Don’t panic, I mean the original one, not the forgettable Starbreeze shooter (though it did have a decent multiplayer mode). Given Recent Events it’s a good time to look back at glory days Molyneux/Bullfrog, a time when that studio’s games were rewriting the rulebook. So, I heartily recommend grabbing Syndicate from Origin today, given it’s currently free.
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RPS Feature No, the FPS
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
No, not that one. The other one. Yes, the FPS. EA trying to resurrect Bullfrog’s top-down tactical series as an FPS was obviously going to rile up the people it was supposed to excite, but ignore the name. It’s a pleasant spot of face-shooting in a sumptuous cyberpunk world of gleaming clean lines and filthy neon. I don’t remember much of the campaign, but writing this has me wanting to dive back into the co-op.
RPS Feature The Syndicate remake we need
Spritual Syndicate sequel/remake Satellite Reign arrived on Steam Early Access last week. Can it possibly live up to its hallowed Bullfrog cyberpunk squad shooter legacy? I jacked in to find out.
The bad news: we’re running out of things that we want spiritual sequels to! Everything we ever wanted is coming true! CRISIS IN VIDEOGAMELAND.
The good news: Syndicate remake (of a sort) Satellite Reign is hot.
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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I’m playing Satellite Reign right now, so the Bullfrog subversive squad-shooter which heavily inspired it is very much on my mind. SR marks a sea-change: a game that’s been bewilderingly ignored by studios for decades is only now getting the follow-up it deserves.
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?
“I wonder what’s going on with Syndicate remake/spiritual sequel Satellite Reign?” I asked myself yesterday. “It’s been a while since we heard anything about it. Oh God, maybe it’s dead, oh no, please”, I panicked, before realising that “heard” would involve “games sites covering it”, which meant that I simply hadn’t checked in on it for a few months, which meant that I should go and do that right now. So I did. And I’m glad I did.
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RPS Feature Visible ASCII
Invisible, Inc. is coming to Steam Early Access on August 19th. It’s developer Klei’s return to stealth after 2012’s Mark of the Ninja, but this time it’s turn-based, tactical, and about steering a team of operatives through a Syndicate-inspired world of corporate espionage. It’s also their return to procedural generation and permadeath after 2013’s vastly successful Burtonesque survival game, Don’t Starve.
I spoke to company founder and programmer Jamie Cheng about why they came back to stealth game design, the challenges of procedureal generation, the right way to do Early Access, and mods.
Want first proper in-game, in-mission footage of spiritual Syndicate remake Satellite Reign? With agents and cars and civilians and cities and miniguns and all? Step right this way.
I think you’re going to like what you see.
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Oh my god, it’s a mirage, I’m telling you all it’s sabotage. Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” is apparently a big inspiration for LA Cops‘ overall attitude/look, but I’m even more pleased that it describes the top-down shooter strategy’s moment-to-moment gameplay. Inspired by Hotline Miami‘s gore-spattered thrills and (classic) Syndicate‘s cold strategizing, this one puts you in control of two hard-boiled eggs law enforcement professionals at any given moment. Positioning is key, but so are split-second smarts and reflexes. So you might, for instance, use one cop as bait and then run them right into a bullet firehose – aka, your partner. SABOTAGE. This looks like one to watch, and watch it you shall in a pair of videos below.
Aha, good to see the spiritual Syndicate sequel (the real one, not that dreary cash-grab from Starbreeze a couple of years back) breaking cover again after its successful Kickstarter. The good stuff – an early glimpse of Satellite Reign’s unfinished world, with its newly animated civilians scampering about – doesn’t kick in until 6m40s mark, but let’s not be churlish – it’s always fascinating to see how videogames get made. Especially when it involves quite as much brutal puppy sacrifice and breaking into DARPA bases as the 5 Lives team gets up to. Frankly I’m amazed they’re prepared to show all that in public. And so much nudity too! Whatever makes a more comfortable working environment, I guess.
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All of a sudden, espionage is cool again. I’d suggest it has something to do with WikiLeaks, but the last time I typed a nice thing about WikiLeaks my PC started making funny noises and a flower delivery truck spent three days outside my house. And I hadn’t ordered any flowers, sheeple. Anyway, I blew that van up and then the police came. Coincidence? I think not. So now I’m writing about Black Annex from the front room of the Cuban embassy: Developer Lance E. McDonald streamed it as part of the Greenlight SuperShow, showing off his incredibly silly strategy action game. I think it looks rather lovely.
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Will the Kickstarter controversies never end? Simon Roth stopped making his crowdfunded procedurally generated management game, Maia, for at least five seconds this morning. I know that it happened because he spent that time sending me a link to Black Annex, a one-man production built in QBASIC that will probably remind readers of a certain age that Syndicate used to be about controlling a squad of tiny, violent cyber(punk)men from afar rather than violently dismissing a first-person shooter from afar. The hot-off-the-presses trailer shows four agents infiltrating buildings, shooting enemies and hacking computers, and it looks wonderful.
RPS Feature Retro-Futurism
Last week I found myself in two conversations about resurrecting dead games. One was about Homeworld: I’d made a flippant comment about pressuring Relic to do a Kickstarter to make a sequel, and other people agreed. If Double Fine can raise millions for a point ‘n click, then why not millions for our lost and beloved space RTS? The other was about Syndicate. Wouldn’t it be great if we got a Syndicate sequel, finally, in the way we got a “proper” X-Com remake? No right-minded gamer would disagree. Hell, Paradox even seem to be planning to do so.
But I got to thinking about how this turn to “how games used to be” shouldn’t be about nostalgia, or the past at all, really. It should be about the future. The point of looking back must be to identify, rescue and save the futures we were promised.
Lewie’s away being fitted for birthday hats and I’m all alone in the Savy Tower this weekend. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I was racing the bargain-bots down the endless stairs when Lewie appeared to me in a text message. ‘Tony, you should probably find cheap games’ he said – in an impressive hat – so here I am. If you are in London on May 4th, please do come celebrate five years of Savygamer, more details and daily deals are on SavyGamer.co.uk. Hats welcome.
In the bucket today: Syndicate (the fab one), Gratuitous Space Battles, Total War packs, Serious Sam 3 and, oh, all sorts.
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We have a name, Cold Mercury, and we have a vague notion as to what the business model will be, free-to-play, but that’s all there is to know about Syndicate developer Starbreeze’s next game. Business smarties GamesIndustry.biz dug up the details from Starbreeze’s CEO Mikael Nermark. He said.
“Starbreeze will not leave the AAA segment. We are discussing with several leading game publisher on publisher financed games, but we will broaden our product portfolio of games in the new business models and segments that have arisen in the games industry. I am convinced that Starbreeze will be successful with the new games.”
So what are we looking at, here? Adam reckons “The first in a series of episodic FPS games following the career of American Music Club. The next one will be called Temperate San Francisco.”
RPS Feature Conquering the Atlantic Accelerator
Alright, I’ve spent today investigating Syndicate’s four-player co-operative online mode, and while I’m obviously several decades away from reaching all the unlocks and whatnot, I’ve got a firm handle on how it all works and if I think it’s any cop. Is it as forgettable as the singleplayer? Is it anything like Syndicate? What would the world be like if Mr Mark Question of Shoreham-on-Sea hadn’t invented the question mark in 1913? Read on for answers to at least two of those questions.
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RPS Feature Not terribly persuasive
I’ve been playing EA and Starbreeze’s contentious FPS reboot of the legendary Syndicate. I’ve only done a little dabbling in co-op, a report on which I will present very soon (so far: better than singleplayer, but very much in the unlock/ranking modern multiplayer idiom). You can find my rather more positive thoughts on the co-op mode here, but below is my take on the campaign mode, and the tale of the hysterically-named Eurocorp Agent MILES KILO.
CHOOSE YOUR REVIEW
1) Whether Syndicate is a decent first-person shooter or not.
2) Whether Syndicate 2012 is anything like Syndicate 1993.
3) The coffee I’m currently drinking.
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The humble .nfo file is a business card, instruction manual, and score-setting rap song in ascii form. They’re the files that the piracy scene drops into their releases to claim bragging rights for that particular chunk of nefarious code. So why the hell did Syndicate Developers Starbreeze stick one in the legitimate release of their first-person shooter? Redditor MikkelManDK spotted the file in the game’s directory: it’s there to partly to mock the scene a little — the install notes read: ‘1) Insert disc 2) Play ;)’ — and partly to bring the Warez groups into the games industry: Starbreeze’s .nfo asks them to apply for jobs.
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.
