So basically you are paying to download a substandard and short hl2 mod? 

The original was terribly underappreciated, so it would've been nice for Episodes to make up for that.

I was going to get my hands on it myself, but I might wait until a few more have been released and they put out a pack for sale, now. 

i liked it, typed some shit on me site about it. 

I've yet to play, so I can't comment on the gameplay, but I don't think $20 is a bad deal for 2 / 3 ish hours play. You'd easily piss that up the wall going to the cinema and its less entertaining.

Also, you do get the original Sin with it, which I thought was a good laugh. 

You can play through Marcher Fortress for an hour for FREE, with probably better gameplay and you don't even need to have fucking Steam on your computer (GOD BLESS YOU KINN!) 

$20 = a 4-minute lap dance. 

I like Steam, it just works.

metl, thats probably the best use of $20. 

four minute lapdance = 20$

she takes to the back room as the bouncer is starting his break
= priceless 

Anybody would think this was the worst game ever from what has been said so far. It's not at all, I really enjoyed it. It's flawed and far from the ultimate FPS experience but has good solid combat, fairly decent AI and all the other palaver you would expect.

Game length varies between individuals, a lot, especially in FPS games. My first play of HL2 took me a full day (something like 16-18 hours) yet I've seen people say it sucked because it was 8 hours long, which pretty much means they played it like a bunnyhopping CS retard the whole way through and completely pissed away any potential to actually enjoy all the stuff in the game (Note: I'm not saying that this was you playing Emergence Daz, just citing an extreme example!) My first play of Emergence took just over 4 hours and I thought I had rushed it a bit (it was a week night with work the next morning after all), replaying it and exploring properly will probably take longer. Arena mode is supposed to be coming in a patch soon as well which will hopefully add a lot of replay value to something that cost me less than getting a movie on DVD.

The dynamic difficulty thing is currently broken, there's no denying it. If you play on the default slider settings you'll breeze through the first half of the game, and then start getting frequent bouts of anal rape after the mid-game boss. That it worked so perfectly up to midway and so badly after is disappointing: For the first half I rarely died but was often scraping my way to the next health cache which felt challenging and exciting, for the second half I was constantly quickloading (but I was still having fun so I didn't mind too much). It was kind of refreshing to have a game actually be hard for me but still beatable though, too often it just doesn't work out with fixed difficulty levels, if a game has difficulty settings at all. Hopefully I can find slider settings that give me the right experience all the way through.

It was disappointing that Blade doesn't chat much now, no quips and chatter with JC like in the original. Silly Easter eggs and daft posters were still everywhere though - lots of posters have numbers on them which can be dialled into the game's phones to get sound clips. Lots of interactive stuff in levels as well (sinks, computers, refillable health stations etc.).

Now I need to remember to give the Shadowgrounds demo a try. 

ok so I played it again and lowered the difficulty sliders a bit and it IS better now, I dunno who picked those default settings but they need to be strung up :)

The combat is fun, I think I was maybe overly harsh in the opening post because I was just so sick of all the quickloading and it ruined most of the later half of the game for me.

Yeah the wall posters make me laugh, especially the "pipes are the new crate" posters in the tanker :)

Onto shadowgrounds (which Shallow mentioned). This and SiN ep1 are basicly the same price iirc, but Shadowgrounds is much more fun! Its like a topdown AvP game with you playing as the marine, its oldschool for sure but its great and Im definitely gonna buy it next month. If you need any more convincing, just listen to the disco music in the last level of the demo :D you'll know it when you hear it =) 

There is a dopefish! 

a lot like the original, fun in parts but equally frustrating and buggy in others. 

auto-skill never works.

"like half-life 2 minus all the cool things you liked about half-life 2."

heh 

People have sent Ritual a bunch of save games and stats which has enabled them to identify how some players are getting their difficulty set too high in the latter part of the game (it's by no means a universal thing, although a significant number). There should hopefully be a patch this week.

This is good, since my 'relaxed pace' replay saw me starting to get my dose of chaingun rape about a level sooner than before - even though I'd adjusted the sliders for a more mellow experience! 

obviously don't show up in beta tests.

oh, a sarcasm detector! 

Overall I thought it was very good. A bit like HL2 in the beginning, yes, but I loved HL2 so no complaints.
It feels like a game from 1997 with huge graphical upgrades, that is with all the weird humor, terrible dialogue and the LOL TITS! factor.
Level design also felt rather old style. Probably that magical Levelord� touch.
I did love that the game in fact had secrets. Actual, quantifiable secrets. you even get a little fanfare that plays when you find them. Man that was great, when was the last time a game let you know you found a secret? Probably 1997 or something.

However, I had been playing along just fine, no major challenge, just as I wanted it to be, but then I got into the Sexy Tower or whatever it was called and suddenly the difficulty shot through the roof. At one point I counted 9 of those fucking chaingun guys firing at me in a small area. Nigga please! Can't cope with that! So I put fucking godmode on and finished it that way. Which was pleasant.
They should seriously tone down the chaingun guys, they deal ~20 damage per second or something and they take at least 4 seconds to kill. Fuck those guys.

Also the boss fight was too hard.

Will probably get next episode, although I think they are too expensive. 

"when was the last time a game let you know you found a secret? Probably 1997 or something. "

No it was in Painkiller last year =)

I totally agree about the minigun guys though, totally crazy. In an oldschool way it is a great game but I was expecting something modern (wrongly?).

I'll see what episode 2 shows, but I will not be pre-perchasing it, gonna wait until I get some proper reviews. 

dont click if you dont want to ruin it..

http://www.techgage.com/viewimg.php?img=/reviews/gaming/ritual/sin/episode_1/sin_episodes_easteregg_1.jpg&desc=SiN%20Episodes:%20Emergence

Yay it lives!