Syndicate - First Impressions from an Old-School Fan

Written by Troy Benedict Tuesday, 21 February 2012 20:42

In the early 90s, one of my favorite PC game studios was Bullfrog Productions.  The studio, which was helmed at the time by famed Fable developer Peter Molyneux, offered a variety of different and interesting games that were unlike anything on the market at the time.  

One of my favorite Bullfrog games was Syndicate, the isometric action-strategy game, where you controlled a group of ruthless corporate killing machines and assisted them as they completed a variety of different mission types.  These goals ranged from persuading scientists to join your agency, killing the competition, or assassination of targeted enemies.  

As the player, you recruited new agents, enhanced their abilities, and armed them with better weapons and technology through research and development.  The more powerful and better-armed your agents were, the better chance you had at keeping your agents alive and completing your goals.

Like most gaming enthusiasts, I don’t always like change.  We hold on, near and dear to the games we enjoy, and when studios announce a sequel or a spiritual successor to our beloved titles, we tend to expect the worst.  

But unlike other gaming enthusiasts, I hold onto the past in my mind and don’t often go back and actually revisit my favorite games.  The reason being is that they’re never quite as good as I remember them at their prime.  Syndicate is an excellent example of this.  

The game was released at a time when technology was rapidly evolving.  Graphics were getting better, and the richness of music and special effects were becoming more and more important.  Using a mouse to interact with objects on-screen was also much more common-place.  Gone were the days of the antiquated “beeps” and “bloops” of an internal computer speaker, and gone were the days when 16 colors (or less!) was enough to paint a convincing image on your computer monitor.  

Games evolve at such an alarming rate, and most of it is due to the advances in technology.  Things that were not possible one day become possible the next with new technology, and as people embrace the new technology it becomes standardized until the next evolution.  

I loved the original Syndicate, but I have no qualms in saying that playing it is not that enjoyable today.  The responsiveness isn’t as smooth as it is with today’s isometric style games.  The graphics aren’t as good, even for a nostalgia, and the gameplay doesn’t seem deep enough to keep me interested for more than a few minutes.  

When it was announced that Starbreeze was working on a reboot to my beloved Syndicate, I was interested, and to be honest, I wasn’t that disappointed or worried that they’d destroy the beloved vision of the classic PC game.
When I sat down with the game, as I prepared my review for GoozerNation, these are some of my first impressions.

I couldn’t help but smile during the game’s opening with the obvious reference of “1993” to the original Bullfrog title during the timeline explanation of the progressive leaps in technology that take the player up to 2069 when the game takes place.

The transition from isometric strategy game to first-person perspective didn’t bother me.  There were enough interesting HUD overlays that made the game more futuristic, but in a more real-way, and thus made it feel like a spiritual successor to the original Syndicate even though it didn’t play the same way.  

One of the things that I really liked was the way that Starbreeze handled the first-person perspective, complete with some really immersive point-of-view moments.  One of the things that has always bothered me with FPS is that some games feel like you’re a floating pair of arms holding a gun.  With Syndicate, if you look down, you’ll see your feet. When you look around in cinematic scenes, you’ll see your arms and lower body.  During scenes where you smash through a door, and stumble, you see your arms help brace your fall.  I’m sure this is a nightmare for people who suffer from motion sickness, but I liked the way Starbreeze handled the first-person perspective.

Gameplay-wise, if you’ve played one FPS, you’ll catch on with the basics of Syndicate, but the game takes the experience to a slightly different level.  Using the right bumper will activate the Dart Overlay, which sort of turns your point of view into a Matrix-ey night vision mode, where your layout of the environment is easier to see, your enemies are revealed (even behind cover), and you become more accurate as time slows down a bit.  Overlay mode only lasts for a few seconds, before you run out and need to disengage.  After a few seconds it’ll begin to recharge.  

In addition to the dart mode, you’ll acquire additional skills like the ability to force an enemy to commit suicide (which can also kill multiple enemies if you “tag” a target who is amongst a cluster of enemies) and you can cause their weapons to backfire, which will knock them off balance and soften them up for the kill.  While I haven’t acquired additional skills at the time, you can also persuade enemies to open fire on their friends before turning the gun on themselves (it’s like suicide, but they’ll shoot at each other awhile longer).  The persuade feature, of course, being a nod to the Persuadatron from the original game which allowed you to influence citizens and police officers to blindly fight for you.  

The game does feel like it has the potential to be linear, and I’m wondering how replayable the campaign will be, but I suppose the co-op is where the bulk of the game will be enjoyed over and over again.  I didn’t try the co-op mode, as I really like to get a feel for the game before taking the game online.  

Being an old-school fan of Syndicate, I’m pleased with the reboot so far.  I’m interested to see how the game plays out in the campaign, and how it the co-op turns out.  

So far, so good, Starbreeze!