Syndicate This: Satellite Reign Launches On Early Access

Prepare to download jubilation and dispense judgement, agents: Satellite Reign has arrived on Steam Early Access.

The game's been covered a-plenty on RPS since it was teased all the way back in May 2013, and that's undeniably been helped by its promise to be the successor to long-forgotten series Syndicate. I said long-forgotten. What's an FPS?

Satellite Reign is not a mere slavish imitation of its forebears: one clear design shift is the addition of role-based abilities and specialisations, whereas the Syndicate games largely treated your four-man teams as interchangeable bar differences in loadout. Satellite Reign's approach dovetails nicely with the game's promised focus on "behaviour, not scripting", suggesting open-ended levels with multiple solutions possible for challenges.

The game's brightly-lit environments look delightful; it's the same sort of neon-lit cultural fusion of old and new that made Blade Runner's cityscapes so memorable.

Elite Special Agent Rossignol went hands-on with the game back in October, and also interviewed SR lead Mike Diskett back in July. 5 Lives Studios still have plenty of work to do, but to release a version of the game into the hands of players is something to be celebrated. It has been a long time coming.

If your interest in Satellite Reign is, like mine, at least partially driven by nostalgia, you may enjoy revisiting the intro cinematic for Syndicate Wars. I remember watching that when I was 14 and thinking it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. Feel free to laugh at my childhood; it did seem to involve an inordinate number of low-resolution PC game intro sequences.

For the rest of you, I apologise for the excitement visibly oozing from between each letter presented before you. My brain has been hacked. Sned hlep.