Quick Look: Syndicate

1:50...is that supposed to be christian bale?

@stryker1121 said:

Too bad about the short campaign..that's the only reason i'd get this. I know Jeff loved it but I wouldn't mind more devs stop trying to be all things to all people, particularly in the FPS realm. In Syndicate there seems to be two modes that are light on content, instead of one complete kickass mode. From all I've read the co-op is more complete of the two, so why not just make a full-on co-op title out of this? Just don't bullshit me w/ these short shrift SP campaigns.

I pretty much agree. I want the SP, but I always don't get what i want. I think SP and Co-op are the 2 natural modes devs try to do at times . Borderlands is an example of that. Co-op may even be rather dominant, because interest in Sp will carry itself, and again thats what got me through Borderlands. But Borderlands had a lot of RPG content, and these ppl. want 60.00 for the (PC) standard length fps- game out the gate.

I am going to get this game.. for PC. Just not now.

Edit- yay for Starbreeze!

The story sounds like Haze.

@xtafxfoulfellow said:

The multiple sight thing needs to happen in real life, ACOG and red dot ftw

This is already in use in the military.

@Hizang said:

The story sounds like Haze.

Yeah, and that sucks. I'd have loved this game to be an awesome power trip you of just being a dude working for corporations,killing other people, and going to war with them and their crazy awesome secret agent dudes like you. But then they gotta add "depth" to it and stuff. I guess I can see the developers wanting to do something more, though, than just shooting things because you were told to,

Also, this game is super quiet. I wish the dubstep was just constantly pumping.

Saw the score, was very tempted to pick it up despite no prior knowledge. Discovered that the single player was terribly short, decided against it. Sorry, but I'm done with games with almost no single player campaign. Too many other games to play coming up soon.

I know a lot people seem to be griping about a short single player, but to me the CO-OP in this game is worth the price of admission alone. I've been hooked on it all day on the PC, and it's the most fun I've had with a shooter in a long time. I cannot recommend the game enough.

@Deathpooky: You do realize that 6 hours is not 'terribly short' for a modern shooter right? Short would be closer to 4 hours, but at any length I'll take a good game over a mundane one and if that means they can deliver something worth while that lasts 'just' 6 hours then that's fine by me. I don't want to play for 8 hours than get incredibly bored and unable to finish a game that would take another 8 hours on top of that, just a waste of my time.

@DJJoeJoe: 6 hours is terribly short. Compare it to Modern Warfare and all if you want to try to justify it, but that's not an amount of time I'm paying full price for. At that point you're not even getting your time to money's worth versus a movie. Especially since this game looks like a fun original FPS, but still an FPS.

If I'm done with it in a single weekend, I'm not paying $60 to buy it unless it's off the charts good and original. I could pick it up if it drops to below $40, but there's too much else to do and play to otherwise justify spending $60 for a game that'll last a day. I obviously don't want to play a game that's over 6 hours but boring, but there's enough out there that the options aren't this or banality.

@Deathpooky: You do realize that 6 hours is not 'terribly short' for a modern shooter right? Short would be closer to 4 hours, but at any length I'll take a good game over a mundane one and if that means they can deliver something worth while that lasts 'just' 6 hours then that's fine by me. I don't want to play for 8 hours than get incredibly bored and unable to finish a game that would take another 8 hours on top of that, just a waste of my time.

Looks like a techier Blade Runner

@zaglis said:

@DJJoeJoe said:

@Deathpooky: You do realize that 6 hours is not 'terribly short' for a modern shooter right? Short would be closer to 4 hours, but at any length I'll take a good game over a mundane one and if that means they can deliver something worth while that lasts 'just' 6 hours then that's fine by me. I don't want to play for 8 hours than get incredibly bored and unable to finish a game that would take another 8 hours on top of that, just a waste of my time.

NO. FUCKING NO. Since when terribly short was considered 4 hours? 6 hours already is considered the bare, pathetic minimum for a 60$ game. *Virtual spit* on people like you.

Considering this game has a multiplayer component, saying it's 6 hours long is like measuring someone's cock by it's girth only. Since when was length important to the amount of enjoyment you get out of a fuckin game? If it's not worth it for you, fine, go play Skyrim, and enjoy all of the glitches and bugs and jank of a game with that much content. A six hour campaign with a really solid multiplayer component is worth $60 for me, and most people who have the money to support a habit like gaming. If your issue is getting your bang for your buck, then play the multiplayer a lot. I know if I get this game and some of my buddies get it, we will likely play it a fair amount. You have to recognize that there is more than length involved in the quality or even value of a single player component. Games like Skyrim and Borderlands and Mass Effect are awesome, I've probably played more of those than just about any other games. But they have to make sacrifices to get those games to have that much content. The content will have to receive less work per unit of time the player experiences it. Borderlands has a huge amount of content and massive replayability but the story is mostly limited to a couple of FMV sequences, scattered and quick dialogue and probably 80% quest text. I still loved the shit out of that game, but you know what game was just as awesome? Uncharted 3. And because it wasn't a billion hours of content rich, the developers were able to cram every bit of craft into every second of that game. The environments are much more detailed, the cutscenes, not only does the game have them but they are considered among the best in the entire industry, with excellent performance capture, animation, acting, writing, lots of cool shit happening in them. That game can be beaten in 3 hours. It usually took 6-8 hours. Are you saying that extra craft isn't worth it?

Starbreeze isn't some massive studio who can get the kind of capital required for a Mass Effect or a Metal Gear length experience. And they made a good game. If you can't afford it, too bad. But don't completely ignore parts of the game, and don't act like it's up to you do decide if it's worthwhile to anyone but yourself. Syndicate isn't a 6 hour game. Don't cry to everyone else when they are willing to put down their cash and get something worthwhile for it.

@stryker1121 said:

Too bad about the short campaign..that's the only reason i'd get this. I know Jeff loved it but I wouldn't mind more devs stop trying to be all things to all people, particularly in the FPS realm. In Syndicate there seems to be two modes that are light on content, instead of one complete kickass mode. From all I've read the co-op is more complete of the two, so why not just make a full-on co-op title out of this? Just don't bullshit me w/ these short shrift SP campaigns.

I like games that have separate singleplayer and coop components, because otherwise you are forced to do one or the other. Even if they had made everything coop with an option to play alone, the game would be focused for one way or the other. Much better to have a singleplayer campaign with a single player story and single player design and a coop campaign with a coop story and coop design, in my opinion. I like both, and I want both from games. And not many developers put coop in their games, so stop complaining about it! Or they'll stop v.v Gamers need to start asking for more coop in games, 4 player online coop is an awesome thing but so few games do it. I have friends, just because I play video games doesn't mean I hate everyone and only want to compete. I love cooperative experiences, and I love single player experiences. Hell, I'll even take coop kinda forced into a singleplayer experience if it means I can roll around with some buddies in Skyrim beating the shit out of some bandits. Games like Gears of War 3 are shining examples of why coop in games is always good if enough work is put into it. Mass Effect 3 is starting to look like it might have pretty cool coop gameplay too.

I might agree if this felt like shoehorning multiplayer into a game that shouldn't have it and doing it poorly, but this looks like an awesome experience either way, especially if your a big cyber punk buff. Like me!

@zaglis said:

*Virtual spit* on people like you.

Dick move.

@zaglis said:

@DJJoeJoe said:

@Deathpooky: You do realize that 6 hours is not 'terribly short' for a modern shooter right? Short would be closer to 4 hours, but at any length I'll take a good game over a mundane one and if that means they can deliver something worth while that lasts 'just' 6 hours then that's fine by me. I don't want to play for 8 hours than get incredibly bored and unable to finish a game that would take another 8 hours on top of that, just a waste of my time.

NO. FUCKING NO. Since when terribly short was considered 4 hours? 6 hours already is considered the bare, pathetic minimum for a 60$ game. *Virtual spit* on people like you.

there is a co-op mode in case you all forgot, and it's kinda tie-in with the campaign

@DJJoeJoe said:

You do realize that 6 hours is not 'terribly short' for a modern shooter right?

Sad thing about this statement, is you're right. Which is exactly the reason I no longer buy modern shooters anymore.

It's the fact that they're selling 1/4th the product for the exact same price which makes it so absurd. And people like you just eat it up, which is the only reason they do it, not because they want to tell a better story or anything. They make more money off of you, period.

In my opinion, sucks to be you. I can't understand how you would think that getting more of something you paid for is a bad thing.

@MordeaniisChaos said:

If it's not worth it for you, fine, go play Skyrim, and enjoy all of the glitches and bugs and jank of a game with that much content.

I have never understood this mentality, because its blown out of proportion completely. I have 250 hours played total in Skyrim and have really only encountered a handful of bugs, and all have been solvable by just restarting the game.

So lets see, $60 for 250 hours, and still going... or $60 for 6 hours and probably wont ever pick it up again after finishing. If that's a "jank of a game" then I don't even want to know what Syndicate is.

Woah. I actually watched this whole quick look. I didn't think I'd find this so compelling, but it appears so much better than I was expecting! Some little Ghost in the Shell vibes and the Kusanagi weapon got me all excited. Might have to actually pick this one up.

Hmmm anyone know if I will be able to play this in Australia? Thought I read somewhere it was refused classification...

This looks so much like Brink to me.  The color, the head bob, the size of the guns compared to the rest of the screen, the little text box overlays on everything.

This is all I could think of around 1:08:00 when they all jumped the ledge to save the downed guy:

Wanted: Weapons of Fate was Starbreeze's previous project.

Syndicate looks pretty good. The graphics are great; some of it actually reminds me of Battlefield 3 (especially the lighting and interiors), although it's obviously not quite that good looking. The co-op looks really fun, but the campaign looks kind of forgettable. Oh, and the menus are hideous.

This game looks like what Deus Ex would be like if Infinity Ward had made it. Lots of over the top violence, in a relatively linear campaign, that lasts about a weekend.

Nothing wrong with this, but I'm more of the methodical, open-ended camp, myself.

If you see this as only a six hour SP experience you should turn in your gamer card, because you no longer know how to have fun.

@AdMordem: Unfortunately, it will not be available in Australia. EA has said that they currently have no plans to significantly censor the game to make it acceptable to their approval board; though, the board hasn't even indicated what could be changed to make it okay. So, for the moment and probably the foreseeable future, it isn't happening in Australia.

I would recommend trying to get it from New Zealand, as it has been approved for purchase there.

Enjoying this game immensely, save for the boss and "miniboss" encounters - which are kind of annoying. For the people griping about the main campaign length - it needs to be emphasized that there is a massive co-op component to this game.

The aesthetic is very Deus Ex-ish, but the combat itself reminds me a lot of The Darkness 2, in terms of flow. I love the futuristic chip overlay.

@SomeJerk said:

If you see this as only a six hour SP experience you should turn in your gamer card, because you no longer know how to have fun.

So, because some people have an opinion that's different then yours we shouldn't be allowed to play video games? Well, at least your screen name is appropriate.

@Soapy86: What if it's a really good shooter? What's wrong with that? I could never be as categoric as you are being.

LOLS: Syndicate.....make it happen!

@gringbot: the thing is some people will be more compelled by the 6 hour campaign and online co-op than doing 200 hours in Skyrim. I like a variety of games but Skyrim was just more of the same from Oblivion. I know theres tons of quests but they all seem completely inconsequential and boring. There are tons of caves that all follow the same pattern and rarely have anything of interest in them unless it's a main quest location. I'd rather play a tight engaging 6 hour experience and then have fun online. I'm not advocating that 6 hours is a good length as like anyone else I'd rather get more than less - I just don't want more at the cost of my own engagement.

don't see whats so special about this. Looks like a first person shooter to me. I guess I don't find the things awesome that jeff does. So you press a button and the AI does all the awesome stuff , you basically only had one button of interaction with the awesome. not awesome to me.

@SomeJerk said:

If you see this as only a six hour SP experience you should turn in your gamer card, because you no longer know how to have fun.

So, because some people have an opinion that's different then yours we shouldn't be allowed to play video games? Well, at least your screen name is appropriate.

I think I just may have played too many shooters, so that doesn't feel less generic to me than anything else.

They pasted some old assets over it, that have no meaning or context anymore.

It reminds me of the last Shadowrun iteration.

I'm trying to give EA my money but they won't take it! Stupid Origin.

I'm sorry, but I can't pay $60 for a 6 hour long game, much in the same way I won't pay $20 a Big Mag. Yeah, I can afford it, but it feels like a waste of money for me. What I'm seeing is cool, don't get me wrong, but the price will have to drop.

But I'm also one of those people that refuses to pay full price for CoD games, so whatever anyone else feels their money is worth is up to them. I don't judge.

This looked like a GREAT 40$ game.

@SomeJerk said:

Yeah, for completely ignoring the co-op of Syndicate. There were people who complained of the campaign length in MW3 and BF3, people who did not want to even click the co-op button. They too should turn in their gamer cards.

Again, because someone plays a game differently, to you it means they should stop playing video games... staying true to your colors at least.

@Humanity said:

@gringbot: the thing is some people will be more compelled by the 6 hour campaign and online co-op than doing 200 hours in Skyrim. I like a variety of games but Skyrim was just more of the same from Oblivion. I know theres tons of quests but they all seem completely inconsequential and boring. There are tons of caves that all follow the same pattern and rarely have anything of interest in them unless it's a main quest location. I'd rather play a tight engaging 6 hour experience and then have fun online. I'm not advocating that 6 hours is a good length as like anyone else I'd rather get more than less - I just don't want more at the cost of my own engagement.

Well, the thing is I don't play games unless I'm engaged, so those 250 hours are genuine. There's more then just caves in the game, and if you just ran through the game and didn't listen to what people said for quests, or read a few journals or books scattered about, or just charged through everything of course you wouldn't see its depth. But I won't sit here and say Syndicate looks terrible and unengaging (...ungaging?), I was genuinely interested in what this game had to offer, there were some very attractive sections but then I realized I had just seen 1/6th of whats available in the SP campaign. And then I almost fell asleep during the Co-op section and stopped watching, because to me, it wasn't really that interesting.

But in Skyrim, I'm still finding brand new things: new stories, new items, new unique places, and even when I try a different character, I end up with an entirely different approach to the same game. Can you really do that here? Doesn't seem like there's much variety to replaying the game.

My point is that this is a game that seems way to easy to digest and be done with, which with a $60 price tag (and having to use spywar*COUGH*... I mean origin to play it) just doesn't seem like a good deal, at all. It feels more along the lines of a complete ripoff.

By all means, if you enjoy the game, don't let me stop you from having that enjoyment. But I feel that it's the same old EA trickery of cutting lots of corners to milk its customers dry.

I didnt ask for any of this...

@Humanity said:

@gringbot: the thing is some people will be more compelled by the 6 hour campaign and online co-op than doing 200 hours in Skyrim. I like a variety of games but Skyrim was just more of the same from Oblivion. I know theres tons of quests but they all seem completely inconsequential and boring. There are tons of caves that all follow the same pattern and rarely have anything of interest in them unless it's a main quest location. I'd rather play a tight engaging 6 hour experience and then have fun online. I'm not advocating that 6 hours is a good length as like anyone else I'd rather get more than less - I just don't want more at the cost of my own engagement.

I think Skyrim is what you make of it. To me, it's not about the sheer amount of quests or whatever, it's the fact that world is breathing, it feels dynamic. How dynamic it is or not is questionable now that I've put 170 hours in it, you can see behind walls quite a bit. But to the point, Oblivion and Morrowind were not like that at all (nor Arena or Daggerfall for that matter) Also, go back and play Oblivion and check those caves out, your mind will be blown at how fucking basic they are. It makes me appreciate every single Skyrim dungeon soooo much more than I already did.

I'm not saying what you'd rather play is wrong, that would be something an insane person would say. I'm just expressing how i feel about that type of game compared to Syndicate, which more to the point actually does bum me out. I like my games to have a little more depth now, including First Person Shooters (for some reason Far Cry 2 comes to mind constantly, not an insanely deep game mind you, but a bloody good lengthy experience that is incredibly replayable) there was a time many years ago where I would have been all over this, but back then games weren't six hours. That could be a Jeff Gerstmann six hours though, I'm not sure...

The more I look at it, the shooting does look pretty solid and fun, I'm very tempted to get it some time down the line anyway, but I won't lie, I really wish there was some competitive multiplayer in there, co-op doesn't appeal to me. I can easily guess why there isn't any, you'd probably have to change the core shooting and sacrifice some of it's neat touches, but the co-op progression looks cool, would have liked to have seen that brought over. Hell actually I would have liked to see that in the single player! That's the kind of thing I'm talking about, a little something extra (there's also the part where the competitive multiplayer probably wouldn't last more than 2 weeks because it's not bloody CoD, aaaand i could just play more BF3, that solves the issue i guess)

Anyway i'll promptly shut up now, I don't usually post massive arduous posts.

@SomeJerk said:

@gringbot said:

@SomeJerk said:

If you see this as only a six hour SP experience you should turn in your gamer card, because you no longer know how to have fun.

So, because some people have an opinion that's different then yours we shouldn't be allowed to play video games? Well, at least your screen name is appropriate.

Yeah, for completely ignoring the co-op of Syndicate. There were people who complained of the campaign length in MW3 and BF3, people who did not want to even click the co-op button. They too should turn in their gamer cards.

I wasn't at the massive arsehole convention so I never got my "gamer card".

@Tsuchikage said:

Wanted: Weapons of Fate was Starbreeze's previous project.

Syndicate looks pretty good. The graphics are great; some of it actually reminds me of Battlefield 3 (especially the lighting and interiors), although it's obviously not quite that good looking. The co-op looks really fun, but the campaign looks kind of forgettable. Oh, and the menus are hideous.

I thought that was GRIN who made Wanted?

Sooo where's the challenge in this game? The systems and controls aren't complicated and the AI is pretty stupid.

Wow, we're still bitching about the length. As if games were somehow always dozens of hours long. If you want to say that $60 is too much for only 6 hours of single player and you'll just ignore the co-op - that's fine. Maybe you want to say that games have changed and the standard length for games has gotten longer - that's fine too. But don't start asserting that games have always been long and they have somehow become super expensive for no content because that is blatant bullshit. Video game production costs have gone up by a huge amount even just since this console generation started. You should be glad that the market has expanded enough so they don't cost even more.

If you want cheap games, get an iPod Touch.

Looks like Deus Ex in Mirror's Edge with KIllzone menus.

Man, a Respawn meets Blade Runner game would be so fucking awesome.

After 300hours of Bf3 I'm ready to give more money to EA

Lovin' all dem Starbreeze touches of weapon handling, full body awareness, cover system (was in Riddick games), and melee executions.

Most definitely buying this, love that this is the opposite of optimistic Deus Ex where we lost the "human revolution" and are now governed by corporations. You're not chipped, you don't even exist. COLD

I'll have to be honest I wasn't looking forward to this game, however after this quick look it actually looks amazing. Cannot wait to buy this (when I've got money)

Game looks great. I hope the PC version is not as botched as some people make it seem.

SOLD!!

@mbr2: They did.

As far as I know the last project Starbreeze did was Dark Athena. I'm not sure if that was the "new" Starbreeze or the "old" one, but it wasnt a bad game. Optimized like shit for PC though.

I'm liking the feel of the shooting in this game, reminds me of Fear (the monolith ones) but the game seems too easy, and if it's as short as people are making it out to be I guess i'll end up renting it or something. Fuck the multiplayer...

@xobballox said:

Those fingers blowing off when he shot the gas tank... man...

I'm curious how this is on PC. Liked what I played on PS3 (the demo), but I want it on PC if I buy it.

Apparently it runs at a smooth 60FPS on even a modest rig which is always a good thing. Means it likely won't be pushing graphical limits too far but hell, game looks damned fine as is.