NightDive are at it again, with a new remake/master of a classic 90s shooter…this one a little more obscure.

Back in the 90s, there were a slew of weird and wonderful first person games. Alongside Quake and Turok, there’s stealth games like Thief and No One Lives Forever.

But one game really caught headlines for its provocative style and strong branding – SiN – and Nightdive clearly felt it was worth preserving with this new Reloaded Edition.

Using the Quake 2 Engine, SiN is set in a near-future dystopia where you play as Colonel Blade, a security professional who is in pursuit of Doctor Elexis Sinclaire – the CEO of SinTEK Industries – who has created an army of genetically modified mutants. Blade’s the last hope of fighting back.

The game itself is full of Primary and Secondary Objectives with an overarching story across each mission, from collecting bags of money, to saving a certain amount of hostages, to unlocking security doors and gaining access to hidden doorways.

For some people, they may think remastering this game is a surprise, but it actually is a significant piece of history, offering lots of opportunities for players to interact with consoles, with locked doors, hacking with cameras and even using vehicles. It was a very dynamic shooter with lots of possibilities and ways to get around the level, and was so important to the evolution of the genre with branching pathways and optional pathways.

But this pack even includes the Wages of SiN content as well to make this package complete, with new mutants and reupped textures and maps, with improvements Night Dive have made to improve the game’s quality of life.

SiN is just good switch off fun, the story isn’t especially complicated or overwhelming. The game feels like a classic 90s/ early 2000s shooter with all the halmarks of outdated humor, mechanics, and overegged voice acting, but also full of ridiculous oversized weapons and masses of explosions life and right.

All done with now 4K graphics, updated textures and models with modern adaptations for current systems including control tweaks and updated UI. Even improved sound and music.

The gameplay loop itself is pretty engaging, though. I just enjoyed running around, room to room, shooting my way through, watching the story unfold as I go, and it just reminded me of simpler shooters that didn’t take themselves too seriously and weren’t bothered about winning awards. They just wanted to be simple and entertaining.

And NightDive just get how to preserve these games. They do such a wonderful job of making them fit on today’s hardware while also maintaining that earnestness and authenticity that we knew of the times.

The price tag might make this a little tougher for some to justify, especially if you didn’t grow up with the game, but there’s a certain dose of nostalgia here that many will appreciate and others will be open to receive. We don’t really get shooters like this anymore and it reminds you of the value of having a good simple campaign like this.

It’s by no means a perfect game, and often feels the product of its times, particularly with some of the outdated sexualisation and innuendo, but there’s a good range of weapons, the environment is interactive and dynamic, the mission structure follows along seamlessly, and the enemies really present their own distinct challenge as you progress.

It’s a tougher ask at the price, but if you’re like me and want to replay this one all over again to be reminded of those classic FPS days, this is as good of a remaster as Night Dive have done to date.

Verdict

SiN: Reloaded is the absolute essence of mid 90s/early 2000s shooter, with its focus on simple mechanics, vocal enemies and range of activities, but also the absurd storyline and eccentric characters, as well as oversized weapons and towering explosions. I had such a great time with this one all over again and can’t believe how good it feels with all of Night Dive’s updates and improvements. The price may be off-putting for some, especially having not grown up in the era, but for people like me who were there from the start, this was a wonderful trip down memory lane. Even if it has aged quite poorly in some regards.

Pros

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SiN: Reloaded is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox and Switch

Code Kindly Provided by Atari for review purposes

Played on Xbox Series X