NSO Retro: Sin & Punishment (N64)

Is the N64 retro? I guess so, but I don’t have to like it!

Sin & Punishment is a rail shooter that originally released on the N64 in 2000 in Japan, but it wasn’t officially available in the West until its release on the Wii Virtual Console in 2007. And now it’s available via Nintendo Switch Online, which is how I played it for the first time.

The only thing I knew about Sin & Punishment was that it was a rail shooter and there are certainly aspects of Sin & Punishment that remind of another rail shooter I did play and come to love back in the day – Panzer Dragoon.

You’re locked on a linear track with a rapid fire gun you use to shoot and destroy enemies that appear within your path. Your gun has two modes – a free-aim and an auto-lock. Enemies do fire their own projectiles or energy beams your way and whilst some can be targeted and destroyed, others can only be dodged.

You have a slow left-to-right movement that allows you to precisely side step incoming fire, and a quick roll that allows you to simply get the f**k out of the way. You also have a jump and double-jump ability that you’ll also use to avoid fire or environmental obstacles.

But that’s not all – you also have a powerful melee attack for enemies that get too close (and in some cases is the only way to defeat them). Your melee attack can also be used to deflect certain enemy projectiles right back at them, inflicting significant damage.

Unfortunately, the game does a terrible job of signposting which projectiles can and can’t be deflected, so there’s an element of trial and error in every boss fight (and Sin & Punishment features many mini-boss fights) in which you just have to take some hits in order to figure out what to dodge and what to deflect.

It’s a fun and effective combat system that forces you to be as focused on your own movement as you are on the enemies you’re shooting. Things can get pretty damn hectic at times as you’re faced with multiple incoming projectiles. You need to dodge fast, deflect when you can and just keep on shooting, even if you can barely see what the f**k is going on – but that’s where the auto-lock mode comes in handy.

Does it get a little too hectic at times? I’d say so. Even on the ‘Easy’ setting, Sin & Punishment can prove challenging, but fortunately you’re able to brute force your way through most things. On higher difficulties I imagine a degree of muscle memory comes into play. Your timing has to be precise and you need to know exactly what to target and when because you’re not just fighting enemies, but a stage timer that’s constantly counting down.

Take too long to defeat an enemy and your health will rapidly drain to zero. Speed is as important as precision and you soon learn that you don’t need to target every enemy or every part of a mini-boss to succeed – sometimes you just need to blast them down as quickly as you can before your timer runs out.

Sin & Punishment is a pretty short game – I cleared it on Easy in about 2 hours or so – but it does offer replay value in the higher difficulties which include additional bosses or boss stages. And it is, overall, pretty fun. It’s certainly no Panzer Dragoon, but it’s still worth checking out.

The visuals hold up pretty well, even if some parts of the game suffer from that ugly early-3D polygon clutter that can make things a little tricky to see and the character models are . . . uh, I don’t know what the f**k is going on with those but I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about them later.

And don’t ask me what Sin & Punishment is about because I really have no f**king clue. It’s completely baffling to me even after watching all the cut-scenes and reading a plot summary on Wikipedia. The dialogue is so bad and bizarre it’s kind of funny – but that’s only when you can hear it because the voices are so bloody quiet.

The game does end with you fighting a planet though so that’s pretty cool. No idea why, but who cares?