You can read the first part of our Syndicate series here.
After musing about my impressions and expectations of this game in the last entry, it is now time for the first impression and the outlook on what these first impressions make me hope the rest of the game has in store.
First of all, when playing Syndicate on PC the biggest draw before playing is the need to install Origin and go through all the registration brouhaha. Which I can’t possibly hold against Starbreeze, Origin surely wasn’t their idea. And then it starts.
After having been put up to date in terms of the state of the world in 2069, the player assumes the role of Eurocorp Agent Miles Kilo, who’s first act in the game is one of getting punched in the face by a masked goon.The first thing that struck me about Synidcate was that damn this game has style. It’s the one thing that Starbreeze has always managed to pull off. Style. Tons of it. It’s clear from the minimalistic opening sequence that this is a game of style. After having been put up to date in terms of the state of the world in 2069, the player assumes the role of Eurocorp Agent Miles Kilo, who’s first act in the game is one of getting punched in the face by a masked goon. After artistically redesigning said goon’s facial facade and a quick look around, Kilo finds himself in a “Downzone” area of New York City, which apparently has diveded itself in “Upzone” in the upper layers of it’s many starscrapers, and a “Downzone”, which is, well, down below. Needless to say that Upzone is where the rich folks live and Downzone the lair of everyone else.
All these little details slowly get peeled from the game world. Partially through pure environmental storytelling like scattered TVs or “3D News Booths”, and partially through data chunks that can be collected when found lying around in the world. It’s mostly well done and presented, and it’s really quite well written. These are the parts of the game where science fiction writer Richard K. Morgan’s hand is showing most prominently. He’s done quite the job of creating a world here. Admittably, Syndicate’s hard cyberpunk might be a bit old fashioned, but then again, that’s what this game is about. The first entry to the franchise is now one of the old school of cyberpunk fans’ basic building blocks from when they were still young and had all hair left on their now slowly balding heads. Morgan hasn’t done a lot of updating that old recipe of warring global megacorporations and cybernetic enhancement. He’s just injected a certain edgyness into it all and spliced it up with a lot of interesting ideas that make this old cyber-stew taste quiet fresh even these days.
Then after getting a first feel for the itty gritty 2069 urban nightmare, the player can slowly start getting to the meat of the game, and that is combat. There is a lot of that later on in Syndicate, and it’s mostly fun. Fast paced, induced with some mean superpowers that mostly screw with the heads of the opposing agents, it’s nothing too special. The chip-powers are what’s making the game stand out from the rest, but there aren’t too many and they regenerate too slowly - or rather under too harsh conditions - for them to make Syndicate another kind of Bioshock.
The powers are wild cards in the mix, not necessarily another set of weapons.
What’s not so much fun about this game are the ten thousand hectoliters of lightbloom someone spilled all over it. In an age when nearly every other game engine supports HDR lighting, this amount of incredibly eye straining highlights are just a bit too much. Especially since this particular graphical trickery tends to make a lot of the on-screen messages barely readable.
When it comes to encounter design, the first hour is a bit hit and miss. Most of the encounter spaces and combinations of enemies work quite well and are fun to engage with, however there are some odd ones that either just keep repeating the same pattern over and over, or just throw one wave of enemies after the other at the player.
Overall, the first impression from the game is relucantly good. It’s a pretty game with some very interesting conceptual ideas as far as world building goes and the environmental storytelling fluff stuff is really well written. The shooting mechanics are solid, the powers throw a fistful of fun into the mix, and while the main plot seems not too original itself, it’s at least well written and acted, making me wonder what kind of things the game and it’s gory, lightbloom blinding world will throw at me next.
