Syndicate Review
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Syndicate is a futuristic first person shooter developed by Starbreeze, the team behind the Chronicles of Riddick games. Set in 2069, it plays like a typical sci-fi shooter with advanced weapons and useful player abilities. This is not a new franchise, as the original Syndicate was released back in 1993. It was an isometric tactical game where you controlled four agents on varied missions. Four agents return to take part in the co-op missions for this reboot. During the campaign you play as the voiceless Agent employed by Eurocorp, Miles Kilo.
We just have to pray this is a good reboot for the franchise
You have a prototype chip imbedded in your brain, yet to be fully tested. Jack Denham, the ruthless CEO of Eurocorp, insists that you be given a real field assignment. You must infiltrate another Syndicate, assassinate a scientist and retrieve a chip that could send Eurocorp’s stock on a downward spiral. Should you succeed, you’ll prove this fancy tech is more than capable of defending the company’s interests. Initially paired with the civilian murdering Agent, Merit, you spend most of the time alone. The cast of Syndicate is small, with Rosario Dawson and Brian Cox lending voice and likenesses to two main characters. The story centres on a special prototype chip, the DART 6.
The DART 6 chip gives you enhanced abilities, such as time slowing and making enemies explode. After turning on the DART overlay, the world around you slows to match your improved reflexes. The chip links with electronic devices, so you can hack doors and elevators from a distance. Three powers can be used once they are charged with adrenaline: Suicide, Backfire and Persuade. Suicide causes one enemy to explode, taking out nearby enemies. Backfire knocks down enemies who become susceptible to damage. Persuade turns one foe to fight alongside you for a brief time before killing themselves.
While the powers work well, it never really feels like you are doing more than holding a button every time a power recharges. No doubt there is some skill to use them: deploying suicide in groups, persuading early in fights and backfiring more than one enemy. It also gives you something to do as you reload one of your weapons. Since enemies need to be in line of sight first, it can make the combat feel a little clumsy. It’s probably good that more powers weren’t added, it would have just gotten in the way of the shooting. Of all chip’s features, the slow motion is the most successful.
Slow motion can feel nearly as good as the FEAR games. When you combine gore and similar weapons the action gets even closer to the aforementioned title. During slow motion you absorb and deal more damage. It’s also great for highlighting enemies through cover in the bland environments. You can use breach powers during slow motion, easily diffusing an incoming grenade mid flight. When not in slow motion the weapon and character movement can feel a little strange.
Slow motion action can be pretty good
The game opts to keep your body visible at all times and creates first person animations for everything. Every second door and vent requires you to bash a button for a few seconds to get it open. There is even a vaulting mechanic that can produce some odd transitions. Kilo’s run animation is jarring at the best of times. The upside is that there is an effective first person cover mechanic, like that seen in Killlzone 2. The arm animations are rather jerky when moving about, so accuracy feels poor even with upgrades. Many enemies perform a duck manoeuvre that reduces the effectiveness of your arsenal.
The weapons are fairly standard for a sci-fi shooter. Resistance: Fall of Man gets a nod with Syndicate’s Gauss gun, behaving like the auto tracking Bullseye. You lock onto an enemy and projectiles will head towards that target. Limited ammo in the campaign means you won’t be using it much. A few standard assault rifles are included, becoming your core arsenal due to ammo distribution. You will barely use grenades and the pistols are rather unwieldy. There is one laser rifle that looks similar to the laser in FEAR, unfortunately it is quite useless. The arsenal is certainly suitable for the setting even if the locations are rather uninteresting.
Most of the game takes place in New York, specifically bland, square, futuristic office buildings. You visit a city on the ocean that would make Kevin Costner proud. There is also a foray in the slums of New York with enemies waiting patiently to jump up from floor grates like a jack-in-the-box. Apart from the change in location the gameplay remains the same. Thankfully the enemy AI is quite good, flanking your position and holding ground patiently. Civilians caught in the crossfire seem to think the best way to avoid danger is to lie down in the middle of a room and squirm. To offset the monotonous locations, the game changes pace for a few brief sections.
Two of these changes in pace involve the use of extremely overpowered weapons. They allow you to wade through hoards of standard enemies without problem or pause. This is actually a fairly standard gameplay trait from Starbreeze. Like their other games though, these brief sections of empowerment are too contrived and have little connection to the story to incite enjoyment. There are few, good memorable sections in the campaign. Most bad sections involve the terrible boss fights.
Ammo would help for this boss battle
Not all the boss fights are bad, but a few that will get on your nerves. The first boss fight, a nimble agent who can duplicate himself, took an enormous amount of bullets to kill. The developers recognised this and populated the area with floating robots that drop ammo. I shot quite a few out of the air before realising they were there to help. No other section in the game had these ammo distributing robots. When you die against this boss, you may reload to have him shooting you in the face from point blank range.
Another boss, equipped with a jetpack and rocket launcher, needed to be defeated without any weapons at all. You run back and forth, destroying jamming emitters and breaching incoming rockets. This repetitive process could go on for 10 minutes if you are unlucky. It’s not particularly hard once you know what to do but the first few times you are playing trial and error. The biggest problem with boss fights is that they are harder than the rest of the game. It stalls the experience or makes you stop playing all together. At least in multiplayer you can team up against annoying bosses.
The co-op portion of Syndicate has some great ideas although still somewhat let down by the same problems in the single player. Four nondescript agents are your avatars for the online portion. They wear grey leather trench coats as homage to the original Syndicate games. This time you are not working for Eurocorp, taking hammy mission briefings from somebody who sounds a lot like Nolan North. The locations in co-op have you travelling over the globe from Australia to Scandinavia. The nine co-op missions are mostly unique with only minor crossover between the campaign.
The big change in co-op is the ability to remotely heal your teammates within line of sight. It makes for some genuinely interesting tactics and allows the trailing players to contribute. You are also encouraged to join forces by breaching bosses and devices concurrently. There is no slow motion in co-op, but you still get bonuses when using the DART overlay. You proceed through areas defeating enemies, opening gates, hacking turrets and collecting items. You might need to defend a moving robot or protect a drop ship. End scenarios will likely have you facing tougher bosses that require multiple breaches and plenty of bullets.
In co-op healing and protecting your team is the key to success
There is plenty to unlock in multiplayer, through weapons and agent applications. You acquire tokens from missions to unlock research for weapon upgrades. You can also upgrade your agent with health bonuses, explosion protection or recharge improvements. In addition there are specific co-op powers, similar to perks, that might provide shielding or squad heal abilities. Four player co-op is constant action, even when you are standing still. The constant momentum is a big positive and makes it easy to keep playing.
The co-op has three difficulties, normal is genuinely fair with even a semi-competent team of three or four people. Hard is very difficult and I was never game to try the Expert difficulty. Damage dealt by enemies in hard mode will drain health very quickly. Once damaged enough players go into a downed state and call for a reboot. It can be hilarious when players go into this downed state because they shuffle hunched over. Players can even bash a button to shuffle faster. The harder difficulties are for players who will sink a great deal of time into the co-op.
My special shuffle attack will begin soon!
There is some variation when replaying each of the nine levels. Changes might result in certain containers not opening in the docks level. You might see more robots in the streets on China. These are minor alterations but it’s just enough to keep you on your toes when replaying missions. You can play the co-op alone but it will get very difficult against enemies who can disable you. Fewer players means slower progress forward although the game seems to make things a little easier. Co-op doesn’t end if your entire team is killed, it merely takes you to the last generous checkpoint.
If you are the type of player who loves to constantly revive and heal downed individuals while dancing around enemies, then this game is for you. Or if you just enjoy the gunplay and the constant momentum then you’ll get some value out of the online component. The net code is satisfactory, occasionally warping characters, but it was very playable as host or peer. Simple objectives, bland locations and repetitive gameplay dilute the intriguing co-op mechanics. With a small online population, that will continue to shrink, it will get harder and harder to justify buying Syndicate for the co-op. While the co-op is certainly enjoyable the visuals can be extremely disagreeable.
There is bloom…and then there is Syndicate
Syndicate has the worst bloom implementation of any video game to date. No other game has produced such visuals saturated with light that it physically made my eyes water. It is clearly a design decision, persisting through each level and online. Not content with just bloom damaging your eyes, the game bleeds lights from the edge of the screen. This feature can’t be switched off or reduced. It ruins an otherwise decent, although bland, visual package. The graphics engine certainly runs well though, maintaining a healthy 60fps with only a few brief stutters on a mid range system.
Having not played the original Syndicate games, I had no expectations before playing this reboot. Syndicate draws inspiration from many shooters but struggles to define itself in such a saturated genre. The best part of Syndicate is the co-op, offering unique content that encourages team play. It may consume more hours than the single player portion depending on the shrinking online population. Syndicate doesn’t break the shooter mould but it provides a satisfactory experience that may charm a select few.