Sin and Punishment Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/13/2024)

[Image from igdb.com]

Sin and Punishment

Developer: Treasure

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Rail Shooter

Platforms: N64

Release Date: November 21, 2000

Sin AND Punishment? This game has everything! Sign me the fuck up! Easy, obnoxious jokes about the title aside, for some time, westerners such as myself couldn’t sign themselves up to relish in Nintendo’s third-person rail shooter. Sin and Punishment is yet another example of a hidden gem whose esoteric status stems from a lack of an international release outside of Japan. The Japanese public was the lucky few given the blessing to play Sin and Punishment at its initial release on the N64, while everyone elsewhere had to jump over a generation to download it on the Wii’s extensive Virtual Console application. All of my gamer peers over here in the United States were salivating like hungry dogs at the looming possibility of finally playing Sin and Punishment, for we heard from all of the reliable sources on the internet that this game was the tits (metaphorically speaking, of course). Once it emerged on a legitimate platform over here, those rumors of Sin and Punishment satisfying those cravings for a damn good video game were definitely affirmed. But why was the game’s global prestige deferred in the first place? Digressing from the peculiarly adult title that sounds like the memoir of a dominatrix, perhaps Sin and Punishment’s confinement to its eastern homeland of Japan can be extrapolated through its gameplay, presentation, and narrative to understand why they kept it to themselves for so long.

Maybe someone from the land of the rising sun will be able to explain what the fuck is occurring in Sin and Punishment’s story. Similarly to several other rail shooters, Sin and Punishment is science fiction-themed, and its art style exudes something of a quasi-cyberpunk aesthetic that compliments the futuristic tone and setting. From what I gather, the antagonists of Sin and Punishment are the “Ruffians,” a species of cybernetic creatures that were apparently engineered as a food source for the famine-stricken people of the then-near future of 2007 Japan. Naturally, these genetic monstrosities weren’t going to stand for the eradication of their kind through mass consumption, so they began attacking the humans as a sign of retaliation. A military group called the Armed Forces was then assigned to eliminate the Ruffian threat but then decided to form an allegiance with the Ruffians to hegemonize the Japanese public to a tyrannical reign between the two factions. Only a psychic girl named Achi and her two friends, Saki and Airan, have the necessary moxie and resources to overthrow their oppressors. Summarizing Sin and Punishment’s premise required a bit of additional research and even with a detailed explanation of the narrative’s context, it’s still rife with more holes than a leaking bucket. How did the futuristic agriculturalists actually expect the people of their nation to feasibly eat these gargantuan bugs and humanoid mechs that have more metallic substances in them than an automobile? What could be the Armed Forces’ motive for subjugating the already destitute civilians, and how did they achieve this position of power working with what are essentially cattle? One would think the Ruffians have such little sway in transformative governmental revolutions that it's laughable, but evidently, this is not the case. My resources don’t have an explanation for this, I don’t have an explanation for this, and I’ll bet that the guy who drummed this shit up in his sleep doesn’t either. Perhaps the strangest thing about Sin and Punishment is that despite the game’s restriction to Japan, the game is fully voice-acted in English (albeit incompetently) with Japanese subtitles scrolling along the screen so the only viable player base can understand. Color me befuddled.

Fortunately, Sin and Punishment’s story is practically irrelevant in the grand scheme of the game’s principal qualities. If you're familiar with the work of the chief developer Treasure from their previous titles such as Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier, you can likely guess what Sin and Punishment has in store for the player regarding the rail shooter gameplay. Sin and Punishment bombs the player with a blustering blitzkrieg of bullets so veritably staggering that even breathing will make them susceptible to swallowing a blast of lead energy. To describe Sin and Punishment’s gameplay as “fast-paced” would be a glaring understatement. I’ve never seen the concept of inertia act to this maximalist extent before I played Sin and Punishment. This game’s pacing is pure caffeine topped off with a splash of juice from a wild bull’s adrenal gland. Never in any game that I’ve played, much less in the rail shooter genre, have I witnessed such a shameless bombast. Something or someone explodes every millisecond and after that chain of explosions is another waiting around the corner at breakneck speed. Sin and Punishment jostles the player around so vigorously that they’ll hardly have time to mentally process everything assaulting them. Yet, that’s what makes Sin and Punishment so appealing. Sometimes, it feels exhilarating to let one’s hair down and let the excess flow through your pleasure centers without being bothered by skepticism, kind of like an acid trip.

I’d revel in the extreme, crack-addled action of Sin and Punishment if controlling the character in the midst of battle wasn’t so excruciatingly tedious. Sin and Punishment’s, let’s just say…unorthodox control scheme was a calculated plot by Treasure president Masato Maegawa. This man was concerned that the D-Pad located on the left side of the N64 controller was feeling dejected because the analog protuberance in the center was receiving all of the attention due to the new, 3D spatial range that it accommodated. Utilizing the lonely left D-Pad is a nice gesture and a unique mechanic for the console but in practice, it’s like emphasizing the pinky toe during regular walking movement. The player has to use both directional units on the controller in tandem with one another to execute two indispensable facets of the game’s control scheme. The D-Pad alters the position of the character’s body on the restricted horizontal plane, and the analog stick moves the targeting crosshair. The B and A buttons will activate the jumping and shooting controls respectively. I already abhor the N64 controller for its awkward shape and mismanaged placement of its various implements, and humoring Sin and Punishment’s control scheme by treating the controller like a Twister gamepad is liable to give every player premature arthritis. I played this game on a Gamecube controller connected to the American Wii version, so my appalled critiques are essentially on the principle of the matter. Still, even with a competently designed controller, there is absolutely zero synergy between this absurdly cumbersome schematic. Tasks that I thought were simple such as jumping and moving have been congested by the equal precedence by so many other controls that should've been reworked with more consideration. I feel handicapped by Sin and Punishment’s controls and considering the game moves at a blistering speed, it’s quite a hefty encumbrance. Either automatically control the character’s physical movement or incorporate a more direct marriage between shooting and moving like in Star Fox 64. In addition, I thought the beam sword in Saki’s hand was an illusion until I accidentally unsheathed it for a second while attempting to shoot. Triggering this weapon for up close and personal combat situations is executed with the same button as the gun, but I swear that the player has to touch the button so gingerly to differentiate the action that it would be more responsive to the shaking of a sneeze rather than a finger press.

Sin and Punishment’s controls are only the tip of the iceberg of frustration that’s wedged between my full enjoyment of the game. A common descriptor most gamers assign to Sin and Punishment is “arcadey,” and I also feel like that term isn’t selling the whole truth. Sin and Punishment’s design encompasses so many clear-cut arcade game tropes that it’s practically a textbook example of a game developed for the remote gaming peripheral, and telling me otherwise is like trying to convince me that Alexandra Daddario isn’t a woman. I even double-checked during my research to reveal the truth of this matter and despite my incredulity, Sin and Punishment was crafted exclusively for the N64. Now I’ll believe anything. The underlying issue of assigning this descriptor to a console game is that it comes with a steamer trunk full of negative connotations that I associate with the typical translation from an arcade game to a console game. It goes without saying that Sin and Punishment does not offer infinite continues. Understandably, the game has a brief overall playtime, and the game admittedly does offer plenty of health items and reward perks to slightly mitigate the permanent punishment for failure. Still, Sin and Punishment bombards the player with so much from the opposition that the only way they’ll be able to anticipate any of it is through organic practice. However, the game ensures that the player will not receive a limitless chance to hone their skills because the game subscribes to an arcade ethos of penalty. The player must also eliminate their targets pronto because a clock will be ticking overhead. 99 seconds is the time limit given to complete a swathe of a level that will keep declining to zero until the player completes a milestone. Over a minute-and-a-half seems like a reasonably merciful period to abide by, but the swathe of progress needed to be completed seems to be arbitrarily assigned by the game. Some sections are short and sweet, while others will have the player praying for relief until the time limit is up and the player’s health bar slowly bleeds dry. There is simply too much stacked against the player for them to succeed.

Defeating a boss is one accomplishment that will consistently replenish the game’s time gauge. Sin and Punishment offers formidable foes with screen-spanning health bars aplenty, and I’d consider them to be an exemplary aspect of the game. Every boss that the player stumbles upon in their quest to dismantle the Ruffian’s reign is quite memorable, commenting mostly on their imposing stature and not because the player will likely face them countless times on repeat cycles. Radan is the first sizable boss and the first to require another method to defeat besides relentless shooting. The villainous Brad and his felonious feline companion, Leda, will give the player a taste of what it’s like to combat two significant foes simultaneously. A mention should go to the avalanche of living boulders that block the progression of a moving subway car that takes place ten years in the future where Saki and Airan are the proud parents of a healthy young boy (yes, this game’s plot still remains nonsensical), for both its bizarre design and creative means of dispatching it. The last duel of the game is truly the pinnacle of final bosses in gaming, much less just Sin and Punishment. The war of attrition between the onslaught of meteorites that the mimicry of Earth launches and the bullet fire of Ruffian Saki defending the original evokes an epic atmosphere unmatched by most other titles. I think what I enjoy the most from these bosses is the fact that the pollution of extra firepower from enemies is not applicable, so the player has the opportunity to concentrate and learn their attack patterns accordingly. However, every boss has a trick up their sleeves that will catch the player off guard and harm them for their unadorned reflexes, so ultimately, the player might not gain the necessary familiarity with these bosses because of the penalties that are still at play.

I can now conclude that Sin and Punishment’s relegation to its country of origin is a classic case of perceived Japanese superiority. Oftentimes, many gaming publishers, especially Nintendo, refuse an international release of a title for fear that Western audiences will become uncomfortably confused and put off by its “foreign” and “highbrow” content. I challenge any Japanese person to analyze Sin and Punishment sufficiently, for I don’t believe that anyone could withstand bewilderment from the game regardless of nationality. Sin and Punishment is an ostentatious rollercoaster ride backed by a feverishly obtuse plot conjured up by an overworked and overmedicated man over at Treasure. The only way any of this is passable is if it was all crafted with the arcade in mind, for the scope of the setting conveys a totally polar aura than that of a home console arrangement. If I could play Sin and Punishment with friends over drinks in a dimly lit public room, it would be the first machine I’d dart towards. In a perfect world, lines would be formed at every Dave and Busters establishment for the chance to engage in Sin and Punishment’s extravagant splendor with local kids fawning over it from afar.. Alas, its allocation to the N64 system and working around the incompatibility of the console with the game’s arcade attributes makes the game rather ill-conceived. As a result, Sin and Punishment emphasizes the punishment aspect of the title more than anything else. But what sin was committed by gamers to warrant this? Having fun? Expecting clemency in a post-arcade gaming climate? How dare we.