Watch Ten Minutes of Brutal, Bloody Syndicate Mayhem
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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My gamer age is showing here, but seeing the original game explained, I'm more excited to play the original.
A thought. I don't see how publishers think first person shooter games are easier to market than others (with Syndicate coming after BF3, MW3, RAGE, Gears of War 3 [I know, 3rd person] Halo Anni Ed, probably etc). Now EA has to parade the unique points of this game like whipping bears through flaming hoops just to get our attention. 4-player coop "re-imagined from the original" ain't a great start, in my book, either.
A thought. I don't see how publishers think first person shooter games are easier to market than others (with Syndicate coming after BF3, MW3, RAGE, Gears of War 3 [I know, 3rd person] Halo Anni Ed, probably etc). Now EA has to parade the unique points of this game like whipping bears through flaming hoops just to get our attention. 4-player coop "re-imagined from the original" ain't a great start, in my book, either.
Alright, ignoring for now the fact that it's not really your job to tell me what games I'm allowed to like - how does this game look good? I'm honestly wondering what you see in it. Its mechanics are just pretty much identical to every other modern FPS - two weapons, regenerating health, screen goes red when you're damaged, yadda yadda yadda. Nothing interesting at all in the gameplay so far, other than the fact that even for a modern FPS, you seem to walk really, really goddamn slowly.Andy Chalk said:
Then, at least judging on this ten minute footage clip, it's set in a place where a large proportion of the enemies you fight aren't even armed. Shooting dudes who shoot back at you with weak, badly aimed guns is bad enough, but shooting dudes who aren't even armed and don't seem to even make much attempt to run away or do anything to stop you? Where's the challenge? Where's the excitement, the danger, the fun?
Then possibly my biggest gripe is the 'breach' system. Interesting in concept, but from watching the gameplay footage it looks like nothing more than a literal 'Press X to Win' system. Who needs to shoot the (incredibly sparse as it is) enemies, when you can just look at a shiny circle on the wall, hold a button and Something Awesome Happens to do the job for you? Why bother building hacking, or mind control, into the mechanics of the game and make them something you have to actually skilfully control and use yourself, when instead they can just make it so that you press a button and a scripted event happens to do it all for you? It's just pointlessly lazy design, and pushes the game more towards slideshow territory than it already is.
Actually, that's something which is pretty much the running theme here - the utterly ridiculous amounts of handholding. This isn't a game with a set of mechanics which are used in different ways to provide challenges for the player, which can often evolve and change dynamically based on the player input - it's a rigid instruction manual the player has to follow. Go here. Then press X. Then press Y. Then shoot this guy. Then press the Awesome Button. This is linearity at its most extreme - the player has absolutely no agency at all, they're only allowed to perform the specific actions the game will let them.
And before someone brings up Half-Life 2, that game is actually not very linear at all in terms of each individual encounter. Yeah, you have to go from A to B to C to D to E, and fight specific enemies along the way. But how you fight them? Where you fight them? How the fights unfold, what tools you use? That's all entirely down to you. The gameplay of the Half-Life games are actually very mechanics-driven, which is something people seem to often forget.
But back to Syndicate, and its linearity in every aspect of the game. One example of a specific thing that annoyed me in the video was the taking of the chip from the head scientist or whoever he was. When he said, "don't shoot, or I'll destroy the chip!" I began to hope that there would actually be some sort of challenge involved, that the player would have to pretend to put away his weapon or go back through a side route or something. But no - the scientist was bluffing. You just shoot him anyway and nothing happens. So why bother having him say something like that in the first place?
All in all, this game is pretty much what you'd get if a bunch of people sat in a room and tried to design the game that would be the least interesting to me that they possibly could. I'm sure there are some people who would enjoy this sort of thing, though, and I don't have anything against them doing so. But why can't people be left to make up their own minds? State your own opinion in the article, sure - but gearing the entire thing towards not only informing people of the newly released footage, but also telling everyone that they're supposed to think it looks awesome? Is that really necessary?
Well, that seemed a bit uncalled for.Andy Chalk said:
OT: It looks ok, but the thinking part of it just requires the player to press "X".
Man, you got massively trolled.random_bars said:
On the topic of the game, it looks interesting. I've yet to see the ten minute video, but just from seeing the trailer above, my curiosity has been piqued. Starbreeze has a pretty excellent record, so I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. My real concern is how much oversight EA will have in the development of the game.
You're making an awful lot of judgments about a game which is still months away from release. This is the first gameplay video we've seen. It's taken from an early part of the game - that is, the part of the game that's meant to introduce players to concepts, mechanics and tactics which they will have to employ on their own through the balance of the game without the "handholding."random_bars said:
I could easily say the same thing about all the highlighted objects in the DX:HR Missing Link videos. What kind of lameness is that? I'm not some kind of useless tit slackjaw, I don't want to play a game that points everything out to me with a glowing yellow outline. Oh, you can turn that off? Well then.
I'm not saying the game is great, or will be great, I'm just saying it looks great, and that all the apocalyptic howling coming from disenfranchised Syndicate fans - myself included - is starting to appear entirely without basis.
That's why I get paid the big bucks, baby.
... 'kay, that was pretty good. I'm surprised to see them so openly acknowledging the original Syndicate when 2k did everything it could to bury the original X-COM and hope gamers forgot about it.
Still not convinced, but keep trying.
Still not convinced, but keep trying.
If you think the complaints are entirely without basis and somehow think the game looks fun, despite the fact that it looks exactly like every linear corridor, "push a button and something awesome happens", regenerating health, two weapons limit cover based shooter that everything on the market currently is and this is turning out to be as we all feared it would, then honestly I don't know what to say.Andy Chalk said:
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sick of seeing shooters like this over and over and over again godammit. For christ sake the game that popularised this trend, Modern Warfare, only got so popular because it broke the goddamn plague of WW2 shooters on the market and now the same phenomenons happening all over again.
I played Syndicate Wars. I never once saw someone using a pistol or some kind of auto-suicide power. I am having trouble seeing any correlation between the original and this, except for the company being called "Eurotech" and everyone having chips in their heads.
Could very well be. I'm pretty sure it's his voice in the original gameplay trailer (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/113387-Syndicate-Gameplay-Trailer-Turns-Up-the-Heat [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/113387-Syndicate-Gameplay-Trailer-Turns-Up-the-Heat]) so I wouldn't be surprised if his likeness turns up too.InsaneFool said:
I suppose you could say that you're basing your entire argument on one pre-release gameplay video taken from an early segment of the game. Because honestly, based on what little we've seen so far, I don't see how you can make any judgments about how this is turning, or even who "we all" are.AsurasFinest said:
If you know something we don't, feel free to share, but otherwise I really think you're being very premature here.
You're right, I didn't recognize his voice in the original trailer - but now that I've seen that screen shot it has to be.Andy Chalk said:
As I said in the other thread on this video, it looks fun, but it's not really striking. I wouldn't get it on pre-order that's for sure.
If ten minutes of gameplay isn't representative of how the games going to be, then I don't know what the hell to tell you. Saw all the staples of the current, boring shooters in ten minutes of gameplay, which will be completely in the game unless you honestly think they'll rehaul it in a few months and churn out a different system.Andy Chalk said:
Unless you somehow think theres an element that completely changes it up. Which if there was,they would've gone out of their way to show don;t you think?