When it comes to investing a lot of well-deserved goofing-off time into a game that offers extra upgrades only at its parent site, I often drop the inferior version without even trying it and head over for the extra in-game swag.

Sin Mark, a 2-D RPG side-scroller by Armor Games, is the first game I made an exception for. The gameplay is hard but fair, and does a fine job of recreating the bloodiness of medieval and fantasy terrain battles. I was never really much of a fan of the archer class, but Sin Mark comes through in a big way. By adding 2-D terrain, combining a rune-gathering, spell-making system to accompany the repetitive draw-fire of bow combat, and adding in some allies from time to time, the game avoids being a yawnfest.

When you begin, you’re an an archer babe in the woods. Well, actually you’re a burly guy. Anyhoo you’re about as empowered as a kid lost in a Wal-Mart back room the way the monsters swarming from the portals replace their fallen ranks as you fire generic arrow after generic arrow. If you can aim over the heads of the monsters charging at you, you can chip away at the portals’ life bars. If you’re standing on a hill, it may or may not be easier; a higher spot may be farther away than a ground shot. Either way, they make sure you have your work cut out for you. Have you ever tried to destroy a dimensional portal with a few pointy twigs? It just ain’t easy.

The one downside to the gameplay is a lack of documentation that tells you to just tap the space bar to start digging up rune piles scattered throughout the level. Apparently if you hold the space bar down, it doesn’t do anything until you let go. This caused me a few minutes of frustration. When you do let go, a progress bar begins to fill up, and then you get runes. Of course, since you’re out on the battlefield, you don’t really have much time to invoke your spell-making arts, so you have to survive until the end of the level. This is done by destroying all the portals and monsters. To add a little variety to the game, portals will appear on either side of you, sometimes letting monsters use a pincer movement to beat on you when you’re finally surrounded.

Should you defeat all your enemies as a puny beginning bowman, the level will fade to black and martial music will play in the background as you go over your spellcrafting options. A 4-page spellbook (5 pages at ArmorGames.com) shows you the many rune combinations you will need to create permanent spells. This isn’t your granddad’s wussy earth-air-fire-water crap. No sir, you get to mix up runes like Bone, Chaos, Storm, Destruction… and okay, Earth and Fire. Though you’ve probably seen the spells in other games countless times, the fact a lone archer can use them makes the experience original. Basics like Earth Arrow, Fire Arrow, Freeze and Slow give way to assorted nastiness like Decay Armor, Thorns, Storm Strike and the antacid-sponsored Bloat. ArmorGames.com withholds only three goodies: Arrow Storm, Warrior of Chaos, and BoneStorm. True to good RPG style, the final components are hidden.

Other considerations are which spells you want to add to your bow (you can only stock 5 at a time), how much mana each spell uses, and which of 6 trinkets you want to wear. While the idea of an arrow-spraying he-man doesn’t mesh that well with the image of wearing a pretty bauble, they’re still pretty badass, at least as far as trinkets go. One lets you fire faster; another lets you pierce armor; another protects you; another lets you dodge easily; and the last I’ve found (there seems to be one more) helps you find rarer runes more easily for the more complex spells.

Once you’re back on the battlefield, and armed with magic this time, the fight gets intense fast. Armor Games has made sure that once you have some spells down, the fight will be furious. Often you will be fighting Hamburger Hill style to protect your terrain, or at least keep from getting marched all the way back to the left edge of the battleground and then gang-beaten. If this does happen, it’s not an automatic cheese-out loss; even if you have no spells it’s not too tough to sink a few in your nearest foes and begin reclaiming the battleground again.

The game does a great job of rezzing some really annoying random unit combinations. Smaller demihumans can often run interference for larger armored units, and the goblin mages do a very good job singeing your lifebar away dropping one aerial fireball at a time.

I’ve only gotten half the spells as of this writing. The Fire Arrow is pretty weak, even though it does splash damage and wrecks portals faster, but I’ve come to find that this game’s version of Fear is about as kick-ass as you can get. Whether fired near or far, even the big armored units will give you the elbow room you need to conserve your health and mana (both of which are displayed Diablo-style in red and blue punchbowls).

There aren’t any crazy objectives like “capture the flag” and I haven’t really seen any magic-resistant creatures, but if you like a fight for the sake of fighting, Sin Mark will help you get that bad day at the office out of your system pretty quick.

Gameplay: A. A little repetitive in the beginning, but that’s the way most good RPGs have it: so you can enjoy the good stuff later. Solid collision detection, some PG-13 effects (arrows sticking in enemies and enemies exploding from inside), and a lot of mix-and-match customization, along with some pot luck from random runes, makes discovery fun.

Graphics: A+. Just about photorealistic, from a distance, in the combat section, and the options screen is on a par with Talesworth Arena.

Sound/Music: A. Whether the soothing music of the options screen or the hack-o-rama of the combat, Sin Mark delivers without being overbearing.

Replay Value: B. Once I’m done with this, I probably won’t be doing much with it, as it is such a thumb-buster, but I’ll see what the extra spells do on the Armor site.

Originality: B+. A hybrid, but a hybrid so good it deserves its own tax credit.
Overall: A. Not a bad game at all, with sharp production values, varied backgrounds, a fun synthesis system, and plenty of hack-and-… uh… shoot.

Play Sin Mark at Newgrounds or Armor Games.