SiN's first step into next-gen may be small, but its one damnably solid step that even dares to show up the bigger fish.
To start, let us answer the question that exists in symbios to any review of, well... anything. That question is: does this have value or does it not? Is this worth effort on your part to experiance or will this leach from you that there of? It is a service that is neccesary on both fronts in a consumer world, but I think it is safe to say that one would be more compelled to speak out in terms of something of worth than what can be dissmissed as invaluble, unless of course it excells so in its suckage that shear concious drives you to ensure that its value is put to its face for all to see (Bad Day L.A.).
The seeming tangents of my writing answer the question in their own right since I wouldent care enough to go there if I were worried about the potential sufferage that would be endured by this (as it goes, women and children first eh?). Essentialy, if you havent picked Emergence up allready and you call your self a shooter fan, make a note to do so.
While it is worth the purchase, do note that its probably not quite worth the intro. I dont want to hype it up for any one beyond what it is, but I do feel that it is worth a lot more than what the majority of reviews had laid it out as.
On the game itself. People have said many things about it being the same old same old, nothing new or exeptional. That is pretty much true. But one must look at the genre of shooters, it's not exactly a slot that has been shown to have a lot of breathing room and to give (it) specificly... sh*t for filling that space is massivly hyporcitical when people seem to be blind to such genericy on the games with more of a following. There is more to be said along these lines, much more but in Emergences case; it may not change the concept, but it does what it does to perfection.
One thing issue that Half-Life 2 had was that while it was a shooter, it never realy seemed to focus on the shooting. While yes there was a fair story going on around you the game like all shooters pretty much was about 99.9 % shooter. This isnt a problem in itself but one would think that if your going to spend the whole time shooting that you would make more out of it. Enemies are engaged in groups of three or four, the times where you do face larger groups you are slamed with the rigidity of the scripting so that variety is allmost a nill save the introduction of an npc class which is brief. Beyond that the shooting itself was dated, run, gun and that was it. They didnt even let you keep reasonable amounts of ammo for the style of play (one of the only cases where being forced to switch weapons often actualy took variety out of the game since the choices you had were allmost all crap ). The enemy AI was fair but the scripting and poor level design never let it realy shine; in addition the friendly AI was also fair but the default config for it excelled allmost to perfection at making them not just usless but a hinderence as they would go to a place, then comeback 15 secconds later, follow you to within a foot and get you killed when they clog up a hall while a land mine goes off (who goes to cover, then runs head long into machinegun fire to go back to their squad leader who told them to go where they were and didnt tell them to come back, or who goes a cirtian amount of the way then turns back as if nothing happened... usualy running into machine gun fire as well? its a simple number command to fix it and it makes you wounder if valve beta tested the game at all) Another prize example of fanboism is Halo: Combat Evolved. While I understand most of this sh*t comes from the kiddie console loosers who have never seen a real shooter in the first place; the PC following was embarassing. Allmost the entire single player campaign consisted of going into a room, shooting x amount of baddies, going into ANOTHER ROOM THATS THE EXACT SAME ROOM AND SHOOTING THE EXACT SAME X AMOUNT OF BADDIES, AND THEN GOING INTO ANOTHER ROOM THAT ALSO JUST HAPPENS TO BE THE EXACT SAME GODDAMN ROOM AND HAVE THE EXACT SAME X AMOUNT OF GODDAMN BADDIES, I could keep going but I feel I suffered enough playing through it and since discribing it is allmost the same thing its just not worth it. At least Halo had some vehicles that were worth a damn in the looks department; Half-Life 2 couldent even manage that** not to mention a compitent multiplayer that didnt mirror exactly its own 1998 predicessor and 2000 predicessor of CS. And people b*tch about a lack of variety...the horror. My b*tching at least goes to serve a purpose and that purpose is to shed some light on the fact that Emergence may follow the same formula as the major players but it dosent f*ck up all over the place. What it has is complete and what it does is maximise the potential that has been left out of other games for how a shooter can have a high body count and be interesting at the same time. While there are only three weapons in the first release they serve to more than most of HL2's guns and I found that for once I didnt miss numbers all to much once the game got started. Its still kinda skimpy since it was the first release but I promise you wont miss the usual one bit in terms of the gameplay. One thing I loved in particular was that the feel of the guns was strangly real and satasfying, a vast improvement over the first. The weapon sounds are still a tad pathetic as seems to be the trend in allmost all shooters that arent directly going for realism, but what they lack in volume they make up in quality. When you mix that with the feel of the kick and the animation it realy brings the game to life in a way that I dont think I have expirianced before. The guns of course arent realistic and nither is the shooting, but the way they play out on the screen is... just the bullets all go in one general place with accuracy even though your fireing from the waist.
The pistol makes a return from the original, but the shotgun and assault rifle replace SiN's SG and SMG; its a welcome upgrade. The shotgun is magazine fed and fires the usual with a seccondary that shoots several high powered balls that bounce off of surfaces allmost like a flechet launcher (great for around corners). The Pistol shoots the same high powered rounds as the original with a seccondary fire that is a sort of rail gun, shooting at incredible force a large blue slug that leaves a lingering trail that warps the air like FEAR's bullet time effect only much larger. The assault rifle fires the standard AR type rounds that you usualy see in these games, it also has a low-magnification scope. The seccondary fire is the standard 203 type grenade you often see and it has a hellishly long range making it all kinds of usefull. Each weapon has an Iron sight function save the rifle which has the scope; when aiming your weapon headshots and other targets apear outlined in orange to indicate that you have a clean shot. This is kind of annoying over all but with the numbers you deal with it can come in handy, expecialy for the pistol. Also each weapon has a melee attack: the pistol, well, pistol whips; the assault rifle flips up and bashes with the bottom corner of the butt, and the shot gun is incredibly badass as it is lifted over your sholder and the stock is slamed forward into the victim. Last in terms of guns is the grenades which arent explosive shrapnel like the usual, but rather are incindiary divices that when they go off torch every thing and every one within ten to twenty feet. Like in HL2 the best bet is to chuck it at the ground and cook it off since the regular throw is pretty powerfull and is hard to mark something close, not to mention that the fuse is rather long in comparison to what we usualy see in games. Like all modern shooters grenades are a separete function and can be hurld while blasting away, eliminating the annoyance of swaping weapons and such. The base gameplay like all shooters is shooting sh*t. But Emergence dosent try to dress it up in meaning or other bullsh*t that only serve to act as a mask over a developers lazyness all to often. Straight up, from start to finish you are pretty much poping heads off, spliting them in half, lighting baddies up, b*tch slaping them, or just torching them out right. There are a couple of physics puzzles in the style of Half-Life 2 but most of that is instilled in the shooting as well. Often a stand will be made in a room with lots of explosive tanks, from barbique propane tanks to explosive fire extinguishers (ironicly and oddly enough they torch people) and what looks to be hydrogen or some such. Setting them up and getting them to launch or explode where you need them is often a challenge since they never realy have the decency to wait for you to set them up. Objects like thin walls, plastic trashcans and sofa's (ect...) often wont stop the bullets making some interesting gameplay experiances where you on a whim light up a wall or door and open it to a pile of bloody corpses and the resounding echo of a scream... if only they didnt also use this to their advantage as well, providing the occasional startle. While thats all good and fun the best part of the gameplay comes from its story where you are at the begining injected with some sort of mutigen. Essentialy instead of running around in circles as a creature till you tear apart your captors like in the first, you become sensitive to the mutigen itself, increasing your reflexes beyond any human capabilities. Essentialy if you get in a cloud of gas time slows down to the bullet time of FEAR or Max Payne. The gas is held in canisters everywhere and shooting it will release it, though they only hold so much, you can set them up and whipe out a whole mass of baddies without going back to real time. The gas is toxic but if you watch the meter you can realy have some fun with it. Of course with mutigen comes mutants and in that the gameplay is similer to the meth-head zombies in HL2. Its not the same, and thats not all there is to it but its hard to deny the similarities. I will say most of the types look a hell of a lot cooler though. Its kind of as if some one mixed the HL2 meth-head's with FarCry's trigents, just nicer. There's still more to it but I dont want to ruin any more of it. All in all there is a very happy feeling that you get from mowing down hundreds of baddies, Painkiller showed us that like no other. This takes the slaughter and places it in more standardized terms. Same rush, just with the addition of modern shooter gameplay rather than the old school rush that made PK so endearing. It is short, it's value comes in its 15 dollar price tag and in that it includes the original SiN game which is fair enough, but the next release needs to up the content a little bit, lets face it episodic game as a medium other than test pilot (which is what SiN Episodes is, an interview said that they are putting together feedback from the episodes for a full release though I dont know if this is still the case), just plain ass blows. Its not exactly the best written game out their but by not focusing on that and focusing on the part we actualy play, Ritual wins out by far over all. What I find funny is that it takes HL2's game, and b*tchslaps with jovial mockery where Valve was to retarded to actualy make their game competent as a shooter. Lets hope that dosent continue... whether by Ritual's examples of how a shooter should work, even on a stripped down level, or by the fact that a user mod (smod and all its varients ) virtualy rapes its image in gameplay, lets just hope that big time devs like Valve get the message and present a game, not just a good story.
Emergence is realy just plain ass fun. Fun goes a long ways when you deal in games, its sad a lot of people dont realize this. Its not like I condone a thin story or cheasy dialoge (which this surprisingly dosent have), but when I play a shooter, I think the shooting should be important too. If you cant do both sublime, just do what Ritual did and do the best you can with the other stuff once you perfected your GAME. Out of 10 Emergence is about 8.3, what compelled me to write this is that it gets there maximizing on something that so few do, in that it is different... just like Painkiller was back in 04. *To keep my crap that was in my old install intact I just installed windows again on another hard disk and pluged in the former, runing all my programs off it via the executables.
**Not to mention that they took one of the super guns from the first and turned it into some dingy POS you couldent even carry around, Tau cannon my ass, more like a cattle prod with range.