icemann on 14/2/2013 at 18:16

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I was meaning more of an unfeeling cyborg, than just of whether he's a cyborg or not. To give a more accurate version of what I meant. In the earlier games your agents were all controlled from elsewhere by a central authority so no independent thought of any kind came into the equation since they had bionic brains etc. So you'd send your agents somewhere fill them up with drugs and have they set to kill anything that comes nearby with a gun un-holstered whether they were a cop, civilian, enemy agent etc. So not something like say a Terminator who can think and act independently to achieve a task, since whilst they are still given orders/a mission they act independently to complete it.

Unlike say your Gordon Freeman or Adam Jensen who has the free will to choose how to take on a task.

But to feel like a cyborg in a game fair enough, any FPS game can do that. Hell even Doom does that.

DaBeast on 21/2/2013 at 18:33

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I found the Half-Life games entirely linear. The presentation/style of the game makes it seems more free than it really is. Not necessarily a bad thing, linear done well can be just as enjoyable as something a little more dynamic.

RE:Topic

Contrary to what some of you have said, I heard the co-op/multiplayer was terrible. The SP didn't look any worse than the average FPS, if it had good co-op I might pick it up.

Tomi on 19/1/2014 at 02:03

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Okay, just finished this one. Thanks for the recommendation, henke!

I remember being quite excited about the new Syndicate when it was announced, but lost my interest when it turned out to be an FPS that only got rather mediocre reviews. I had already forgotten all about it until I saw it for sale in a store that sells car parts and accessories a few weeks ago, lying in a bargain bin with some other random stuff. It was only 5 euros, so I thought I'd buy it and give it a chance... It turned out to be the best* game that I've ever bought in a store that specialises in car supplies and tools!

Syndicate is not a great game, but it's certainly better than I expected it to be, and definitely worth the 5 euros that I spent on it at least. It's quite possibly the most linear FPS that I've ever played, there's always just one single way to get to your target. There's also not any secret stuff for the player to discover, or anything interesting to collect... Well, actually, there are quite a lot of readables (pointless journals and database entries) but they break the flow of the non-stop action pretty badly. I didn't find the readables very interesting anyway and the game world isn't interesting enough so I didn't care about reading more about it. The in-game dialogue and cutscenes deliver the essentials of the story, it's not told very well and it's quite predictable, but I still wanted to find out how it all ends.

So yeah, Syndicate is all about the action, and fortunately the action bits are mostly pretty fun and well done. Practically the game is just one action setpiece after another - it's all very hectic and keeps you on your toes all the time, but I also found it a bit tiring at times. Some of the fights are pretty hard, especially the boss fights can be a bit frustrating, so I kept dying quite a lot. You're a cyborg, so you can also do all sorts of nasty things. You can "breach" mechanical devices to activate/deactive them or to hack them, and you've also got three nice special abilities to get rid of your enemies... but for some strange reason the coolest two of those abilities are disabled for most of the game! :erg:

Oh, and the game looks gorgeous too. They've really managed to nail the futuristic cyberpunk atmosphere here, even better than Human Revolution did, in my opinion. The slums looks gritty and dark on the street level, and the views from the skyscrapers are sometimes just spectacular. I don't normally like futuristic weapons, but the ones in Syndicate are actually pretty cool. I did mostly use the same three or four weapons though, and to my disappointment the new Gauss Gun turned out to be a boring pew-pew gun instead of a terrifying explosive weapon. The grenades weren't much better either... This game needs more explosions!

nuSyndicate is a reboot, but I was still a little disappointed that there's almost nothing in common with the old classics. I was hoping to play as a merciless killing machine that would destroy everything and everyone on its way. Cyborgs aren't supposed to care about civilian casualties, right? Right? But once again I only ended up playing as Mr Nice Guy who saves the world, and the beautiful mass destruction and chaos of the original Syndicate only remained a nice nostalgic memory in my head. There's no Persuaderton, so you can't build an army of innocent civilians that you can use as meat shields, and the civilians hardly ever get on your way so that you would accidentally (or even "accidentally") kill them. Boring! :p

But all in all, Syndicate is still a pretty good game. It's rather short (only about 8 hours or so) and very simple, but that's just what I wanted right now. There's no need to bother your brains with complicated puzzles or with anything at all really, it's just non-stop action from the beginning to the end. I think I might even replay this one day, but I've had my action FPS dose for now, so I want play something different again after this.

* it's also the only game that I've bought in such a store

henke on 19/1/2014 at 17:12

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Good write-up Tomi. I agree with pretty much all of it.

Painkiller on 21/1/2014 at 10:28

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I hear ya, Iceman! Looking forward to it, bigtime. I'll bet it's going to be damn good.