and prevention of crimes. Chaos gradually receded, as security forces gradually restored law and order in the city.

One such company with its own armed security forces is SinTEK , a large transnational biotechnology corporation owned by the beautiful and charismatic Elexis Sinclair, founded in 2005 by the father of Elexis, Dr. Trell Sinclair. Elexis led the corporation after the disappearance of her father.

Currently (in 2037), the protagonist of the game, Colonel John R. Blade (John R. Blade), the head of HardCorps , is trying to find the source of the drug "U4", which appeared on the streets of the city not so long ago. Its action has not yet been fully studied, and lately strange things have happened to those who accept it. Blade decides by all means to find out who or what is behind all these inexplicable problems occurring in the city, and put an end to this.

At the beginning of the game, Blade tries to prevent a bank robbery and free the hostages. During the operation, it turns out that the crime is run by Tony Mancini.

When performing assignments, Blade over the radio communication is assisted by his partner JC (JC), who works in HardCorps . JC is a skilled hacker capable of hacking even the most secure computer networks. In fact, Blade learned about JC, investigating the actions of the hacker who had hacked into the corporate network HardCorps. After the hacker was captured, Blade realized that his talent could be useful, and decided to make JC his employee, offering to work in HardCorps instead of arrest and jail time. Thus, JC has become one of the most valuable frames HardCorps .

In the process of chasing criminals, questions arise: who is behind the bank robbery plan? And is this related to reports of the appearance of mutants in the city? This complex puzzle ultimately leads to the mysterious Elexis Sinclair, who, being a brilliant biochemist, is trying to change the course of human evolution, stopping at nothing to get what she wants.

• Game support over LAN and Internet.
• In the full version, there are 15 Deathmatch levels available (spry, paradox, hotair, gluttony, envy, sincity, sindm6, sindm9, oilrigdm, biodm, eisenblatt, whatever, pride, skeen, railroad), 8 CTF levels (ctf_spry, ctf_kungfu, ctff_hu, ctf__tung, ctf_kung, ctf_hu, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khy, ctf_khyf) , ctf_para, ctf_zor, ctf_fetus, ctf_dig).
• Ability to choose a player model: Blade, JC or Elexis in Deathmatch.

Critics' reviews of SiN were mixed. While the PC Zone gave the game 91% and the “classic” rating, praising it for the original level design and plot ^[2] , most other publications did not have such rave reviews. Most often they complained about a long download time (up to a minute) between levels, death or fast loading (quickload), and even on the most powerful PC at that time 500 MHz with 128 MB RAM ^[3] . This, of course, caused great discontent and spoiled the gaming experience for many players. Later patches were released to eliminate this problem, but compatibility with the old versions was lost, forcing players to start the game from the very beginning or use cheat codes to return to the previous place in the game. The game also abounded with a large number of errors and bugs: problems with sound, a fight at the end of the first chapter with the final boss, who was still standing because of an error, a wrong transition from one level to the end of the game, and other failures. Although these errors were corrected with the release of the patch, the overall impression of the game was spoiled, especially by the majority of the game press describing the original version. And the patch was very large. At that time, the fixes were released in the size of about 5 MB, whereas for the SiN patch there were 31.23 MB.

A likely explanation of the premature release of the game in circulation is an attempt to catch the Christmas holidays of 1998 and get ahead of the market launch of a similar game Half-Life . These blunders, together with the expected release of Half-Life , led to the fact that SiN did not achieve as much success as the developers had hoped, so the percentage of sales was at an average level ^[4] .

In 1999, the developer studio 2015, Inc. released a mission package for the game — an add-on called SiN: Wages of Sin . The player is again in the role of John Blade, but he now has a new mission - the fight against the famous mafia boss Gianni Manero, notorious in the city of Freeport.

In 2000, ADV Films released their first animated film - anime Sin: Creators of Monsters . The plot though is based on the game (similar characters and episodes of the script), but there are also significant differences. For example, one of the main characters of the game - the hacker JC (JC) - was killed at the very beginning of the movie.

In 2003, Ritual Entertainment made SiN II Demo , a demo of the game, to show it to potential publishers, but against the background of the US struggle against drug cartels, the plot of the game with the drug U4 did not meet with support.

In 2005, development began based on the SiN universe, designated as preparation for the release of SiN Episodes . Various tasks were published on the website, and their solution was to occur in new parts of the game. However, the support of this part of Ritual Entertainment’s virtual marketing did not last long, but it was necessary, as many tasks still remained unsolved.

The sequel to SiN Episodes was launched by Ritual and was intended to launch episodes on the Steam platform via Valve Corporation. On May 10, 2006, a single episode was released, entitled “Emergence”.

SiN was also re-released on Steam on April 5, 2006 in a package called SiN Episodes: Emergence . This version of SiN numbered 1.12 includes fixes for problems with audio and video playback, as well as integration with the browser of Steam servers for multiplayer. Several textures in this version have been redone, apparently due to copyright issues, many of the original models have been replaced with similar ones from SiN Episodes . In addition, all erotic images and links to drugs in the game were censored ^[5] .

• The official website of the game (archive.org) (in the web archive - September 10, 2008)
• SiN Forum on the Steam Network
• Ritualistic fan site and official forum venue
• Fan site SiN (in Japanese) and archive ext. unofficial maps, bots, modifications, model skins, etc.
• Fan site SiN: Retribution
• 7wolf