Rock, Paper, Shotgun

In another example of the games industry twisting a word until its meaning shatters into a thousand pieces of bacon shredding shrapnel, blinding a nearby piglet who only wanted to use his eyes to see what was happening, and who’ll now go through the rest of his life bumping sadly into your leg and hoping you’re not a rabid wolf… that piglet trusted you, damnit! See what you’ve done, industry? You’ve toss around words like “free” and “beta”, blinding curious little animals who only wanted to play with you, and now EA have gone and released a “launch” trailer for their FPS reboot of Syndicate, yet the game remains decidedly unlaunched. Well, it’s not on my PC and another piglet will never be able to appreciate eye things ever again.
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Check the Earth for giant cracks, while demons ride high above the clouds, their red wings raining down fire, because the original Bullfrog Syndicate is to be available once again, via the magic of Good Old Games.

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Hello there. The characters in the new Syndicate co-op trailer seem to be having a competition to see who can have the worst made-up soldier-person name on the team! Ooh, they’re all contenders, but sadly none have as terrible a name as the single player protagonist, Miles Kilo (pictured with his tool). Still, it’s not worth being too snide around these agents of corporate malevolence, because any one of them can break a man’s neck as if it were made from cheese-string, as this video (below) quite relevantly demonstrates. Ooh, that’s nasty. I bet Syndicate agents have a poor sense of humour, too. Look at them frown!
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Last time out, Syndicate was showing off its guns and I don’t remember seeing a single flamethrower, which made me grumble in a manner befitting a madman denied the ability to burn the flesh off his enemies. The latest piece of video advertainment is all about the power of technology, which allows agents to persuade their opponents to commit suicide and attack their allies, among other ethically questionable activities. It’s certainly far more interesting than the guns. The removal of chips from peoples’ skulls to gain experience is described as a “critical mission objective”, which is something the same mad part of me that wants a flamethrower approves of heartily. Watch between the tiny gaps in your cybernetically augmented HUD below.

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UPDATE: Turns out there is a trailer, too. (Below.)

This has to be one of the weirdest asset releases we’ve seen lately: a batch of screenshots in which the protagonist of Syndicate is having a good look at the gun that he’s carrying. That’s what it’s about: admiring the shooting cylinder. Conveniently it features most of the guns you’ll be toting in the game. So big. So gunny! Mmm. Full gallery below!
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There has already been a short trailer showing the chip-fipping, face-slamming action of the Syndicate reboot, this being the boot that may stamp on the face of your gaming past forever. This longer video shows an actual play session on the same map, jumping between agents’ viewpoints to confuse me but otherwise giving a fairly good idea of how things will play out. There will be lots of violence, death and use of cover. Strategy? Well, you’ll have to wait for team-mates before opening certain doors and really tough men will absorb thousands of bullets so you’ll need to heal one another during those fights. Oh, just look at it.

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A reasonable number of folk around these parts are, I think it’s safe to sweepingly generalise, a little nonplussed that Starbreeze’s Syndicate remake is going down the mostly linear manshooter path. All along, though, we’ve been told the game’s four-player co-op mode would entail a more direct nod to the strategicish Bullfrog original. Is that, could that be, true? Time to find out.
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This is one for the young people, perhaps – as part of another trailer for the upcoming Syndicate enshooterising, we get a potted history of Bullfrog’s original game. “A cyberpunk wonderland,” apparently. Then it segues into a pic’n'mix of previous and new Syndishoot footage, and I guess we’re supposed to think “gosh, the reticule-based adventures of MILES KILO sure are highly thematically similar to an isometric tactical game.” Still, it’s nice to see the original Syndicate (“quite a unique experience”, claims robo-lady in the video) given a proper nod – never thought we’d see that as part of a bombastic, noisy trailer like this.

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Crikey, from being an unknown (and yet somehow inevitably always an FPS) project of rumour and vapour, there’s already footage of Syndicate to coo at/smash up your house in rage because of. Ten minutes of it! Which you can watch below.

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Okay, here it is: the first Syndicate trailer. Heavy on the dubstep and men in trenchcoats. Gosh, this makes me realise that the original Syndicate came out in the era before there were generally trailers for games.
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