SiN was a fine FPS, if a bit buggy at launch. Considered by many to be a spiritual successor to Duke Nukem 3D, with its wisecracking meathead protagonist stomping his way through a highly interactive world. It also came out on November 4th, 1998. On November 19th, Half-Life launched. Oof. Thankfully, Nightdive Studios, masters of retro remastering, have been holding a torch for this one for years. Today, it finally gets a second shot in the limelight. Polished up, retuned, and enhanced along with its expansion, released today as SiN Reloaded.

It really did feel like a clash of the eras, and Half-Life squarely won, with its silent protagonist and intuitively told in-game narrative. By comparison, SiN was '90s comics culture writ large, with swole action-guy protagonist John R. Blade dropping snappy one-liners, getting into expository chatter with his hacker sidekick, and trading barbs with the amply be-bosomed supervillain antagonist Elexis Sinclair.

But even if it was an exercise in cornball comic-book excess, even back in the day, I really liked SiN. The combat had surprising depth, with visible locational damage on enemies, and a huge roster of bad guys - humans, cyborgs, mutants and robots abound. It also had secrets to be found EVERYWHERE, including some entirely optional missions that required some out-of-the-box thinking to even reach. Plus, there were a bunch of fun things to poke around (or blow up) in the environment - always a fun time, although the opening mission in a bank is probably the high point for interaction. At least in the main game.

It even saw a surprisingly good expansion (included and similarly overhauled in this re-release), and hopefully a few more people will be able to experience it now. Nightdive has done their usual thing, porting the game from the old Quake 2 engine to their in-house Kex Engine. As such, expect slicker graphics, better lighting, a raft of new (optional) high-res models and textures, plus a lot of quality-of-life and UI improvements. There's a demo, too, if you want to see how they've tuned it up.

The only downside of this release is the steep price tag. Development of this remaster has been a long, messy process for Nightdive, but on a day as packed as this, I'd be surprised if SiN Reloaded was flying off the virtual shelves at £25/$30, especially as a 28-year-old game without any major new content.

Nightdive have hinted that if this remaster sells well enough, then they might return to the sadly-abandoned episodic sequel (which launched right alongside the first Half-Life 2 expansion - the curse continues), but I'm not betting money on that happening. Would be nice, though. At least there's a broader audience now - SiN Reloaded is also out on every console around, including the original Nintendo Switch.