Syndicate Review

[NvrPhazed]

While I agree that the campaign could have been handled better (more breach options like co-op and a little less cliche story), I think the game-play itself held up pretty well. The reviewer talked about how the technology in the game seemed not advanced enough, but I believe his opinion is misled by how other people portray the near-future. I think that Syndicate portrayed a very viable and grounded vision of future warfare that combines both traditional and cyber warfare. As of now there is no conceivable reason to use hand held energy weapons since there are inefficient and honestly don't add much advantage over slug-throwers now in 50-60 some odd years I still see slug throwers still being used as a primary method for taking down targets with energy weapons being relegated to special uses only like the coil laser rifle they have in the game.

The only real complaint that I have with this game seems just to be a lack of content which is not enough to vilify it completely. If it had competitive multi-player (not every game needs it but I believed Syndicate would of benefited from it) and a more expanded co-op mode (hopefully dlc will come if it is popular enough) this game would of been one of my favorites for the year probably. As of now it is just good not great which is the game's true crime of lost potential. Also, I have never played the original (if that means anything to any parties concerned), but I believe games should be judged by its own merits not those of the games of the past.

/response

 

[Voltano]

I wondered if this game would do well. I never played the original "Syndicate" (though tempted to pick it up off GOG.com), but from what I recall this was shortly announced after the release of "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" last year, and I instantly thought this was only made to cash-in on the Deus Ex fans. I think that is still my personal theory, but it sounds like the game is dull and incapable of standing out.

Look at it this way: Deus Ex dealt with the rather stupid issue of people arguing over whether or not prosthetic limbs are evil. If nothing else, Syndicate did a great job looking at the implications of widespread techno-organic innovation, rather than wallowing in the 'will people embrace new technology' part.

Eh, kind of. The impression I got was that augmentations should be controlled and regulated by the government while others think it should be free to the public. Its like should "guns" or "weapons" be given civilians or corporations and be trusted with them. Not whether augmentations are 'evil'.

Plus, I think Deus Ex at least *sticks* to its thesis throughout the game rather than "Syndicate" might for its 6 hour length. The game was hyped up to have a story about revenge and corporations doing evil things already, and as Justin pointed out, it was a pretty predictable plot-point. So yeah Syndicate would look at the implications of widespread techno-organic innovation, but in a very cliched and tired way.

Plus, while I heard many people saying this is "Betrayal" to the original reboot, I'd point out that this is no different from what Microsoft did with "Shadowrun" on the Xbox 360 years ago.

Okay...but how is that an example against that argument? Shadowrun was panned, not only for that reason, but because it just wasn't very good. I had the unfortunate privileged of having bought it, and...yeah. 'Counterstrike plus magic' should have been a winning formula. It's more of an accomplishment that they cocked it up.

The reason I think of that game as "betrayal" like the "X-com shooter" and this one is altering the genre of the game so much that the fans can't recognize or appreciate it from the previous installments. I liked the "Shadowrun" RPGs on the SNES and Sega Genesis, so switching them to an FPS (which I never played but based upon what I heard and what you said, turned out crappy). It just adds further insult to the fans when these "fresh reboots" to these games turns out mediocre or lame.

I don't think that will happen with that "X-com shooter" since that looks to be a decent game, but we won't know that until it comes out (if it would come out).

 

[obliviondoll]

Time to call people out on their misinformation (this comment will contain potentially MAJOR spoilers - I'll keep them as generic as possible though)

You DON'T destroy EUROCORP. You destroy the Eurocorp HQ - there's still plenty of Eurocorp assets/products/other stuff around. You also kill the CEO, but he can be replaced.

And you DON'T kill/destroy the people in Eurocorp BECAUSE THEY'RE EVIL. You do it because someone you have reason to trust, and who would have ways to know, convinces you that they plan to kill you, and can do so at any time. THAT person wants to bring down the entire Syndicate system, and is uniquely placed to do so. They're manipulating resistance groups as well as several Syndicates to ensure the maximum efficiency in their attempted revolution.

Yes, the plot is a good take on the kind of story you'd expect in the Syndicate universe - the problem is that it's NOT told well AT ALL. Most of the storytelling is NOT integrated into the game, but included in the background - digital business cards, "data transfers" from certain computers, etc. If you dig through those backstory parts, you'll realise that without stopping and reading up on things, you were missing 90% of the reason the story makes sense. With those details, it's not a truly great story, but it's reasonably good, and things which seem silly on the surface start making sense. Without them, it's a generic, predictable and occasionally ridiculous stereotypical cyberpunk plot.

And regardless of the actually decent (but not great) single player story, the main reason I love the game personally is how well the Co-Op mode captures the feel of being in the Syndicate world. There are familiar locations, but they've been altered a little for FPS gameplay. The environments are more open, allowing for more varied approaches to the situation you're in. The boss fights are about outwitting intelligent AI, not finding the specific gimmick you need to use this time. You feel like you're an Agent from the original game, working as part of a 4-person team, wiping out anything that gets in your way. Enemy Agents actually FEEL like a legitimate threat, even on Normal. They have many of the same capabilities your squad brings with you.

 

[Sirron Kcuch]

Technically speaking, this game is uninspired, as many would like to hear. But when playing, there's something really subjective and it's that it feels great; it kinda flows like you would expect it to, and it's so average you won't need to buy any other FPS in this generation.

BTW I love the visuals.
I still wouldn't buy it, though.

 

[Slycne]

This. It was short (Although I beat it in just over 8 hours; reviewer must have been playing on easy)

Nope, though 2 hours is right around the standard swing amount for games.

 

[Slycne]

The reviewer talked about how the technology in the game seemed not advanced enough, but I believe his opinion is misled by how other people portray the near-future. I think that Syndicate portrayed a very viable and grounded vision of future warfare that combines both traditional and cyber warfare. As of now there is no conceivable reason to use hand held energy weapons since there are inefficient and honestly don't add much advantage over slug-throwers now in 50-60 some odd years I still see slug throwers still being used as a primary method for taking down targets with energy weapons being relegated to special uses only like the coil laser rifle they have in the game.

Even their standard munition weapons don't feel like they've advanced in the ~50 year time gap compared to the technology today. Right now we have things like caseless ammunition, SMGs with virtually no recoil and fully automatic shotguns, but every gun in Syndicate feels like they strapped an augmented reality ammo display on it and called it a day. While I'm fully on board with the hard science "bullets still do it just as well" approach the act of putting that piece of metal down range should still be better.

 

[Blind Sight]

I chose to ignore the story in my earlier rant because i called the plot twist when the game was announced. Boy the hatred that shall flow to EA if they release DLC titled "American Revolt". I also quite clearly remember that it was impossible for the agents to revolt against Eurocorp and the other syndicates due to Massive amounts of conditioning and brainwashing. The very idea (within the Syndicate universe)is ludicrous, ignoring the "LOLALIENS" reason in Syndicate wars.

Hell, that's a good plot there in itself (not the aliens). Have a character slaved to the corporation, hating what he's doing but ultimately unable to stop it because he values his own survival above all else. Opens a big can of morality worms and all that. Possibly end on a bittersweet climax of the character accepting his role and the futility of even attempting to fight back. If you're that set on having a 'good' main character and ignoring previous canon that's a great way to convey the hopelessness of the Syndicate universe. If they're going to wipe the conditioning and brainwashing canon of the original then at least try to come up with something interesting. Instead we get the plot to every 'resistance vs. the big bad evil corporations' story ever made.

Exactly, atleast try to make -SOMETHING- within the source material, hell even a classic "WELL NEVER DEFEAT THE CORPORATIONS" would have been nearly acceptable. But no, there needed to be a scrappy militant faction that can somehow completely botch the mental conditioning and immense amounts of programming that Eurocorp agents receive upon "Recruitment". I can still forsee EA not learning thier lesson and using this "Resistance" faction as an excuse to name DLC "American revolt" Just you wait.

And reading the plot, as i did with MW 3 against my better judgement, im left saying....What the fuck.

Time to pull a DALLAS and say it was all some computer-constructed dream designed by the corporation to test the character's loyalty. See Starbreeze and EA, it's not hard to come up with this stuff.

 

[Frankster]

Decent albeit uninspired shooter? If the reviewer had to use a single word to describe syndicate it would be "safe"? Based on those 2 pieces of info I can arrive at the following conclusion that I will put in terms old skol syndicate fans will understand: it's a massive fail.

People who haven't played the original classics like xcom, syndicate or jagged alliance wonder why us old timers go crazy with paranoia and pessimistic expectations over these remakes of our old beloved games and this is why: the remakes gut all the elements that made the originals awesome to appeal to a modern audience and in doing so we get an uninspired shooter.

Original syndicate was a masterpiece and a decent but uninspired "safe" shooter does no justice to it at all.

That it might have decent coop means the game itself might be fun to some (indeed, im not getting the impression it's a horribad game if taken on its own accounts), but this will only rage actual syndicate fans.

 

[Aptspire]

It does look neat, although bland.
Came for a review, stayed for the WUB

 

[Kopikatsu]

6 hours long

60 dollar game.

You're paying 10 dollars per hour of gameplay.

Expect 10-15 dollar DLC

And they expect gamers not to buy used games?

A movie ticket for an adult is $10 here. The average length of a movie is 70-80 minutes. So they're comparable, even completely ignoring the time you'd spend on co-op.

 

[DeMorquist]

All the videos made it look like a super version of Brink....








with terrible music in the background...

 

[Nurb]

6 hours long

60 dollar game.

You're paying 10 dollars per hour of gameplay.

Expect 10-15 dollar DLC

And they expect gamers not to buy used games?

A movie ticket for an adult is $10 here. The average length of a movie is 70-80 minutes. So they're comparable, even completely ignoring the time you'd spend on co-op.

Not really, you're paying more per hour for this game, and the person working the theater makes even less than 10 per hour.

We pay more up front for a longer eperience.

 

[PunkRex]

Another 6 hour single player game... it detresses me that this seems to be becoming the norm... outside of RPGs, which don't seem to bloody end at all!

 

[PunkRex]

6 hours long

60 dollar game.

You're paying 10 dollars per hour of gameplay.

Expect 10-15 dollar DLC

And they expect gamers not to buy used games?

A movie ticket for an adult is $10 here. The average length of a movie is 70-80 minutes. So they're comparable, even completely ignoring the time you'd spend on co-op.

Not really, you're paying more per hour for this game, and the person working the theater makes even less than 10 per hour.

We pay more up front for a longer eperience.

Having worked at a cinema I can support this claim...

 

[WindKnight]

the worst part of this is the wasted potential of the IP.. they could of brought it into the 21st century but no they took the IP and wasted it on a bog standard bargin bin fps that people will forget in a month or two.

i never thought i would say this but im glad its banned here in australia at least people wont be regretting their purchase of this

My main probleem witht he co-op demo was the weapons didn;t fell very syndicate/syndicate wars like. It was just the usual pistols, rifles, smg's shotguns...

Where were the flamethrowers, the miniguns, the laserguns, the nuke grenades, the mini rocket launchers. the orbital designator?

 

[Char-Nobyl]

Eh, kind of. The impression I got was that augmentations should be controlled and regulated by the government while others think it should be free to the public. Its like should "guns" or "weapons" be given civilians or corporations and be trusted with them. Not whether augmentations are 'evil'.

Make of it what you will, but your first real mission is to launch a counter-offensive against a terrorist group that took over a building and was threatening to murder people over their involvement in augmentations. Didn't seem to be a lot of wiggle room there. And the Illuminati rep (whose name currently escapes me) did want regulation/control rather than total abolition, but that was his unofficial stance. His fear was that they would make people too hard to control, but again, that was his private agenda, not the one he garnered support with.

Plus, I think Deus Ex at least *sticks* to its thesis throughout the game rather than "Syndicate" might for its 6 hour length. The game was hyped up to have a story about revenge and corporations doing evil things already, and as Justin pointed out, it was a pretty predictable plot-point. So yeah Syndicate would look at the implications of widespread techno-organic innovation, but in a very cliched and tired way.

Honestly, it was an unpredicted cliche for me. I expected it to be about corporate espionage/warfare, not one man's vendetta against his former patron. The former might've made the player something of a villain, but sometimes wars are fought amongst nothing but villains.

The reason I think of that game as "betrayal" like the "X-com shooter" and this one is altering the genre of the game so much that the fans can't recognize or appreciate it from the previous installments. I liked the "Shadowrun" RPGs on the SNES and Sega Genesis, so switching them to an FPS (which I never played but based upon what I heard and what you said, turned out crappy).

Well...they did start out as a pen-and-paper RPG, so really the best way to translate that into a video game would just be through a straightforward RPG.

But then again, I've never found a story system diverse enough or a dialogue system flexible enough to outweigh the advantages of a good DM running the show.

It just adds further insult to the fans when these "fresh reboots" to these games turns out mediocre or lame.

The rarely-used-term I think you're looking for is "adding injury to insult." Usually it's the other way around, but I think it's appropriate for this scenario.

 

[Simonoly]

Having just completed the single player on the hardest difficulty in around 8 hours (with dawdling) I have to say I'm quite disappointed. I don't mind short games if they are done well (Portal 2 for example), but Syndicate doesn't bother to spend any time trying to establish itself as a believable piece of sci-fi. It's a real shame because the concept behind Syndicate is actually quite cool and I wish I had played the original now to get a better overview. The co-op is superb but feels completely removed from the world of the single player, so really could just be a separate game in itself. I highly recommend picking it up when it's cheaper just for the co-op, as the amount of customisation (create you're own syndicate, upgrade weapons, abilities etc) is really quite refreshing.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Syndicate Review

Syndicate is a decent albeit uninspired shooter. While there are a few highlights, it mostly feels bland and homogenized from other games and cyberpunk fiction.

Read Full Article

Why are you giving three stars to a game that, in your words, is "bland and uninspired"? I don't think three stars adequately (or should adequately) represent a product you also say has "one saving grace", and is a "disappointment".

Stars, points, tomatoes or whatever other metrics are obviously (I hope) fairly weightless to most people, but they should at least allow for a rough guide upon glancing. Critics may be inflating scores, but there's no need to carry the trend. Give a game two stars if you don't think it's all that good. If people are out there looking for and believing anything less than four means a sub-par experience, it's their loss.

As for the review, I don't agree with it, but it's well written. Good work there.

I do wonder why you take issue with this, though: "[These] fights turn into hit-and-run grind fests as you whittle away at their health bars, run away to regenerate your own health and deal with each boss's gimmick." That more or less describes every boss fight in the modern (and not so modern) gaming universe, lol. Just seems odd to me that you take particular issue with it here.

 

[Slycne]

Why are you giving three stars to a game that, in your words, is "bland and uninspired"? I don't think three stars adequately (or should adequately) represent a product you also say has "one saving grace", and is a "disappointment".

I guess to me that sentiment, and how I reflected it in the score, simply means average. It's not bad or broken just not great either. So with the co-op being decent and breaching having its moments, I felt that combined with an otherwise average game yielded a 3.

We have a general breakdown of what you can expect from our scores here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/7149-What-Our-Review-Scores-Mean]. If you're interested in getting a gauge of what we think each score more or less means.

As for the review, I don't agree with it, but it's well written. Good work there.

Thanks.

I do wonder why you take issue with this, though: "[These] fights turn into hit-and-run grind fests as you whittle away at their health bars, run away to regenerate your own health and deal with each boss's gimmick." That more or less describes every boss fight in the modern (and not so modern) gaming universe, lol. Just seems odd to me that you take particular issue with it here.

Certainly some, but I would say far from most. It's a pretty core tenent that boss fights usually represent the culmination of your mastery of some specific or all gameplay elements.

Perhaps I might have made the point better, but with regards to Syndicate it felt like their primary gameplay hook, breaching, became a tertiary element instead of being highlighted in boss fights. The Cayman Global fight was actually pretty spot on and used breaching well throughout, everything else was just kind of a slog.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

Certainly some, but I would say far from most. It's a pretty core tenent that boss fights usually represent the culmination of your mastery of some specific or all gameplay elements.

I could argue that one with you, but I won't

I get what you meant by that quote now, too; that you disliked seemingly throwing out a game mechanic for boss encounters, instead of finding a way to incorporate Breaching, as with every other enemy.