Sin & Punishment

Last summer Best Buy had a ridiculous video game sale where new, very recent, very good games were being sold for between $5-$10, and I just couldn't help myself. That got me a cheap copy of Metroid: Other M, as well as a few other games (Infamous 2, Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, and Assassin's Creed: Revelations). To play Sin & Punishment: Star Successor for the Wii, I felt obligated to go back and play its highly acclaimed predecessor- Sin and Punishment for the Nintendo 64. It turns out, this game didn't even come to America until it got ported to the Virtual Console, thus the not-very-N64-looking cover art seen above. Sin & Punishment is a rail shooter, but the reason it is so lauded is that you aren't simply shooting at a screen- you control a character who can move back and forth and jump to avoid damage and even swing a sword at nearby enemies, while at the same time shooting a constant stream of bullets at the enemies in front of you. It's a control scheme that's tough to figure out at first- using the A B and R buttons to move around while scrolling your reticle across the screen to shoot is pretty disorienting- but after an hour or so I realized it's a strength of the game. Unliked Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles and Dead Space: Extraction where the best (and only) defense is a good offense, there's a healthy balance to shooting and avoiding attack in Sin & Punishment that's unlike any other game I've played. The ability to multi-task is more important than pure aiming, and as far as I can tell this type of gameplay is unique to the Sin & Punishment series. The game does use an outdated 'continues' system that required me to restart the whole thing a few times, but the short length kept the game from getting stale- there's no bullshit here, it's mostly boss fight after boss fight. Sin & Punishment is a game with a bananas storyline with some awful Nintendo 64 graphics, but from a pure gameplay standpoint I found it to be a unique, fun play. I'll likely jump into the Wii sequel in the coming months.