Displaying items by tag: Syndicate

Syndicate is the re-boot of an early 90’s PC strategy game of the same name.  The problem for fans of the original is that the re-boot is a first person shooter and probably bears little resemblance to their fond memories.  For those of us who never played the original, Syndicate on the surface looks like just another futuristic shooter.

In a way it is.  It’s set in a future where giant corporations rule the earth and everyone has a chip implanted in their head, which the manufacturing corporation can access.  You play Miles Kilo, and recently prepped agent working for Eurocorp, a major player who has just created the game changing DART 6 chip and is now paranoid about industrial espionage.

Naturally, you’re sent in, guns blazing, to sort things out.

Whilst Syndicate is a shooter at heart, it is a little deeper than your average Call of Duty game.  Scratch the surface a little and you’ll find that Syndicate is a huge puzzle game, that will test your problem, solving skills as you journey through the various levels.  Of course, a decent ability with weaponry is just as essential.

The CART overlay is what makes the game so damn enjoyable to play.  You’ll ned to use it to do everything from overriding the elevators so you can progress through a level, to hacking into opposing guards chips to make them kill themselves of each other.  Don’t worry, this god-like ability is limited and will not enable you to just breeze through the levels.

And the DART overlay won’t always help you.  sometime you have to listen to the verbal instructions, or you’ll be going back and forth scratching your head at certain points.

Visually, Syndicate is a treat.  The graphics are very future modern, everything is clean – that is until you open fire and start to break things.  The game plays smoothly and adds enough variety to keep things interesting, though it does fall heavily on the old end of level big boss predictability.  Very linear, Syndicate seems to want to give you choices that will change the journey somewhat, but forces you along the predetermined path no matter what.

All up, Syndicate is a breath of fresh air to s stagnant first person shooter genre, and a game that should be experienced by everyone.