Sin and Punishment, also known as Tsumi No Batsu, is an On-Rails shooter released in 2000 for the N64. However, it's seen rereleases on every Nintendo home platform released afterwards, except for the Gamecube. And oh boy, does this game take advantage of the N64's hardware.
The style of this game is nothing like anything else released on the Nintendo 64. First of all, I'd like to say that the textures are very impressive. As I'm sure all you LOSERS know, the N64 had only a 4KB Texture cache. Which means that you couldn't have many fancy textures on screen. and those that were on screen had to be limited in size. The N64 specializes in drawing lots of polygons (for the time), but mostly flat shaded polygons. However, this game was released at the very tail end of the N64's lifespan, which means the devs must have had a good handle over the hardware. The graphics are fantastic. For clarity sake, I should specify that I played the Wii Virtual Console Rerelease. However, the differences shouldn't be too major. The art style is very similar to Gainax's "Neon Genesis Evangellion". I feel bad for the poor souls on this website who know what I'm talking about, if you've watched the show. Especially so End of Evangellion. Regardless, the game takes lots of inspiration from the anime of the time. The story follows our genderdly-challenged protagonist, Saki (whom I believed to be a woman at the start of my playthrough.), along with his bumbling cohorts, Airen and Achi. They are a member of a NERV-like group called "The Savior Group". The story takes place in Japan, during the Near-Future year of 2007. Woah. Regardless of off-predictions, the land of the rising sun is not a peaceful one. As we see in the game, we have to mow-down thousands of these creatures called "Ruffians." They're sorta like an insectioid-race of aliens bred for food. As for why anybody would even eat these things? Earth apparently has so many people, that millions are going hungry. Regardless, something has gone terribly wrong, and they've breached containment. Which is "No Bueno." So you, your potential love interest Airen, and a creepy psychic girl in blue rags known as Achi set out to go and kill em' all.
Being an On-Rails shooter, You have your basic movements for such a game. You can move left and right using the left and right "C Buttons". Or, you could use the N64's D-Pad. It's surprisingly intuitive despite how much hate the N64 controller gets. I'll stand by this controller until I'm dead and buried, it isn't bad. It sure kicks the ass of the Jaguar's controller. I didn't find myself reaching for buttons too much, and I got the hang of it after about 30 minutes or gameplay when it all became engrained in muscle memory. As mentioned earlier, the Graphics are pretty good, and enemies are easily identifiable thanks to the clearer textures. However, the game doesn't have a tutorial, or at least not a good one. It took me an hour until I found out that I could dodge. But once you figure out the controls, it's not bad. Another thing that kind of sucks is the lives system. You get a one-up for every 100 hits, which you can rack up in quick succession. When you run out of lives, back to the beginning, bucko. There's one level that will GRIND your lives down over and over again. I was sent back to the start about twice from the level where you have to take out a Thermonuclear warhead. If you switch your targeting to Auto-Lock, you won't deal enough damage to take it out before it makes impact and turns Saki into fucking dust. but if you switch to targeting mode, you won't deal enough damage either. What you're supposed to do is use your melee attack. You need your melee attack to take out a boss earlier in the game, but as I stated, you're never told this until you get frustrated enough to go on GameFAQ's (Gamefags). There's also this really weird time travelling level on an absurdly long subway train in New York City. There's a miniboss of a wall of rocks. you have to shoot the purple spots in time so they explode, that's the boss's weak spot. I'll talk more about the story when we get there.
The game isn't very long. I was able to beat the whole thing in an afternoon, but the replay value is pretty good. There's multiple difficulties that you can choose from. Other than that, once you've beat it you've pretty much seen all the game has to offer.
There's some suckage in this game, mostly the whole thing with the thermonuclear warhead. The controls are also not the greatest, at least when playing on a Wii Classic Controller. I'd reccomend playing on a dedicated N64 Controller. Another thing I think isn't good is the lack of a dedicated melee button. I often find myself not able to melee at the right time, which results in my quarters getting eaten up. Metaphorical quarters, that is. But I don't think any of these flaws stop me from enjoying the game.
I think this game has aged pretty alright, even if it's got early 3D game syndrome in some aspects. I like the narrative and the artstyle, and the gameplay is pretty fun too. Overall, I'd say this game SUCKS'! As in, it passes my criteria for being a good game. Just play it on an Emulator, with the N64 Controller like god intended.