Syndicate Never Stood a Chance

[teh_Canape]

of course people's expectations ruined it
you know, they expected a good game

ba dum tsh!

I enjoyed the game all the way up till the final act where it went really crappy

I attempted to enjoy it, but it really was a tedium to play most of the time

 

[teh_Canape]

of course people's expectations ruined it
you know, they expected a good game

ba dum tsh!

I enjoyed the game all the way up till the final act where it went really crappy

I attempted to enjoy it, but it really was a tedium to play most of the time

Might I ask what you thought of the third act? How did you feel about the sudden decision of the agent switching to the freedom fighter side?

never played the original ones enough to get into their lore properly, so I cannot compare
however, by the game itself and what I experienced from the start to that part, the moment he turned freedom fighter I went "of course, because that's never done before"

 

[thepyrethatburns]

I just had a random thought/observation.

If this game wasn't 'based on Syndicate', but say another Deus Ex game, would that make it more enjoyable?

To me, Syndicate is all about strategy and positioning, from what I have seen this game offers very little in regards to this aspect. But say a Deus Ex game which is already FPS, would the game be 'better' if say the story was about getting a new mod or something.

Honestly? No.

Like many who played it back in the day, the remake made my eyes roll and, as details of the plot and whatnot came out, they rolled even more. But, when the demo came out, I allowed it an honest chance anyway because I've been wrong and some remakes (Defender for the PS2 as an example) turned out really good.

This is not one of them. It isn't bad but it was so bland that it didn't really inspire any feelings one way or another. There was nothing in the demo that distinguished itself from any other dull grey shooter on the market.

To me, it's less about any butthurt/nostalgia backlash and more about how this game could have been renamed "Baby's first modern grey FPS". There was nothing in the demo that hasn't been done before and nothing that stood out. While that doesn't make it the worst FPS on the market, that also doesn't make it worth even $20 of my money.

 

[Something Amyss]

Starbreeze's CEO doesn't think the Syndicate reboot "could've ever lived up to some people's expectations."

Especially if they expected it to be GOOD.

Yes, I'm sure making it too hard was the problem with the game, not... I don't know making it be nothing like... Syndicate?

"It's too hard" is one of the new brand of excuses everyone uses when the game sucks. Look at Amy.

It's not the broken controls. It's the difficulty.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

You wonder why they didnt just take the whole original game and make it into a FPS game but you played it from street level instead of from above. Even Ghost Recon has four people to control in a city environment so it wouldn't have been that difficult thing to do.

 

[Tiamat666]

It was a cookie cutter FPS that annoyed the only people who appreciated the branding. What did they expect?

I wanted to say something, but then the first post already nailed it for me right there.

 

[Simonoly]

It never stood a chance because it simply wasn't a very good game. The multiplayer was fine, but it wasn't enough to make up for the shockingly bad (and incredibly short) single player.

I had a similar reaction to this game as I did with Kingdoms of Amalur: the game was so generic that I felt like I was just playing an expansion pack of a game I had already played before.

Is it that difficult to try and create something original?

 

[Lt._nefarious]

It was a damn shame that game wasn't successful, I thought it was awesome... yep a damn, damn shame.

 

[Quellist]

[

Well back in the day it was to me the most awesome thing ever (even though i usually prefer TBS to RTS), and while its possible to finish the game just sniping and mind controlling what made it so good back in the day was you had so much freedom about completing your objective. It might not stand up so well next to modern RTS but what you have to understand is for its time it was pretty sweet and i think what i and many other fans were hoping for when we heard the word 'Reboot' was an RTS faithful to the spirit of the game with modern day production values and refinements. What we got was something a lot different.

I dont like FPS a lot anyway but seeing a cherished franchise reborn in such a way feels like a double blow. I think the way this game was made basically guaranteed it would piss off the original fanbase.

*Edit* I think part of your problem is the strategy guide. I remember playing that game without a strategy guide and formulating my own strategies. These days that seems to be out of fashion. Yes with a good strategy guide you can walk every mission but you lose the exploration of gameplay angle

Tbh the huge thing I couldn't deal with was a silly thing, I'm very defensive minded and when you couldn't stop time passing at any point, not even with the upgrades! it shifted me out of my comfort zone, I could see some of the reasons why people liked it. Although I wasn't yet looking at the strategy guide for actual guidance and more I was just trying to figure out how the controls worked and the dude had a summary at the front which I ended up flicking through.

I didn't really mean to be critical of it as it was per say, but I just feel that you could have kept was the core fun of the game and completely ditch the control scheme, which I don't know would have been so acceptable nowadays. I was thinking it should control like an FPS (although to be honest a third-person shooter would have made much more sense) but the level design and key gameplay shouldn't have been FPS level design. Instead you have a wide range of upgraded abilities that offer flexible approaches (Human Revolution sort of thing as opposed to Mind Hacking) and been put in, say a fully mapped out building, with an objective. I hope that would be exploratory and flexible and very different to the games you get nowadays without the hangbacks of old control systems. Would that have been okay?

I cant argue i would have thoroughly enjoyed a game like you described, maybe it wouldn't have been a totally faithful remake but it would have been faithful to the spirit of the game and IMO that's more important. Also it sounds like it would be fun that way....shame developers wont take a risk and be creative...

 

[Atrocious Joystick]

It didn't tank because it wasn't like the original Syndicate. That's just a masturbatory fantasies of the fans and a convenient excuse for the developers.

It tanked because it wasn't that impressive of a game, the most impressive thing about it was the trailer. If it had been a good game, the fans could cry all they want and they would still have raked in a bunch of cash and a rebooted franchise to play around with. Fallout 3 raked in the cash like it was nudie pictures of Obama. And it "betrayed" the original franchise too.

So did WOW for that matter. And Neverwinter Nights. (The "first" one)

 

[ElPatron]

Eh?

Turning Warcraft from RTS to RPG seems to have worked, because people liked the world. I don't see why a Syndicate FPS is necessarily a bad thing.

It's not.

But while you have a game where you are a mastermind behind an evil corporation and the game let's you see your evilness. This game? Nah. You are a pawn and you can't really see all the evilness.

It would have worked if it was a good FPS, but it was pretty "bland".

 

[Firia]

You know what game I wish they'd make? Syndicate. Not this FPS baloney. It's so divorced from what I played years ago.

 

[dancinginfernal]

Am I the only one who extremely enjoyed this game, regardless of its relevance to the original?

It wasn't another FPS with a gimmick. Sure, the single-player plot was silly but the gameplay was done extremely well. The Breaching concept wasn't just shoehorned it, it became something you relied on and used strategically to defeat your enemies. Sure, it had a few weak points but so do all games. None of them completely broke the gameplay, or how enjoyable the game was.

Not to mention the Co-operative multiplayer is one of the few games that rewards and endorses working together as opposed to bumrushing on your own. I extremely enjoyed this game, and I wish people would stop crying about it because it's an FPS. Yeah, it's an FPS. It isn't just another shooter, just because it is a shooter, it's its own game and a damn good one at that. Yeah, it carries the Syndicate name and it's not an RTS. That doesn't instantly make it a terrible game, and I imagine half of those complaining about it have scarcely touched it. Such is what the Escapist has become.

Ah, who am I kidding, the Escapist always whines like a baby about things. This is just an instance I disagree with the whining.

 

[Aiberg]

one down one to go, next, X-Com. Disastrous sales won't be a surprise.

 

[snekadid]

Ah the Lucas excuse. (My average product couldn't of been good, because of those blasted fans with their expectations!) If you honestly think it could never have been seen as good by the fans of the original then why bother doing it?
if you wanted to work on a dystopian cyber punk adventure in a FPS environment why not just make an entire new franchise instead of butchering an old one? Syndicate didn't have a patent on the Cyber punk setting... That's a weak excuse. Foreshame Starbreeze, I like you guys.

PS: I love how the picture with the article tells absolutely nothing about the game except it has bloom effect and is a FPS.

Its a FPS?! OOO its a gun! The picture made it look like lab equipment

I'd be upset, but considering they already did the same thing to shadowrun, which was 2 separate games originally on 2 different game systems and both were amazing, I'm looking forward to all the people sharing my outrage and demand for something decent.

 

[DracoSuave]

Not always true though. Example Fallout 3. Fallout 1 and 2 were well known for their combat system interesting quirky squadmates. They put it in a FPS perspective and it still worked with only one squadmate.

Thing is, at least Bethesda made an RPG out of it, rather than a pure FPS. I mean, yeah, sometimes changing the genre does work well. But outside of Fallout 3, and Star Control 2, more often than not it's NOT going to go over very well at all.

Exceptions that prove the rule and all that.