SiN Reloaded – Review

Sinfully SiN!

Between Captain Ciucaș's house – an unlicensed distributor of pirated games in the village of Voila, Brașov County – and the house where I grew up, there are about 200 metres. Sometime around 2000, I sprinted the whole way in one breath, clutching the freshest CD of rips to my chest. KKND, Bonkheads, Cybermercs and SiN (plus a short clip of two lesbians in a restaurant toilet, but that story has no place here). That's what the round piece of plastic held, and it would immediately take over the job of a portal to other worlds. I knew the first three from him, but SiN was completely new to me, beyond a quick pitch: it's a shooter, a bit like Quake 2 but more colourful, and at the start you machine-gun pigeons from a helicopter!

Sins Reloaded

Well, what more could I want? Maybe just a powerful computer with 3D acceleration, because it took me about three minutes to load the first level and enjoy, in software mode, the virtual machine gun's effect on the villains attacking me from the roof. Believe me when I say that, at 15 frames per second and with pixels as big as my head on a tired CRT, SiN looked photorealistic to me. Now that's graphics, baby! The visual wonders coming out of my S3 card had my heart pounding like a deaf man ringing church bells. I'd forgotten all about the pigeons, and about the fact that the tower was starting to give off a sweetish smell of warm, swollen capacitors.

When Blade, the dreadlocked hero with a Duke Nukem attitude, finally reached the corridors of the robbed bank, I knew I was about to develop a small obsession with SiN. Pistol in hand, punching lucky guesses into the interactive ATM, this was the game I'd still have installed in 2026 on my Windows XP gaming PC, because my friendship with Blade has survived the years. What I never imagined back then was that I'd replay it on PlayStation 5, remastered.

Without Sin?

After a run of successful remasters, it was only natural that Nightdive would eventually miss the mark. Because although SiN Reloaded is, body and soul, the same filthy 1998 game with improved graphics, some things don't work – and I don't mean the fact that Elexis Sinclaire is an evil milkmaid with colossal jugs. Nor the honey-voiced nurses. No, I mean that the game has some serious technical problems.

The first has to do with the original's mechanics being implemented in the KEX Engine, because whatever Ritual Entertainment did back then with the Quake 2 engine shows up in SiN Reloaded in the form of some truly magnificent physics bugs. They're so bizarre that I started to find them funny. In the version I played for this review, any attempt to use a vehicle ended in a defiant, Newton-baiting hop across the whole map. The rest mostly concerned enemy behaviour throughout the levels – and what fantastic levels they are, comparable in design complexity to those of Soldier of Fortune 2.

In truth, that would be the second problem. The enemy AI either doesn't realise it's been remastered or is simply incompatible with the game's physics. Blade's enemies trip over every obstacle, shoot at random, ignore being shot altogether, or see through walls, strangers to any form of line of sight. I blasted Mancini with the shotgun without moving an inch, in what was supposed to be a boss fight with at least a bit of difficulty. There are so many moments like the ones I describe that they seem to be part of the game's logic. Oddly enough, this works in the remaster's favour, giving it a janky charm you can't find in modern games (that aren't Wolverine).

Even so, the interaction with the environment is still hard to match. Every map is full of secrets and terminals you can access, some with downright hilarious easter eggs. I recommend trying to withdraw money from Bill Gates' account. I'll give you the PIN: 6666. The other combinations are down to you.

My Sins!

Still, SiN Reloaded is the product of a collision between its own era and ours. It's the same delicious FPS as ever, best enjoyed with a cold drink and a bag of crisps. It comes bundled with the Wages of SiN expansion, in which HARDCORPS daddy Blade gets a few more missions and the ability to fire two pistols at once, and even some useful kit – such as a torch. Quality-of-life upgrades for the limitless cop, which can also be used in the original campaign.

Visually, it looks just as I pictured it in my mind's eye back in software mode. Insane. The colour palette is still easy to recognise and part of this game's identity. If you collect Nightdive remasters, then SiN Reloaded deserves a place on the shelf. It doesn't measure up to the studio's other revivals (at least not right after launch), but I reckon a patch could easily put it right. Because, negatives aside, Sin Reloaded is the same portal to 1998. And nobody can take that away from it.

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Played on: PlayStation 5
Release date: 24 September 2026
Developer: Nightdive Studio, Ritual Entertainment
Publisher: Nightdive Studio, Atari