Starbreeze's Syndicate

[Korax]

Played the first hour or so, and I'm enjoying it. I really like how deep they go not only on "everything has chips," but also the corporation-speak. As you walk around, every little item has a dataverse callout: the HUD is identifying beer bottles, establishing some sort of wireless connection to shopping carts, and showing chip-less people as "hobos." All the levels are referred to as "milestones," and the loading screens give you little infographics about the number of headshots, multikills, etc. you had compared to your best, asking if you're "meeting your goals."

The only co-op I've played was during the demo, but even that was enough to show that it could be lots of fun with the right people.

[elmuerte]

what!? it's out already?

ok, no special edition so it can wait (damn backlog)

[Ben X]

Also, still hate how the main character looks and his name really puts me off...

Yeah, Syndi-Cate is a bit of a girly name for a cyborg agent.

[Brannigan]

Picked this up on pc on a whim. I'm dloree on origin if anyone wants to check out co-op sometime

[Brannigan]

So the hud labeling all the objects in the enviroment is pretty amusing to me. It's like I'm playing Ikea Catalogue 2069.

[Sno]

Love the solo campaign, but the game feels disjointed near the end, feels like like part of the story is missing.

I want to love the co-op, because I like what it's trying to do, but it has major technical problems.

[Sno]

Alright, yeah.

So to iterate on those earlier comments, my feelings on this game are more or less that Syndicate is a pretty awesome game that has some kind of tragic problems.

The campaign feels noticeably like something is missing from it. I mean, there's a hard swing later on that is completely unearned, and since most of the dialogue and characters are actually reasonably well written, it feels like something is missing rather than it just being a failure of story-telling.

I also kind of wish they let you have more upgrade points to play around with by the end of the game, you really have to be careful about how you plan your build, the game is very stingy about upgrades.

It's a good campaign though. It's about ten hours long and it's probably the most linear game Starbreeze has made, but it's still a really good, enjoyable campaign. Some of the larger fights in residential spaces are really frantic and really great. There is complete indifference about civilian casualties, gun fights break out, NPC's hit the ground and cower, and grenades will find collateral damage. It's messy and it's awesome. (Less excellent are requisite annoying boss fights that remind me so much of the much hated DX:HR fights, but here you're at least guaranteed to be capable in combat.)

Lighting effects and environments look fantastic, faces on NPC's look weird. (Rosario Dawson's virtual likeness is not treated well by this.)

The game has a great feel to it. Starbreeze has always had a good commitment to the perspective, you can sense the inertia of your movement, but it's still a very snappy and responsive game. I really, really like the way the game plays.

The multiplayer gets points for being an EA game that wasn't begging me for multiple logins and a CD key.

It's a pretty impressive suite. There's a simple clan system in place, and character progression is much more elaborate than the solo game. There's also a ton of missions, and it can actually be extremely challenging even on the lowest difficulties. There would be a lot to like in the co-op here if it wasn't so damn buggy.

The co-op menus have an annoying tendency to "forget" changes you've made to your character since your last match, and sometimes even dump you into weird, disconnected, broken sub-menus seemingly at random. Moreover, joining games in progress has a tendency to cause all kinds of strangeness. (Mostly harmless, but very noticeable. Frozen NPC's all over the map, presumably enemies that had already been killed.) Most damningly though, the game was crashing really frequently. Though when i was just running random matches, the game never crashed. I think Syndicate might not like the 360's chat parties?

The match-making options are also a little too basic. The game doesn't let you bring a party into match-making, you have to hope you're set up with a game that has empty slots you can invite people to. You can still do private matches, but unless you have four people, it's worthless. Those maps are balanced for four people.

It was all completely infuriating. I really love what Syndicate is doing as a co-op game, and i want to play it, but it's been trying my patience.

[toblix]

Steve Gaynor tweeted recently about how awesome the co-op was on PC. Does anyone know if the game was developed for PC primarily?

[Brannigan]

Steve Gaynor tweeted recently about how awesome the co-op was on PC. Does anyone know if the game was developed for PC primarily?

As far as I remember it has actual graphics options, so there's that. I noticed no issues for playability as I've gone through it. Never crashed or anything either.

[Sno]

Some searches tell me that there are still issues with the PC version, though the volume of complaints isn't nearly as much. I can't tell you if that's simply indicative of how the player base is divided up, or if it's an indication of the PC version's relative stability and quality.

I do really like this game though, if the PC version isn't having these problems, i think it's an easy recommendation.

Also, to be clear, i am only having problems with the co-op, I encountered no issues during the campaign.

[toblix]

I'm this close to getting it for the co-op alone.

[Gwardinen]

(Less excellent are requisite annoying boss fights that remind me so much of the much hated DX:HR fights, but here you're at least guaranteed to be capable in combat.)

Yeah, now that you mention it those are exactly what they remind me of too. They remove all the coolest shit in the game (breaching random dudes and making them blow themselves up/attack their enemies and so on) and just make it about avoiding death for long enough to whittle the people down.

The first agent fight, with the teleporting dude, was somewhat enjoyable just because of its speed and and craziness, but it got a bit boring and irritating towards the end. However, the soldiers with multiple layers of armour that you just have to pound your way through while trying not to die do not feel fun. I spend most of my time against them running in circles around cover in some kind of stupid child's "catch me" position until my health is up again, then I go slowmo, bust another clip into their face and repeat. It's not interesting at all.

I do not look forward to the next inevitable crazy enemy type/agent fight.

[Sno]

I feel like bullet-sponge humans in FPS's are just always fucking terrible bosses to fight, with almost no exceptions.

[Orv]

I don't really intend to play the game, but this commercial almost made me. I know dubstep in trailers is a sin, but I thought they fit it to the video really well.

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[Brannigan]

That actually is in the game. Though admittedly it really fits the first boss fight as it's pretty fast and frantic.

[Chaddicus]

I am enjoying Syndicate so far, especially its atmosphere. My only nitpicks are that I wish I could change the FOV and that the bloom wasn't so intense (even though I love the lighting and colours of this game). I also have yet to play co-op, but it looks like something I will love from what I have seen on Giant Bomb.

[Ben X]

Syndicate 2011 seems to be the game that started the dubstep trend with that amazing Skrillex cover of some of the original Syndicate music. More of it here:

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Even the GI Joe 2 movie trailer has used wub wub now, with a dubstep cover of Seven Nation Army (which worked so well that it almost made me want to see the movie).

[Gwardinen]

That actually is in the game. Though admittedly it really fits the first boss fight as it's pretty fast and frantic.

Yeah, the music when you're fighting the first boss is crazy, but then so is the fight. Looking back the fight itself leaves me a little cold, but the way it's presented makes up for it pretty well. It's certainly better than some of the other set piece fights I've run into so far.

[Brannigan]

Finally played some co-op, pretty fun. First couple matches ended because host would DC sadly, but managed to finish a couple maps finally and had fun.

[toblix]

Just installed this and started a co-op game, and the mouse lag is horrible. Even with graphics quality set to ass and vsync off, there's an annoying delay before mouse movement registers. PC gaming.

[Twig]

I recall having similar problems in Dead Space, and installing D3D Overrider and enforcing Triple Buffering fixed it there. No idea if it'll work here. Probably a long shot. U: