Thoughts on The Syndicate demo

[daveman247]

Before i begin - I havnt really played the original games, before my time. And by the time i tried it it was a bit too dated for me So, i played the new one with fresh eyes.


It was pretty good. The demo did not give much away and was basically a sprint from point A to point B but the co op gameplay was pretty fun. The different ways you can customize your agent is fun, not original but fun.

The Enemies are quite challenging, you must stick together otherwise you will be quickly wiped out.

Being able to heal people on the fly is cool.

The mission didnt really capitalise on this "breach" thing though. It was just used to open doors and turn off turrets. And shorting out the bosses armor so you could damage him :/

And, annoyingly the game has that "starbreeze jerkiness" to it. Those that have played their other games will know what im talking about.

Definitley wait for reviews i think, not terrible but not exactly a game to rush out and buy.

 

[LookingGlass]

I'm hoping it's crap so that I don't have to care about the fact that my ridiculous country banned this game. For once the developer/publisher did the smart thing and just gave us the finger instead of bothering to change their game to fit in our broken system.

Interesting that the Starbreeze console control issues are still there. I gave up on both Escape from Butcher Bay (Xbox) and The Darkness (PS3) because of that, so it'd be a PC pickup for me if anything. I ended up playing through Escape from Butcher Bay on PC a few years later and The Darkness took me three attempts to get a handle on the controls. They were good games though, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is good.


Does it have the story focus of Starbreeze's previous games? Or is that not something you can tell from the demo? My understanding was that the demo is just one of the nine missions from the campaign / story mode.

Is the shooting satisfying, i.e. do the weapons feel like they've got plenty of weight behind them? Is it a straight shooter, or are there stealth elements?

 

[Zhukov]

My only thoughts were "didn't release a PC demo", closely followed by "banned in Australia anyway."

 

[Gammayun]

I could talk about how the coop feels quite nice and that your coop partner are actually helping you or that the Gameplay is smooth and fluid but it doesn?t mess with the fps formula to much.

But I just cant get over the fact that the screen is way to cluttered, ok its a smart idea with how you displays its stats, but still it way too cluttered for my liking. Though for me this is not a deal breaker, its perfectly good and the demo has convinced me to purchase it at some point, which is what a demo is meant to do.

 

[way2sl0w]

1) Graphics were NICE.
2) Game play was WONDERFUL-ly generic
3) Level Design was AMAZING-ly mediocre

 

[daveman247]

Does it have the story focus of Starbreeze's previous games? Or is that not something you can tell from the demo? My understanding was that the demo is just one of the nine missions from the campaign / story mode.

Is the shooting satisfying, i.e. do the weapons feel like they've got plenty of weight behind them? Is it a straight shooter, or are there stealth elements?

Cant tell by the demo, its just a mission taken randomly from the co op multiplayer.

As far as i can tell, it is just a straight shooter.

The feel of the guns depends on what gun it is. Revolvers, sniper rifles and shotguns blow enemies to pieces so they fell quite good. Machine guns seemed to take way too many bullets to get a kill, but improved once i upgraded it a bit with sights/ recoil dampeners/ damage upgrade.

Despite it not doing anything new, i keep coming back to it. Must be the upgrade system or something, and how the special breach powers actually can make a difference

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

You know when first I played the demo I wasn't that crazy about it. Sure the guns felt great and the games visual aesthetic was cool but I found the cluttered HUD annoying and for some reason the game reminded me of Brink which is never a god thing... but damned if I haven't played the demo over maybe 15 times, maybe even more. I've lost count. It's grown on me, enough for me to preorder it. What convinced me was seeing this review from some guys who visited Starbreeze studios and played some of the other maps that weren't in the demo. What they had to say really got me excited, particularly that the stage in the demo in probably one of the weaker maps and that the later maps are much more challenging and require more teamwork (The $20 bonus credit from preordering on Amazon may or may not have also influenced my decision).

 

[BoredDragon]

It has the most confusing in-game interface I've ever seen in a game, especially since it was lacking any tutorial telling me what the hell everything was. There was somewhat of an emphasis of what weapons you were going to start with, but it didn't matter since you can just pick up weapons on the ground and as soon as you get into an area an enemy will have the exact type of weapon that you need.

I haven't heard much about The Syndicate, but based on the demo alone the game is going to be crap.

 

[PotluckBrigand]

Bleah. A generic shooter follow-up to an awesome and unique game.

I had actually never played the original Syndicate until it came out on GoG a couple weeks ago (I won my copy in their writing contest haha) but it's amazing. It's original (Yeah in 1993 that wasn't as hard) and fun as hell. This new one is... fine, I guess. It's not an awful game, but it is awfully boring.

Skip this one and go buy the original on GoG.

EDIT: I forgot it had been banned in Australia. It's so easy to forget living here in the States when we start getting up in arms about censorship that it already fucking happens to our Southern Hemisphere buddies (I think you're our buddies anyway. You guys seem all right).

 

[XMark]

First impression I had was "what are all these words and icons splattered all over my screen and what the hell do I do?"

After going through it once, though, I got the hang of it. I'm sure the single-player campaign in the full game will serve as a sufficient trainer for the co-op.

Basically it feels like Left 4 Deus Ex. I like how it emphasizes teamwork, and I'm sure the whole breaching thing will add some real strategy. Overall, positive feelings but I'm not totally sold on the game.

When I mention Left4Dead, that brings some things that look bad in comparison. Part of the charm of Left4Dead was its characters.

Left4dead has:
the old ex-military guy
the tough bar brawler who hates everything
the hot college girl
the nerdy office guy

Syndicate has:
big tough mercenary guy
skinnier tough mercenary guy
tough mercenary woman
tough mercenary woman with hat

And they're surprisingly hard to tell apart in-game because of the limited color palette. Even the male and female characters require a second or two to identify from each other. They need to take some lessons from Valve about character silhouettes and stuff.

 

[The Floating Nose]

Bleah. A generic shooter follow-up to an awesome and unique game.

I had actually never played the original Syndicate until it came out on GoG a couple weeks ago (I won my copy in their writing contest haha) but it's amazing. It's original (Yeah in 1993 that wasn't as hard) and fun as hell. This new one is... fine, I guess. It's not an awful game, but it is awfully boring.

Skip this one and go buy the original on GoG.

EDIT: I forgot it had been banned in Australia. It's so easy to forget living here in the States when we start getting up in arms about censorship that it already fucking happens to our Southern Hemisphere buddies (I think you're our buddies anyway. You guys seem all right).

What is Gog ?

 

[PotluckBrigand]

Bleah. A generic shooter follow-up to an awesome and unique game.

I had actually never played the original Syndicate until it came out on GoG a couple weeks ago (I won my copy in their writing contest haha) but it's amazing. It's original (Yeah in 1993 that wasn't as hard) and fun as hell. This new one is... fine, I guess. It's not an awful game, but it is awfully boring.

Skip this one and go buy the original on GoG.

EDIT: I forgot it had been banned in Australia. It's so easy to forget living here in the States when we start getting up in arms about censorship that it already fucking happens to our Southern Hemisphere buddies (I think you're our buddies anyway. You guys seem all right).

What is Gog ?

!! http://www.gog.com is Good old Games! They sell old PC games at reasonable prices on direct download and (for the most part) optimized for modern windows systems. They are awesome and all DRM-free (the contest I won was actually to make up a team of cyborgs to help GoG battle DRM in the cyberpunk future haha).

Check it out if you want to take a trip down memory lane or try some of the old greats you might have missed the first time.

 

[backinthepresentfuture]

i had no idea what to think and i still don't, all i am certain of is that i'm not buying it.

 

[The Floating Nose]

Bleah. A generic shooter follow-up to an awesome and unique game.

I had actually never played the original Syndicate until it came out on GoG a couple weeks ago (I won my copy in their writing contest haha) but it's amazing. It's original (Yeah in 1993 that wasn't as hard) and fun as hell. This new one is... fine, I guess. It's not an awful game, but it is awfully boring.

Skip this one and go buy the original on GoG.

EDIT: I forgot it had been banned in Australia. It's so easy to forget living here in the States when we start getting up in arms about censorship that it already fucking happens to our Southern Hemisphere buddies (I think you're our buddies anyway. You guys seem all right).

What is Gog ?

!! http://www.gog.com is Good old Games! They sell old PC games at reasonable prices on direct download and (for the most part) optimized for modern windows systems. They are awesome and all DRM-free (the contest I won was actually to make up a team of cyborgs to help GoG battle DRM in the cyberpunk future haha).

Check it out if you want to take a trip down memory lane or try some of the old greats you might have missed the first time.

When you buy a game, do you have to go through some crap to install it. Because old games like this are extremely hard to install correctly or it's like steam, you buy it, the computer installs it then you play.

 

[LookingGlass]

When you buy a game, do you have to go through some crap to install it. Because old games like this are extremely hard to install correctly or it's like steam, you buy it, the computer installs it then you play.

Nope, they take care of the fiddly work to get it running on Windows XP/Vista/7. You just run one installer and it puts everything you need on your PC to play it.

Sometimes it runs the game within a wrapper program that sets certain settings (e.g. run on only one CPU, run in Windows 95 mode) and sometimes it runs the program through DOSBox (for really old games), but as far as you're concerned, you just run an installer and then run the program through the start menu as per any current application.

 

[Pirakahunter788]

When I first saw about Syndicate, I was "Eh". My friend showed me gameplay of the demo, and the thing that pulled me in was the chip module system, which works alongside the leveling system. I LOVE customizing my character and my equipment to my playstyle, so I couldn't wait to play.

So far, I'm loving it. The visuals are nice, the controls are responsive, and the "perks" they give you are neat. 50% heal when you melee kill? Hell yes. The research system is also interesting, but seems somewhat useless, only prolonging the amount of time it takes to unlock any attachments.

It has a good amount of difficulty to it, meaning your team has to work together and heal one another to stay alive. The only issue I've had is the lack of instruction. They don't explain what you need to do during missions very well, and I've had my teammates continue to open up on the Colonel at the end of the West Europe mission without disabling his shield first, and neglecting the fact they do no damage. Otherwise, I find it to be a good demo.

 

[PotluckBrigand]

Bleah. A generic shooter follow-up to an awesome and unique game.

I had actually never played the original Syndicate until it came out on GoG a couple weeks ago (I won my copy in their writing contest haha) but it's amazing. It's original (Yeah in 1993 that wasn't as hard) and fun as hell. This new one is... fine, I guess. It's not an awful game, but it is awfully boring.

Skip this one and go buy the original on GoG.

EDIT: I forgot it had been banned in Australia. It's so easy to forget living here in the States when we start getting up in arms about censorship that it already fucking happens to our Southern Hemisphere buddies (I think you're our buddies anyway. You guys seem all right).

What is Gog ?

!! http://www.gog.com is Good old Games! They sell old PC games at reasonable prices on direct download and (for the most part) optimized for modern windows systems. They are awesome and all DRM-free (the contest I won was actually to make up a team of cyborgs to help GoG battle DRM in the cyberpunk future haha).

Check it out if you want to take a trip down memory lane or try some of the old greats you might have missed the first time.

When you buy a game, do you have to go through some crap to install it. Because old games like this are extremely hard to install correctly or it's like steam, you buy it, the computer installs it then you play.

So far every game I've bought came in its own little *.exe installer that included DosBox if necessary. It installs it all itself no muss no fuss and just launches from a shortcut on your desktop.

By the way, I don't know if I made it clear, but these guys aren't just some shady site reselling old abandonware haha... They actually have deals with publishers to re-release their old games, so every now and then they'll have a post like "Hey we just signed a deal with EA!" and then there will be tons of EA games added to the catalog. I REALLY go there for the old 90's stuff, but they have newer stuff as well like from the 2000's.

Worth noting as well: When Syndicate itself was released, since it is owned by EA you have to agree to EA's license agreement, but in the case of Syndicate it's mostly a formality. Somewhere in there it says "Origin may be required blah blah..." but that's a standard notification in their ToS, and in the case of Syndicate (and indeed all of the games on GoG as far as I know) this is not the case, and the game runs totally independent. It ruffled some feathers though at the time. Lots of people missed out on a great classic because of confusing wording in the ToS.

EDIT: Sorry I didn't notice someone had already answered your question :X I just got off work and I was responding to my quotes! I'm going to leave my post up though since I think the Terms of Service info is worth knowing. It's great to learn.

 

[Wolfram23]

Ohh I forgot about this one! I need to try it. Last 2 demos I played were a let down - Kingdoms of Amalur and Darkness II.

 

[Dandark]

My main impressions were "ok this looks interesting" followed by "Meh". It seems like a decent enogh game, I like the graphics and they are trying to do something with it(im not sre what). But I just didn't enjoy it all that much.

Of course that could be because I wanted to get back to the Tribes: Ascend beta. They are both shooters but Tribes takes a slightly different approach to movement.

 

[rythter]

i thought the demo was incredibly fun, violent and fast paced. the weapon upgrades are great and encourage multiple playthroughs. the co-op is amazingly fun. the combat is fast, agile, and incredibly satisfying. the ability to slide and effictively take cover allows the combat to feel fairly strategic, and chiprips are the greatest reward for killing a boss EVER. and i believe there is a pc demo on origin?