Random Review - Sin & Punishment

Once again I've got nothing better to do.

Sin & Punishment. An N64 game made by Treasure (Known for hits like Gunstar Heroes and Dynamite Headdy) that only recently hit our shores in the form of a Virtual Console import. I'll be honest with you, I hadn't even heard of this until a few months ago, nevermind play it, and that'll be down to the fact it never got out of Japan and doesn't have a huge cult following like say, the Mother series or whatever. It's an on-the-rails shooter where you control low-polygon people on foot, blasting random stuff.

I haven't finished the game so I'll rate what I've done so far (Which I suppose could be quite a lot, I dunno). S&P is a wierd game. It supposedly takes place in the future (I think it's actually set in 2007, which was seven years in the future from 2000) and from the sounds of things follows a bloke called "Saki" a woman that's basically a clone of the man in terms of gameplay and some annoying emo girl thing that betrays them and does psychic stuff. The three originally go out to beat a man called "Brad" and his annoying rat thing. No I wasn't paying attention to the story too much. There's a lot of it and the voice acting isn't that good (which is understandable I suppose), not to mention the story is deep. As far as I see it it's just a completely random adventure beating robot things.

So your man or woman walks forward most of the time and you shoot stuff with the control stick and fire buttons. It's all good. Man/Woman can also jump about and slash stuff with swords. Also good. Levels get a bit wacky later on but all look fine on N64 hardware. The only problem as you would imagine is the character models in the cutscenes which as already said, look a bit dodgy due to their lack of polygons. Music reminds me of the oldish Arcade games where 3D was the best thing since sliced bread. Not particularly memorable, but certainly gives off an Arcade experience (and at least it's not like a lot of modern games and has a completely dull and boring soundtrack).

Overall pretty cool, although I wouldn't go as far to say it's the best N64 game of all time. They say it beats StarFox but StarFox seems more polished and isn't story driven so I can't say I agree. Nevertheless it's still less than £10 so definitely a bargain considering it's limited release. Certainly better than stuff like Yoshi's Story that's coming up there soon (if it's not there already). Definately one of Treasure's finest works.