Syndicate and Punishment: The Verdict on Starbreezes Reboot

This is the third and final entry in our Syndicate series. You can read part two here.

And things were just starting to get so good. After all the nice moments to be had in the opening hour of Syndicate, the game eventually turns out to be a AAA turd. It’s a weird case really. On paper, everything looks at least serviceable. It’s the execution that lacks so very, very much that Syndicate becomes something no game ever should aspire becoming: A game to avoid.

The plot and characters are nice—there is an entire cyberpunk world with interesting players and actors. The problem is, they remain flat and remain completely remote from the game itself. The only actions the character can really do is kill. Kill, kill, kill, and kill some more. There may be one choice that could warrant a branch in the plot, but as far as it goes, the actual game itself is too much of an atrocity to play to go back and try that route out.

It’s like J. J. Abrams’ love affair with lens flares had a visually challenged lovechild that puked all over the game.

While the design and overall look of the game is nicely done, the lighting flies so very much in the face of everything the art team has accomplished, that this one feature alone tarnishes what could have been a really great looking game. It’s like J. J. Abrams’ love affair with lens flares had a visually challenged lovechild that puked all over the game. Sometimes the bloom gets so bad that reading the HUD becomes illegible. While it might evidence of a certain ‘style over substance’ attitude of Starbreeze, it’s also evidence that certain things just don’t work in games. When the fancy light effects get me killed because I can’t see anything, then either give my character some goddamn sunshades or, you know, tone that bloom down cause you’re becoming the laughing stock of shooters that way.

Speaking of shooting, the basic game mechanics of Syndicate are good and fun. The implementation of the hacking powers works really well and invites to some fooling around. However, what’s quite not fun is the level- and encounter design. Especially towards the last third of the game, things start falling apart at the seams. Clearly the game has been developed with a multiplayer focus, but that doesn’t matter, since as long as the game has dedicated singleplayer, it’s no excuse to say “but it’s been developed for Coop!” The game’s storytelling doesn’t give me the slightest hint that I might be doing something wrong here. There is no room for another protagonist. It’s the main character, Miles Kilo—probably related to Inch Fathoms—and his story. Thematically there is nothing missing. There is no role that feel like it could actually benefit from another player taking it over.

Level and especially encounter design have problems. Oh boy. In the last chapters the game repeatedly throws the player into mandatory horde-mode arenas, the last of which features no less than ten waves of tough enemies to cut down, which is frustrating and punishingly difficult to pull off alone, especially since it really shows that this part of the game was developed primarily with multiple players in mind. A lot of rooms in those chapters are re-used to the death. Any in game door will eventually open and spew out yet another wave of baddies. Sometimes they even come through the walls. Or the ceiling. With agonizingly little time to reload and restock in between the individual waves.

It’s especially bad since the game can be really good fun when it’s in the flow. When the levels don’t stop the player’s progression in its tracks to lop those endless waves of goon out. It’s maddening. There are fun parts in the game. There are even some really interesting conceptual ideas there to be had. But then another invincible-until-hacked baddie comes along and spoils the fun. Then another horde mode arena serves to draw out the overall playtime.

Also, I need to rant some about the bosses. Some work. Some don’t. They’re not quite as horrible as the boss fights from Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but the worse ones are quite close. The worst bosses are those that can’t be hacked, and where the hacking mechanic doesn’t get used at all. And even if the hacking mechanic is figured in, the normal hacking powers can only be used to make the bosses vulnerable to gunfire. They also can’t be attacked in close combat - since the only close combat moves the game features are actually finishers.

It could have been a really smart game if there had been more quiet moments, more time to take the world in and basically just be a little more than a straight up shooter.

What makes Syndicate such a bad game—the worst AAA title I’ve played in recent years actually—is mostly the agonizing frustration over the decisions taken by the designers. It’s a game with some smart writing in its world building. It’s a game that features some quite breathtaking setpieces and really interesting concepts. And it’s just outright frustrating how little of that is used for anything that isn’t essentially shooting an endless deluge of goons in the face. It’s a game that has one of my favorite science fiction writers on board, Richard K. Morgan. It could have been a really smart game if there had been more quiet moments, more time to take the world in and basically just be a little more than a straight up shooter. I remember those downtime moments in both Chronicles of Riddick and The Darkness. Those served as brilliant counterpoints to those games intense action pieces. There is so little of that in Syndicate, and the game would have been so much better if the player would have been allowed much, much more time to stop and smell the roses.

My verdict on the game really is this: Avoid it. There are better games out there to be had right now. It’s not a game that warrants the full retail price. Even if on sale I would strongly suggest reconsidering a purchase. It’s just a frustrating trainwreck with some really nice ideas that ultimately are left on the wayside in favor of blunt, badly balanced encounters and outright action. It’s a game that can be passed without missing much. As an entry to the venerated Syndicate franchise it’s a crying shame. The original Syndicate will surely be remembered in years to come. This game here? I very much doubt it.