Sin & Punishment

The N64 had it rough, and not without reason. The system came late to a losing battle against the Playstation, a console that offered an easier platform to develop on and with much cheaper games to produce compared to the cost of cartridge production. Despite putting out arguably some of the most important games in the progress of 3D game development, the N64 alienated too many publishers, confused many developers, and left many consumers hungry for more. I have to at least commend Nintendo for their efforts, especially when this console is responsible for what I consider not only the greatest game on the system, but simply one of my favorite games ever made. Interestingly, despite releasing near the end of the 2000s, the game originally started development near the beginning of the N64's shelf life. Developed by Treasure under the working title of 'Glass Soldier', Sin & Punishment was a slow burn in development as it would be the company's first time truly developing with 3D hardware, not to mention company culture would have at most 2 or so people developing it at a time. During the game's development, Treasure were able to produce two other titles on the N64, Mischief Makers and Bangai-O respectively, and this doesn't even reference the various other titles they would have released for Playstation and Sega Saturn, along with a port of Bangai-O to the Dreamcast. Suffice to say, Treasure's forte was fast paced action packed 2D games. Translating that design philosophy to the 3rd dimension was to be quite a difficult jump for them, so much so that despite Nintendo's patience, they inevitably had to throw in their support in the form of their R&D1 division to help finish development, making it one of Treasure's bigger games in terms of team size. The cost of this long development cycle is quite apparent, but if you're wondering how a game with this significantly long development time was not only able to still see the light of day, but had a significant amount of support of Nintendo as well, the game unfortunately would only see a physical N64 release in Japan only. The reasoning behind this is very understandable as it was mentioned in the beginning, the N64 simply did not succeed as well to warrant a worldwide release, especially when Nintendo was already hard at work in preparing for their next console. Despite this, the game managed to do very well critically both in Japan, and in the hands of critics who had imported the game in the hopes of hopefully gaining enough traction to encourage Nintendo to publish the game in the west, although to no avail. So is the game really worth the hype it garners? Simply put it, it's the Nintendo 64's swan song. It was designed with the console in mind so gameplay wise it's very well *optimized ( I have more things to add to this, but in due time), and the gameplay, while still applicable to other control formats ala the Virtual Console release on Wii that allowed for classic controller or gamecube support, the original intent of the game's core design was to use the N64 controller to the fullest. The game's controls would be made to accommodate both left and right handed players along with support for two players with one controlling the aim of the weapon reticle and the other controlling the on screen character. The gameplay mainly consists of an on-rails shooter format similar to that of Star Fox 64, although instead of being in a flying ship, you're on foot with the ability to jump or dodge around oncoming obstacles and enemies. Along with moving around the foreground, you also control the aforementioned on screen reticle to aim your gun across the screen to shoot at the various onscreen enemies and surrounding environment along with a quick melee attack if anything happens to get too close for comfort. The overall gameplay is for all intents and purposes, very simple and arcade like, the depth of the game does not come from the complexity of the controls, but mastering them. There's roughly 3 acts in the game, two focused on the character of Saki Amamiya and one act between Saki's acts focused on Airan Jo, another protagonist of the main story. It doesn't sound like much, with the main game coming down to roughly 2 hours for a first playthrough, and as short as an under 1 and 1/2 hours, but in that time of gameplay is some of the most action packed stages along with exciting and difficult bosses. Gameplay wise Sin & Punishment is a very short game, but it is immensely satisfying to run through over and over again in the same vein of many great arcade like experiences, although if I were to leave the review there, I would regret not having mentioned the stellar presentation of this masterpiece of an N64 game. Sin & Punishment, despite not pushing the console in the same vein as Conker's Bad Fur Day graphically, does some insane amounts of *optimization to look as good as it does along with being able to push dozens of enemies on screen at one time. The game is very guilty of having moments of slowdown, hence the asterisk on 'optimization' but it never detracts from the game to make it feel completely cheap or unbearable to play thankfully. What really steals the show in my opinion is the presentation of the cutscenes and voice acting. Sin & Punishment has the pleasure of being of the few N64 games to manage incorporating voice acting from beginning to end which is baffling when you consider the entire game is spoken completely in English, this makes the game fairly import friendly both from a gameplay and story perspective despite the menus being completely in Japanese. All the cutscenes not only incorporate corny English voice acting, but the camera angles and movement of the camera make for a consistently cinematic like experience that transitions very smoothly into gameplay and vice versa, although if you've seen the cutscenes many times as I've had, you're more than likely going to skip them at your leisure, being able to jump back into the core gameplay rush consistently with no delay. The dynamic camera angles are not exclusive to these cutscenes either, but in game as well. It is pretty refreshing to go from a game like Star Fox where your camera is consistently maintained in one position throughout the majority of that game, to Sin & Punishment where the camera will sway and move around as it sees fit throughout the game leading to a decent amount of gameplay variety to have the game not feel too repetitive visually, there's even a completely new gameplay format near the tail end of the campaign that turns the game from on rails to a sidescrolling action platformer, although it is a bit jarring (although the gameplay format is alluded to in the form of a boss fight that happens earlier on in the game) and doesn't feel as good as the rest of the game, it's fairly short winded and offers enough gameplay variety to change things up even by the tail end and keep things fresh. Sin & Punishment is a simple game, but it also embodies the fast arcade spirit of many of Treasure's other noteworthy titles. It's definitely not as difficult as most of those older entries but it stands as a testament to their efforts and dedication to the project, making something wholly unique in presentation while being mechanically solid from beginning to end that lives up to a lot of their design philosophies from their best from the Sega Genesis era. It also was able to push the N64 in a different method to really push the system's capabilities to get more out of the system that benefited more so from a gameplay perspective, rather than graphically, leaving the game's art direction to really hold up the game's overall atmosphere and mood. Sin & Punishment is a very admirable game, visually speaking it's a testament to the developers efforts coming to terms with the N64's hardware and get the most out of it while also making complete usage of the controller to accommodate a variety of control styles. It's a game that knows what it is and does exactly what it aims for very well. It also feels a bit criminal to only bearing mention to the game's soundtrack so late into this review, although it's quite difficult to narrow down how to properly describe it other than it is distinctly the sound of the Nintendo 64 through and through. I've come back to this game dozens of times after picking up a copy a few years ago, it is a very addictive game to come back to over and over again, either improving my high score or improving my run time to get shorter and shorter. The game doesn't test my patience or waste my time, it's a very solid game from beginning to end with its own mild gameplay quirks that become apparent with each playthough. Again, it's not a difficult game to play, but it's definitely hard to master. Not to mention with the addition of a harder difficulty setting that changes/adds new enemies and enemy patterns, it makes it quite the challenge to beat the game without losing a single life. Beating the game on the highest difficulty also grants a double speed setting which completely changes the game to be significantly faster for any sadists who want an even greater challenge. It's quite depressing this game did not receive a world wide release during its initial release to give every console region a proper farewell to one of Nintendo's more ambitious consoles, but Nintendo would later rectify this by rereleasing the game via the Virtual Console service on the Wii, then later the WiiU, and now on Nintendo's upcoming online service via the Nintendo Switch. The attention the game drew in the west initially via the original Wii VC release was so great, it even got veteran Treasure devs to return one last time to make a sequel, Sin & Punishment: Star Successor for the Wii, a game that may be argued to be even better than its predecessor. While the Wii game definitely is a master class in gaming and definitely one of Treasures greatest games along side Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun, the original Sin & Punishment stays in my heart as one of my personal favorite games from their catalog and one of my favorite games ever released. It's not a perfect game, but it's a damn beautiful one.

Sometimes playing Nintendo 64 games nowadays feels kind of like playing Atari 2600 games. You sit through their big motion scenes and kind of think "geez, people sat down and liked this?" Almost everything is fuzzier, more blocky, more clunky than you remember. Don't even get me started on the controller

Then you get some solid gems that kept gameplay simple, felt wild and crazy as the best SNES games, and moves so fast you don't really have time to sit back and acknowledge how hideous the character designs look (humans have always looked weird in games developed by Treasure, it's just how they roll).

Sin and Punishment is one of the best N64 games and is sadly locked to Japan unless you managed to download it off the Wii Shop years back. A game bursting with fun exciting ideas in a frantic shooter. The story is absolute nonsense in the most "did I miss three episodes of this anime" kind of way, but I can give that a slider as these is such short bursts. The voice acting is all in English too so you aren't missing too much gameplay-wise.

There's something about games like Star Fox 64 and Sin and Punishment that focus on giant spaceships and aren't in the first person that just make them date better. Perhaps the block nature of spaceships lends itself better to the polygonal nature of these systems and the lack of a heavy first-person camera doesn't let you slide between walls or get too close to already muddy textures. Who could say?

If you want to go back and enjoy an N64 game you haven't either played a dozen times or want to enjoy outside a nostalgic trip to the late 90s, this is the one focus on.