Fuck when was the last time I wrote a review? FalloutNV? damn I need more free time... Because I'm catching up to a ton of games I haven't played yet here is my review for a title that is now a favorite of clearance bins and back-and-bottom of doors everywhere: the new Syndicate WARNING: CONTAINS CRAP DUBSTEP Where do I start? the problem isn't FPS instead of isometric, F3 was an FPS too and it kicked ass. The problem is the same I been talking about regarding other franchise revivals and sonic games in particular: no one making this game had a fuck to give about it. From the start you can tell Syndicate is dying to be the new Human Revolution, but the latter was a quality game with a lot of detail, while every level after the Aspari (first one) in Syndicate feels like a generic CSsource map. The level on the underworld is particularly crappy, the whole place feels like one room after the other. The irony is that Portal was trying to make you feel you were in a bunch of prefab rooms all the time and yet the rooms in that game felt way more original than the ones in Syndicate. All in all is like every COD as of late sans the fancy schmancy michael bay scripted explosions at the end of every corner... Here is another irony: while the original DX was a FPS the original Syndicate was not, however in HR you do a lot more than shooting, in fact taking into account all the gameplay in the game the amount of time you spend shooting is minimal compared to the amount walking through airducts alone. In Syndicate all you do is shoot, even the DART mode is little more than bullet-time, you just shoot shit. The "hacking" in this game boils down to "press A to win". Literally, there is no minigames or anything. Besides shooting you get to stab other people to take their Pentiums, and its always more or less the same crappy cutscene, you don't even get to move the thing around to fish the chip. Also the game is short, and the ending a total crapfest. The only redeemable part have to be the boss in each level, and still consider I'm talking about old repetitive-action bosses, no fancy AI here just keep dying until you figure out the sequence of actions needed to kill the fuckers. The fake HUD hack at the beginning of each boss have to be the shittiest I have seen in my entire life. So the game is crap, feels like deja-vu these days, but this was made by Starbreeze the guys behind Butcher's Bay, what happened? Well as I said I think that nobody gave a fuck, they got the order from the EA overlords to make a COD with an old franchise to replenish the blow-budget back at HQ. So when you are forced by circumstances to work in a game you don't want to and that you couldn't care less about you get something like Syndicate, Kane&Lynch or Sonic 06.
Pretty much sums up what I thought of it, waste of a classic IP. It seemed especially underwhelming having been released like six months after HR, which was undoubtedly the superior cyberpunk game in every way. At least it was a huge flop, so there's no way a sequel is coming out any time soon.
This is about the FPS Syndicate, right? You do realise there's another Syndicate reboot which aims to stay closer to the original: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/5livesstudios/satellite-reign Also, Starbreeze Studios, ahh that takes me back. Same guys who did FastTracker II right?
