Syndicate came out not too long ago and through all the hype and general chat about it, I was really into playing it. I managed to get a hold of a copy on PS3 through my work (the perks of working in a video game store!) and bounded home to play it that night.

Now. I'd been playing a lot of Modern Warfare 3 before picking Syndicate up, so I don't know if it was because of this that the aiming felt off or what but I just could not seem to get to grips with the games aiming at all. It just felt so sluggish and imprecise, like you were turning through treacle. I'd kind of muddled through the game with it and persevered, as I really liked the story and the games premise, but the big fire-fight in the nightclub almost had me lobbing the controller through the window in sheer frustration. I couldn't hit a barn door if I was holding it by the handle. I just could not get past it and died a bunch of times in the process.

For clarity, I was playing on the default difficulty and I hadn't messed around with the sensitivity sliders for the aiming, if there was any. Although I think by that time I'd gotten so pissed off with it I wasn't in the mood to go looking for aiming options and start messing about with sliders.

It's a real shame though as I really liked the look of the game, the art style was pretty good for the most part of what I'd seen and the guns felt really chunky as if they had some power behind them. The story was pretty interesting too and I was just getting into it when I seemed to hit this brick wall.

Did anyone else who played Syndicate find the aiming to be off like this? Was it because I'd become so accustomed to the MW3 aiming? Or, and this is the most likely, am I just really shit at shooting games and should stick to racing, sports and strategy games?

As a side note however, one customer I served traded the game in and he had the same complaint, so maybe it's not just me. *shrugs*

I haven't been able to play the game myself, but Starbreeze's games have ALWAYS felt different when it came to gunplay. I think its the way they handle full body awareness, but in the Riddick games and The Darkness, the shooting was funky and off. I heard its better for this game considering its a FPS focused game, but I wouldn't doubt things were still a little bit off.

Wasn't a problem at all for me. I played it on 360, and the shooting was the best thing going in that game. The co-op mp was pretty awesome while it lasted too. Sounds like your sliders were on 1 or 0 :). Maybe check and see if the default was fubared for some reason.

I played the 360 version of the game and thought the shooting was absolutely fine. Great, even.

@pweidman: @RoboRobb: Like I said in the post, I hadn't messed with any sensitivity sliders before I had to take the game back into work. Might have to acquire a copy again and give it a second look. Maybe even try a 360 version just for comparisons sake.

I actually DID have this problem. On PC - it was like the aiming didn't quite work as I wanted it to. Then I turned off V-Sync and it was just right. Not sure if the PS3 version has the V-Sync option though? :P

@Mnemoidian: I'd have to get a hold of the game again to check but I'd be surprised if the PS3 version came with a V-sync option. Nice to know that it isn't just me though and it's a legitimate problem rather than a lack of skill on my part.

The shooting is pretty horrible on PC to be honest. But I guess that's what happens when games are developed on console and then ported to the pc. It feels like halo with mouse and keyboard attached to it. Plus doing the hacking and breaching while in a firefight doesn't seem optimal at all while on pc. I could imagine how mindless and easy it would be with a 360 controller. Eventually I'll buy a gamepad for my pc but that kind of defeats the purpose of me buying fps for it. Gunplay felt way better in DEUX EX.

@137: I don't know, after I disabled V-Sync, I thought shooting was very satisfying (Note: I'm primarily talking coop here, I played through most of the campaign before I was tipped off on the problem with V-Sync), and once you bind hacking to a mouse button, I thought hacking worked very well too.

I think if I could bind some controls like melee and hacking to the other two mouse buttons the game doesn't even recognize (back/forward) I would've been a bit more happy with the gunplay. I hate when games make unorthodox controls for fps when they're not trying to fall into the E for everything formula.

I'm using F to melee

R to interact with things

Mouse 3 for reloads (like every fps I've ever played on computer it just makes sense to me)

E is to hack everything, why it's not doubled up as the action button makes 0 sense to me.

@137: Having two buttons for the same interaction function on the PC version is a bit daft. I actually thought that with PC gaming "E" to interact was pretty much an industry standard. Why they'd want to change that and make it more complicated than it ought to be, I don't know.

Nothing on my end. Played the 360 version and also didn't mess with any of the sensitivity options. Found everything to be on target. To be fair though, Starbreeze always had a weird, yet oddly satisfying way of handling shooters.

I mean, Mass Effect's "HIT SPACE TO EVERYTHING" kind of works, but I feel it'll also catch you off guard at times - when you want to get into cover but vault over it instead.

I like that Syndicate has distinct buttons for all actions, it means that you can hack and shoot/flee/melee at the same time - and for full disclosure, I've probably played 30 hours of Multiplayer, and it's very needed on the later stages of Multiplayer (on Expert), when you've got 2 Reactives chasing you down while you need to bring a fallen teammate up, and get into cover. When you end up in situations like that, it's almost like a first-person action movie with impossibly many things going on at the same time.

But yeah, I've suggested this to a few other people - if you are having trouble with binding mice-buttons to actions in Syndicate, try checking out your mouse-manufacturer's software. Many provide software that can make the mouse button think it's a keyboard key. Some even allow you to make automatic game-specific profiles for stuff like that.

Personally, with my Razer Naga, I've had no such problems (then again, the thumb-buttons are mapped to the numpad by default :P)

@Mnemoidian: If you need that level of control in multi-player then I could see you needing two separate control buttons then. I've just got a bogo-standard mouse attached to my PC, I'd love to get some Razer kit though as they do make some really good stuff.

@FoolInjection: To be clear - that's not the level of entry :)

The Normal difficulty is quite manageable without any crazy stuff like that, but I can't imagine playing Expert without being able to breach while I do other things.

And yeah, the Razer stuff is pretty cool

@RoboRobb: Dammit, for a second I thought I already posted in this thread

Similar names confuse me.