RipTen Review: Syndicate (Xbox 360)

“Oh, crap. It’s Shadowrun all over again.”

Those were the first words out of my mouth when I learned that EA was really for real creating a new Syndicate game. First person shooter? Oh… goody. I kept reading through the press release anyway. Sure, true to the original game released in 1993. Fine, a neat hacking mechanic called “breaching.” Great, it’s under development at… Starbreeze? OK. That’s called burying the lead, EA. They gave this much loved, long dormant property to the studio responsible for the fantastic Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (and remake/re-release Assault on Dark Athena) and the faithful videogame adaptation of The Darkness. Their involvement left me hopeful, and I’m pleased to say that the end result, while not perfect, is absolutely enjoyable.

No prior experience with the Syndicate RPG is required to fully enjoy this intense, violent and innovative game. The opening lays the groundwork for everything you need to know about how the world works in 2069. Society has become what every opponent of Citizens United fears. Governments are no more, as corporations decided they didn’t need the middle-man. Their victory over democracy was made final with the introduction of the DART chip, which connects willing consumers to the data net of their preferred corporate conglomerate. Certainly, there are those that do not have the desire or financial wherewithal to become chipped, and they suffer for it, living in ghettos called “downzones.” Out of this stark socioeconomic rift has grown terrorism, including the group Towers Will Burn (TWB), which plays a pivotal role in the single player story.

You play as Miles Kilo, an agent for Eurocorp. Agents are outfitted with the top chip and firmware available, giving them superhuman strength and abilities fueled by adrenaline. These protectors of proprietary secrets and the office supply closet must constantly amp themselves up in order to power skills that cause enemy armaments to backfire and convince foes to kill themselves or their allies. Fear not, though. These corporate assets aren’t running around the world killing civilians like PCP-addled addicts. The chip syphons off the excess adrenaline, keeping those with military-grade equipment from going insane with rage.

If this isn't rage, I don't want to see Merit angry...

For the most part, the gunplay is like any other sci-fi shooter. You can carry two weapons at a time, ranging in size from small but powerful revolvers to huge laser canons and miniguns. There is a loose cover system that allows you to peek out from the safety of a wooden crate, but through my entire play through of the game, I only chose to use it a couple of times. Instead, I would often just aim down the sights of gun. I had more control and was equally exposed, with the option to lean offering little to no benefit. The other half of the combat system is where Syndicate truly shines. The Breach mechanic gives you three standard tools to distract and confuse your enemies, along with context-sensitive opportunities to gain the advantage in a firefight (like breaching grenades to disarm them because, in the future, even they have chips).

Backfire, causes weapons to malfunction and open up enemies to extra damage while stunned. Suicide forces your victim to arm a grenade and kill himself and those around him. Persuade convinces an enemy to open fire on his comrades and, once they are gone, turn the gun on himself. Each of these recharges by killing enemies, with bonus adrenaline earned for breach spikes (think active reloading in Gears of War), headshots and stringing together kills into a rampage combo. Backfire requires a lower amount of adrenaline than the other two.

The environment is littered with targets to breach. You’ll occasionally need to remotely move elevators, raise and lower cover and unlock doors from a distance. The few instances in the game where breaching is used to solve puzzles or drastically impact the environment were brilliant. They broke up the linear walk-and-murder gameplay, but they were also too few and far between. Too often, breaching felt like a gimmick rather than something Starbreeze used to differentiate the gameplay from other shooters. Syndicate also features a bullet-time like ability called the DART Overlay. By activating this mode, time slows down, and your vision resembles a wireframe. You can track enemies that you have already seen, even if they are hiding, and line up the perfect headshot. You can still tell when an enemy is behind cover, but there are weapons in the game that can penetrate less substantial materials.

You will kill this guy, and his friends, often.

Throughout most of the six to eight hour experience, you’ll be killing faceless corporate troops, but there are some armored enemies and UAVs that must be breached before damage can be dealt. Unfortunately, this is handled via the generic context sensitive breaching, so it never really matters which kind of armor soldiers wear. Breach, shoot, breach again. There are some creative boss battles that, while still leaning too hard on the breach-shoot-breach design, manage to mix things up. Each syndicate has differentiated technology with which they augment their agents. These battles force you to throw your normal tactics out the window and flush cloaked enemies out with EMP grenades, use indirect methods to disable them or put them down for good before they can be revived by teammates. At the end of each boss battle (and at other set points in the campaign) you’ll “chip rip” and kill your opponent, which gives you an upgrade point to be spent on making you faster, stronger or more resilient.

There is a story here, but it never managed to grab me. The “twists” were predictable, and the revelation that I suppose was intended to shock me fell flat. I felt very little for any of the characters, largely due to weak development. It’s a shame, because the performances from all three major actors, Rosario Dawson, Brian Cox and Michael Wincott, are incredibly strong. The plot always hints at the rich foundational lore of the Syndicate universe, but only manages to penetrate the surface via the collectibles in the forms of intel, personnel files and cyber graffiti. Other games have managed to create a tightly woven experience via extra content off the critical path. Bioshock is a perfect example of non-essential material enriching the experience. In Syndicate, though, nearly all of this content is text, rather than a mix of different media, including video and audio.

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