“Looks super-rad” was a note I made during the recent EA Vegas Showcase after seeing a new trailer for Syndicate from Starbreeze. Having not necessarily played the original game[s], but being a massive fan of Starbreeze as a developer allowed me to go into the game with excited, yet fresh eyes. But it wasn’t until I actually got hands-on with the product that I realised all of the moaning from fans of the original at this purported “reboot” was somewhat misplaced. This is, by no means, a cash-in. How can it be? The Syndicate name is a cult one, at best. It was never a critical monetary success, despite being regarded as ground-breaking, and I’d hardly call a Triple-A developer working on a niche franchise name for some three years, in secret, any sort of attempt at “selling” said franchise “out”.

Getting hands-on with the demo proved a lot more constructive though, because I am a self-professed science-fiction nerd, so anything with sprawling futuristic vistas, synth music and copious lens-flare and neon is going to grab me, regardless.



Thankfully though, Starbreeze haven’t failed yet, and the immediate thing I noticed was the fluidity of first-person movement and controls. A lot of people have already commented on the recently released 11-minute gameplay demo, and that it’s being shown running on console. Honestly, I don’t see why this surprises people anymore. You shouldn’t be looking for on-screen prompts to see what platform it’s running on. I played the game on Xbox 360 and it felt incredibly smooth, but that doesn’t mean it won’t feel smoother with a mouse and keyboard - so many other games have already proven they can co-exist on various platforms, and Starbreeze know they have a lot to prove with the PC crowd given the series’ pedigree.

Anyone who also played either Chronicles of Riddick: Butcher’s Bay or The Darkness will know what to expect in the control sense here. The team are using an updated version of their own engine, which takes full-body motion into account in the FPS space (so, looking down, you’ll see your feet and legs), though I’d argue Syndicate is far more responsive. Another facet of the control interface I caught our community complaining about is auto-targeting which, as is common practice in modern games, can be easily turned off in the Options menu; something I did and still felt completely in control.

The aforementioned video gives a pretty good indication of what I actually played, but it’s important to point out that, unlike Deus Ex, which it will no doubt be compared to right through till release, Syndicate has pacing. There’s less of a stealth component here, replaced more with the hacking element, which is called Breaching. This allows you to take control of anything with a microchip in it, and in the Syndicate universe, that also includes humans. It’s difficult to explore in an 11-minute video, or a 20-minute hands-on session, but ultimately its in place to give you on-the-fly augmentations and tactical recourse, which is much needed because one of the other main stands-outs for me in my experience, was that AI is not only dynamic, but also pretty damn smart.



So walking into a room with turrets, for example, can give you the edge over smarter AI who prefer to hide deftly behind cover. More rogue AI though, the run and gun type, can be turned momentarily to your side though, unwittingly flipping their weapons against their allies, thus giving you the edge to take them out. Or you can use combinations of many Breaches - the tactical options are yours for the exploitation.

Like Deus Ex though, you can upgrade each Breach augmentation you gain, and there will be various tiers as you progress through the game. Not much of this was talked about or shown, but the foundation was there and I skimmed through the game’s menu system to see if there was going to be enough to keep things fresh and interesting, and there is.

The other major stand-out for me with Syndicate though, was tone. The first games were renowned for their mature themes and brutal overtones. Whether it was the straight-up violence, or the anti-capitalism commentary in making corporations the ultimate evil (how prophetic, really), and it looks as though none of that has been lost here. The mission we played saw us needing to “extract” a biochip from one Gary Chang, a scientist working for a rival organisation to the one the game’s protagonist, Miles Kilo, is aligned with (at least for the purpose of our demo). Even upon making it to Chang did the tone remain incredibly mature; holding a gun under his chin, he threatened to the destroy the chip before it could be removed. Depending on your demeanor, you can take him out yourself, or just let him do it, either way, the end result was the same.



Now dead, you can use an extraction tool Kilo has to literally rip the chip from Chang’s head, and Starbreeze didn’t ease up on the detail in this scene, either. Even after the fact there’s a massive pool of rich, red blood gathering on the floor below Chang’s head. General enemy encounters are equally bloody, with digital squibs exploding from enemies wherever you tagged them. Even the in-game, interactive cut-scenes are all business in the violence and blood department, but it makes the game’s col, futuristic world all the better for it.

Despite the frenetic gunplay and visceral action, there’s also a decent mix of puzzles to play through, and most of these require use of different types of breaching and thinking outside the circle. Again, the demo just didn’t give off an expanded sense of how deep this element goes, but the systems are in place for it to be robust enough, so we’re hoping there’s a heady dose of thinking required to progress. Thankfully though, the game’s level-design, coupled with all of the above created a pretty decent sense of where the team are going in the way of gameplay balance. It might be a much pacier affair than the likes of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but that doesn’t mean it’s still not a thinking person’s game.

In all, I felt the demo and how the game handled and paced itself where excellent indications of what’s to come. Knowing the team have been on the game for three years was also massively reassuring, and it felt decidedly polished. For the naysayers out there though, a really good example of modern reimaginings working is Fallout, which made, in my opinion (and the opinion of countless others), a graceful and successful leap to the first-person, without losing any of the tone or atmosphere of the original series. As a standalone game, Syndicate already kicks ass, but armed with what made the originals so ballsy in the videogame landscape, there’s real potential here to add another excellent first-person experience to the already strong 2012 line-up for shooters, that aren’t just based on a modern combat model of monetary success.