Hello, Alfik here. After the release of Cyberpunk 2077, I became a big fan of this style. After completing V’s story, I had a desire to study other similar games. It turned out that there are not so many of them, shooters for sure. For example, Deus Ex. Many people know about it; it’s a fairly popular series that received a reboot in the 1900s. But the Syndicate series was less fortunate. There was also a restart in the 10s, but with a change in genre. However, now few people remember both the series and the game itself from the 12th year. Why did this happen and what kind of Syndicate is it, you ask?. I’ll tell you now.
Back in 1993, when the words 3D and FPS were just beginning to appear in the vocabulary of ordinary gamers, the small studio Bullfrog, which had previously released the God simulator Populous, created Syndicate – a tactical action game with strategy elements. The game takes place in the future, this world is ruled by corporations that have divided zones of influence among themselves. Of course, everyone wants to snatch a larger piece of territory and therefore there are ongoing civil strife between them. The player acts as a representative of one of these corporations, his task, accordingly, is to take over the whole world.
Even though the game has a fairly simple premise, although even now they don’t come up with anything more original, the gameplay grabbed the gamer and didn’t let go until the final credits. You had to manage a squad of 4 fighters from your syndicate, completing tasks in the name of your native corporation. Either steal particularly valuable data from under the noses of competitors, or eliminate their agents or VIPs.
In between missions, it was possible and necessary to micromanage your corporation: conduct research, solve economic issues in the territories under your control.
Syndicate also had several features that made it memorable. For example, since in the world of the game almost every person has a virtual reality chip implanted in their brain, there was often nothing stopping the player from hacking them and, for example, making the enemy a temporary ally or forcing him to commit suicide, while blowing up several more of his comrades.
With such data, the game was doomed to become a cult. What happened to her. The original game was actively swept off the shelves. After some time, the first addition arrived – American Revolt. And in 1996, “Syndicate Wars” was released – a sequel that developed the ideas of the first part. After him, nothing was heard about the series for thirteen long years.
During this time, the studio’s creator managed to sell out to Electronic Arts, and Peter Molyneux, who founded this studio, managed to reincarnate as Uncle Petya and become the main storyteller in the gaming industry. At this time, the general user manages to forget about Syndicate.
But now it’s the https://casinomrpunter.co.uk/login/ end of 2009. Suddenly a rumor spreads online that a remake of Syndicate is being prepared. Everyone turned their attention. Then another rumor appeared that the game was being made by Starbreeze, the creators of the magnificent adaptations of The Chronicles of Riddick and The Darkness. Gamers were greeted with great surprise by the news of a change in game genre. It turned out that the reboot will be a first-person shooter, and not a tactical action game. After this, many fans of the series became wary and began to wait for the official announcement.
At the end of August 2011, when Deus Ex: Human Revolution gradually brought back the fashion for cyberpunk, there was an official announcement. The public was shown a colorful video, which showed a brutal, but at the same time damn stylish cyberpunk action. All this is accompanied by a magnificent track by Skrillex.
A little later, on February 21, 2012, the game hit the shelves. The project received a lot of conflicting reviews: some people liked it, while others gave up halfway through the end credits. But let’s not rush, I’ll tell you everything in order.
Syndicate was a 2012 first-person shooter in which you took on the role of Miles Kill, an agent of the Eurocor corporation. Although now we control only one character, we still have to do the same things: spy, collect data and eliminate all those unwanted by the corporation or us personally. There’s not much to say about the plot of the game, most of all it resembles the story of an average sci-fi action movie of the 80s, equipped with the same cliches and characters.
If in the first half they at least try to present it in such a way as to interest the player, then then I simply dump a series of events on us, through which we jump like mad, so that the passage of the game is completed in a minimum of 6 hours. Perhaps the developers did not want this, but in fact it turns out this way.
By and large, this is the only serious minus. If you don’t get distracted by boring dialogues and chatter, then what opens up before us is the very stylish and brutal action that we were promised in the videos.
The coolest thing is that the authors brought into the game a feature from the original – the ability to penetrate the enemy’s brain and hack it. With just the press of one key, you can force him to take your side, commit suicide, or simply remove his weapon from standing. It seems like a small thing, but juggling these possibilities, any shootout becomes a small puzzle to effectively eliminate opponents.
In addition to these features, the creators made excellent weapon physics. Each barrel feels like a real formidable weapon that is designed to kill, and not like a children’s toy from Call of Duty and similar shooters.
Special thanks to Starbreeze for the excellent artificial intelligence, probably one of the best at that time. Enemies act like a real team, cover each other, hide behind covers, retreat in critical situations, etc.d. In general, the authors managed to create incredibly dynamic shootouts, each of which can be completed like a small puzzle and each time finding new solutions for it.
In addition to the single-player part, the authors made an excellent cooperative for four people, and it is in this that the game is very much reminiscent of the original. This is most facilitated by the fact that some of the maps for this mode were taken from there. There is no place for loners here, take my word for it. They stay alive for no more than two minutes, and even one pair of players is unlikely to overcome all levels without support. That’s why you have to work as a team. While one is carrying a heavy data disk or hacking into a server, the other is covering for him. There are more and more enemies, he can’t cope alone. Another comrade comes to his aid, he is already incapacitated, a big guy with a nanoshield comes to the aid of his competitor, and then the fourth one urgently removes it and saves the others… In general, if you have a campaign of three more gamers, then feel free to play co-op, and if not. I think it’s quite possible to select adequate people for the team… it was, but now hardly anyone else plays it.
Despite all the advantages of the project, the game sold poorly. About half a million copies have been sold so far. It was made at the level of some Crisis or other blockbuster. Sales like this are a failure.
There are plenty of reasons for this, but the main one is EA’s attitude towards the game. It’s hard to say for sure, but it is believed that the game was close to being closed at some stage. This theory is indirectly confirmed by the dismissal of half of Starbreeze’s key employees in 2010. By the way, a little later they will organize a new studio and successfully relaunch the Wolfenstein series.
Plus, the game was announced, as already mentioned, exactly after the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which aroused the interest of the masses in cyberpunk, apparently this prompted EA to still bring the project to release and recoup at least some investments.
In my opinion, if you look at the game as a whole, you can see that the first half was done properly, and then the quality of the game was much worse.
However, despite all the flaws and imperfections, Syndicate 2012 is a stylish action game with great shootouts, the likes of which are few now. If you are even slightly interested in shooters, then you just need to play this game.
If you have already played Syndicate, then write your impressions in the comments. Thank you for your attention, bye everyone, Alfik was with you!