Syndicate And I

Sunday 29 June 2008

Written by: Melaisis

Hey guys, Mel' here; owner of The Three Rs and (now extinct) 3scapism (amongst other projects). Due to the downfall of the latter thanks to circumstances beyond my (or the rest of The Escapist community's control) I thought it would be a good opportunity to give you guys more content by posting their reviews up here, so all our hard work doesn't go to waste. Hence, over the coming weeks, I'll be pasting (with minor edits) some of the 3scapism reviews from days gone by up here. Here's Syndicate:


Before the original Grand Theft Auto hit the headlines as a glorifier of violence and general bad influence on teens, games like the Ultima series were already allowing gamers the option of random acts of violence on innocent NPCs. Sure, it may have candy coated homicidal tendencies with a fantasy setting, but randomly deciding to walk into a pub and sword the cheerful civilians with not nearly enough consequences to discourage the act was no less malicious (or fun) as running over bystanders with a stolen car. In fact, it was entirely satisfying to engage in conversation with an utter jerk and show your disapproval with a well placed axe before taking the initiative to bequeath all their worldly possessions to yourself. If anything, the Ultima series catered to a far darker level of personal humour as it became my hobby to kill random isolated innocents and carry their body back with me to a small cabin in the woods, which I declared to be my "trophy room". The first trophy in the collection was the poor bastard to whom the cabin belonged.

But as fun as it can be to go on a killing spree armed with a crossbow, spellbook and an army's worth of medieval melee weaponry, sometimes, nothing can truly purge the frustrations of day-to-day life quite so well as open-firing upon a crowd of unsuspecting people, thus making their day decidedly more frustrating than yours.

For a 13 year old kid in the early 90's, this is where Syndicate entered the scene.

The game's layout can be most closely compared to the X-Com series, but everything is in real-time as opposed to turn-based, and cities are vastly populated with urban-levels of inhabitants that you can interact with by either leaving them alone or killing them in cold blood. And the comparison between X-Com and Syndicate becomes really thick once you move away from the action: you'll start with a certain amount of weapons and armour ready to purchase at the start, and new weapons and armour will become available to you either through researching them, or prying them out of your victims' cold, dead hands and THEN researching them. The speed at which you research them is determined by how much funding you apply to the project.


Money for funding and purchases can be raised through taxes in each of the regions that you control. Each region is a level that you must complete in order to take control of it, so the more that you conquer, the more money you make. However, if you tax them too high for too long, they will revolt, and you will have to play the level over again in order to reclaim it. You can also pick up weapons from fallen enemies and then sell them, but the money you make from these means are only helpful early on, and amount to chump change as the game progresses.

A big difference between Syndicate and X-Com emerges in the fact that Syndicate agents are sweepingly generic, the only variable being whether they are male or female, which itself has no impact on the action whatsoever. But instead of having character stats, Syndicate agents are defined entirely based on the armour and weaponry they are equipped with at the time, and each new armour upgrade enhances a respective ability. Improvements to chest armour increases their hit points and the range of their self-destruct radius. Upgrading legs allows the agents to run faster, the heart allows them to run longer, the arms allow them to carry more, and the eye improves their aim.

But the game's depth really kicks in once you start having to micro-manage the agents' abilities within the real-time (but pausable) action. Your agents don't just start aiming better, you have to crank their aiming bar. Your agents run as fast or as slow as you like, based on their speed bar, and their artificial intelligence (allowing them to act on their own initiative) in controlled by the AI bar, influenced by the level of the brain implants you've given them. But, as you set the bars higher, their abilities get tired, and as you set them lower, their abilities recover. In words it sounds complicated, but the execution is perfect.

The game places you in the role of a leader of a team of up to four special agents at a time that are mind-controlled into doing your bidding to accomplish your nefarious schemes in the ultimate goal of conquering the world. You will choose your team from a roster of agents at your disposal that will be sent down to a city with a mission objective, ranging from assassinating a particular target, to killing all enemy inhabitants, to using the Persuadertron to abduct VIPs and escort them safely to the exit point.


Syndicate also has a bit of a Hitman ingredient to it, in that so long as you get your objective accomplished, the game really can't care less how you go about achieving your goals. In fact, at least Hitman used a ranking system to encourage you to kill as few people as possible, whereas Syndicate doesn't shed a single tear if you kill every man, woman and their dog. Wait, that's not entirely true; there are no dogs in this game.

That said, certain actions may prove more beneficial than others. For instance, persuading enemy agents rather than killing them will recruit them to your team, which is quite essential if you're like me, and often enjoy carrying out assassinations in the least subtle manner possible by equipping your character with the best available chest armour, walking right up to your target, and then hitting the self-destruct button. Sure, the number of people who would enjoy that may have decreased since terrorism has become a far more prominent issue in the mainstream media over the better part of the last decade, but when I was 13, it was all good, clean fun.

Another of my favourite activities in the game is to use the Persuadertron during assault levels, gathering as many civilians as I can, and have them gravitate around me as a human shield to absorb enemy gunfire so that my agents don't have to. Then, once the threat is cleared, if I have any shield, I mean, civilians remaining, I hop into a car, run over as many as I can, then have the survivors pile into the vehicle and set my agent to self-destruct. Okay, I know this is quickly deviating from a proper review format, but if you haven't played this game by now, there's a good chance you never will, and I'm taking it as my duty to let you know what you've missed out on.

Now, especially for its time, the graphics were on the cutting-edge of Super-VGA, and as time has revealed, sprite-based graphics (which Syndicate employs) ages a lot less quickly than the innovators of polygons. The only criticisms to the game that I have is that driving in vehicles is cumbersome and very limited in their control (they basically drive along an imaginary rail, so if you miss your turn, you have to take the long way around), and it's humorously awkward to watch as an entire city's population of persuaded inhabitants can all cram into a single car.


However, the most annoying aspect of the entire game is a sound issue. Overall, the sound is good, at least for its time. The music is subtle but sets the tone, the sound effects give nothing to complain about, and in basically, in terms of quality alone, the sound holds its own as one of the game's strengths. The problem emerges with the fact that every time you click the mouse button on anything - ANYTHING - a voice saying "SELECTED!" is played. You select an agent to control? "SELECTED!" You select a weapon for them to equip? "SELECTED!" You choose which mission you want to play? "SELECTED!" It's a good thing that the game is a good source of venting, because the constant playing of the "SELECTED!" sound byte contributes towards your NEED to vent.

Overall, though, the game is amazing, and one of gaming's most overlooked innovators of violence. The levels get to be quite challenging at times, especially depending on how you choose to play them, the micro-management of your agents, and the management of your economic resources, and it all comes together in a solid gaming experience that can not only be fairly long, but with loads of replay value that will keep you coming back to play your favourite levels over and over.

I don't like giving numeric values to game reviews, so I'll just mention that I probably spent more time playing Syndicate and its expansion, American Revolt, than I have spent playing all the Grand Theft Autos, combined. Granted, I have yet to play through a GTA game's story mode, in favour of just amassing weapons and seeing how long it takes for the police to finally take me down.

end_boss

Labels: 3scapism reposts, introduction, melaisis, syndicate

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Article Posted: Sunday 29 June 2008 at 05:56.
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