The lights are on
The demo for Syndicate recently became available for Xbox Live, and Game Informer sat down to play a few rounds online. The first thing you will notice is that there isn’t much to notice. It doesn’t do much to set itself apart from other shooters. Left trigger to pulls up the sights, right trigger fires, press in the left control stick to sprint, and the press the B button to duck below cover. It’s comfortable to a fault.Where the game sets itself apart is the variety of ways you interact with your cooperative partners. Much of your interactions with the world and other players are mapped to the left bumper. You can perform breaches on powerful enemies, which chip away at their armor, activate a shield for your buddies, cause enemies' weapons to backfire, and heal partners when their health drops. The nice thing about these actions is that they can all be done within a reasonable distance – you don’t have to be standing next to enemies or partners to perform them. You can begin a breach action on a powerful enemy from a few yards away, and duck behind cover while the mechanic finishes up.I healed my team members often from across the map, even while they were absorbing a heavy barrage of bullets. One of the only actions that requires close proximity is helping a partner get up by resetting their computer systems. When you are the one waiting for a partner to help you get back up, you can move around a little to get behind cover or move closer to a partner, and “bash” the A button to move a bit quicker. I was content with simply pressing the button repeatedly, but feel free to “bash” away as the game instructs.Syndicate really hammers on the idea of working together, but you can still survive as a lone wolf. The only occasions I ran into that required teamwork were getting revived and moving onto the next area. Everyone has to be present to move through certain doors. Of course, this demo only offered one scenario and two different difficulties, so it’s likely that future levels and harder difficulties will deliver the "die alone, survive together" gameplay Syndicate is promising. As always, when you do work together you have a much more fulfilling and easier experience, but that sort of sentiment is true of all cooperative games.The struggle that Syndicate seems likely to encounter is separating itself from other comparable cooperative experiences. The combat feels fluid and fun with obvious inspiration from Call of Duty (not a bad comparison for any first-person shooter), and working together is much more fun than hiding behind a crate and pulling off headshots while you ignore your crew. The ability to breach, shield, and heal (among other abilities not available in the demo) are the elements of the game that will make you play Syndicate over something else, and hopefully it’s enough to carry demo downloaders to retail.You can also rip computer chips out of peoples' heads, which is pretty awesome.
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Downloading now.
sounds interesting. Guess ill give the demo a shot.
The last sentence is the best.
Seems more interesting than I thought. When I looked over the ad in Battlefield 3, I just said "trash".
Will definitely give the demo a try later tonight!
It's quite interesting that Syndicate will release close to The Darkness 2, the sequel to its developer's (Starbreeze Studios) last game. TD2 will probably sell better; but reviews will be neck-to-neck.
Definately on my list of games to play this weekend.
I like the HUD, and the augmented reality. I like single-player though so hopefully that is fun.
Just finished playing a few rounds before the game locked up at a loading screen.
Anywho, I'm not sure if all the players have unique abilities but in my time I think I did at least 99% of all healing and rebooting of my fellow agents.
And all the shield removal from enemies.
It's pretty entertaining once you understand it.
Good to hear Syndicate is shaping up to be a solid shooter, since Starbreeze's last game - the Darkness - felt a little off. Probably since they were building on the Riddick engine, and that game was more about first person melee. That being said, I think the cyberpunk thing is enough to set it apart from every other shooter - sure, there's Deus Ex and ....I dunno, EYE: Divine Cybermancy. Or Hard Reset. But cyberpunk isn't a thing you see a terrible amount of anymore these days.
It's not like the late 90's where everyone had "new millenium fever" and being smart and hoping for cool futuristic societies was the norm. Now we have a moronic society where some people champion ignoring evolution for ****'s sake, and they're content to replay the same military shooters again and again and again. So Syndicate's super refined, frankly amazing looking (it's MUCH better-looking than Deus Ex) aesthetic is a welcome change of pace right there.
That being said, I'm going to wait until the game goes cheaper before buying. I hope EA watches game sales after the first month; I hope they look for that "long tail at retail" that certain games like Bayonetta, Vanquish and New Super Mario Bros. have. I just have too many games to play at the moment, and I'd like to finish them before buying new ones. I'm gonna have to take the same route with Reckoning, unfortunately.
I'm waiting to see how the rest of the game shapes up. I used to love shooters but shifted to action/adventure and RPG around call of duty 3, and haven't been able to get back into shooters since. Syndicate grabbed my attention though, I'm hoping it comes with a decent single-player campaign as well.
i'll wait for EA to hire Firaxis to take the franchise back to its strategy roots.
I like it. Not too easy, and working together makes it more fun. I just wish more people on PSN used mic's in cooperative play. Having 3 team mates who didn't realize how to "reboot" me or eachother and not being able to tell them while they were standing next to me was kind of frustrating.
I played the demo of Syndicate and it was amazing. I may have to purchase Syndicate earlier then I was going too.
I thought this game was going to be another "okay" shooter but I was surprised with how much fun I had playing it with a few friends. It's nice to see a game add only a few new things and those few be enough to alter game play differently then other games.