Path: menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: gbradley@uk.oracle.com (Gary Bradley) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Syndicate Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Date: 4 Dec 1993 20:55:26 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 320 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <2dqtfu$s6h@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: gbradley@uk.oracle.com (Gary Bradley) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: game, strategy, shoot-em-up, commercial PRODUCT NAME Syndicate [MODERATOR'S NOTE: This review originally appeared in comp.sys.amiga.games in July 1993 and is posted here with the author's permission. I have adapted it to use the c.s.a.reviews "Template" but have otherwise not changed the text. - Dan] BRIEF DESCRIPTION Strategy and shoot-em-up game set in a dark future. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Bullfrog, Electronic Arts LIST PRICE 34.00 pounds (UK). SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Apparently runs on all Amigas. "Amiga 1200 or better" is recommended on the package. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: Reports on USENET indicate that the game may crash on Amiga 4000/040's. - Dan] 1 MB RAM required. Hard drive recommended. SOFTWARE None. COPY PROTECTION None. Hard drive installable. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 500 AmigaDOS 1.2 Two floppy drives INTRODUCTION Well I bought this game really really blind. I had never heard of Syndicate, nor even knew what sort of game play to expect. All I had heard was a good report from a friend who has the demo that appeared in a recent UK Amiga magazine. Also, I have an ancient (WB 1.2) Amiga 500 with nothing special except an external floppy drive, so I was really taking a risk! If you want to know how I feel today after splashing out the cash yesterday, read on. THE PLOT In the dark future, massive corporations become so have powerful they replace Governments as the real powers ruling countries. Naturally, the criminal element infiltrate these power bases, and the result (after years of sporadic wars) is the world is now ruled by 8 large companies (or Syndicates). Each of them will stop at nothing to undermine the power of the others and tip the balance of power enough that they can seize overall control and dominate the entire planet. You take control of the European-based power and must take over all other regions while avoiding costly rebellions in the regions you already rule. OVERVIEW The game is played from a world map with 60 or so regions colour-shaded according to which syndicate controls them. Whenever a region experiences an event that upsets the balance of power within it, it flashes on the map to tell you (the greedy controller of Euro-Corp) that there is an opportunity to send your cyborg agents into the area to cause enough confusion that you grab control of the region. Naturally, other syndicates have the same thing in mind and will think nothing of blowing away your agents if their paths cross while they undertake their own missions! These opportunities present themselves as a mission brief tied to the area in question. The missions (I have only seen 3 so far) tend to involve either an assassination of someone or the recruiting of someone to your side via the use of a nasty little gun called a Persuadatron. [This short range weapon zombifies the target so he/she can do nothing but follow you around like a human shield.] Using a combination of your judgement and the resources available, you must assemble a team of cyborgs best suited to the job. The team can consist of 1 to 4 members, and each can carry 10 (I think) pieces of equipment chosen from dozens of possibilities. Overkill when choosing the team is a waste of valuable corporate funds, while underkill will almost certainly result in a massacre (of your side!). For this reason, mission hints and an enhanced map for the mission can be obtained - for a price. These will give you a better idea of what to expect and how best to configure the team you plan to send. At this point in the game, you can also allocate funds to your scientists in a "Mega-lo-Mania" sort of way to get them to develop even more devious ways to kill enemy agents in spectacular fashion. True to the spirit of "Syndicate", the more money you throw at the researchers, the faster they succeed in their task. Another nice feature is that any unknown devices or weapons you take from enemies (whose heads you have just blown off) can be given to the lab boys after the mission and developed much quicker than starting from scratch. Once your team of cyborg agents is selected and kitted out, you send them into the appropriate hot spot in the region (e.g., a small village in one of the missions I played) to carry out their task. The execution of the mission makes up the major aspect of the game. This is presented in an isometric point of view - much like Populous, but far, far more detailed. A weird point I will make here is that game does resemble Populous and other "play God" sort of games to some extent, but is much more precise and playable than I have found that category of game to be. Your no-holds-barred killer cyborg agents can act independently or as a group, and have efficient scanner devices allowing them to locate the various targets (as well as spot enemy agents). In fact, every member of an area's population appears on the scanner - it is VERY detailed (as the next paragraph will reveal)! Apparently, entire cities are modeled as living, breathing entities in this game, right down to the whereabouts and activity of the most insignificant member of the populace, and including entire working (and usable) transport networks. This claim I can believe as the little village I infiltrated had a population of around 30 little people, and intelligence in each was obviously present: when one of my cyborgs pulled out a nasty Uzi machine gun in the middle of the town square, everyone around scattered for cover while the village guards and police ran at me with pistols blazing!!! The documentation also mentions that the "living city" simulation will go on without your intervention. This was proved as I sat and watched the daily lives of the villagers for about 3 minutes -- before giving into the temptation of killing a few by doing a drive by in my cyborg's bubble car and launching my flame thrower out the window! Great Fun! What really shocked me was my underestimation of how much detail the game actually includes in its city models. At one point, I had 4 cyborg agents in my team, and we had just gotten out of our car when the villains opened fire at us in a crowded public place. Foolishly, I pulled my agent with the heaviest weapon to one side and opened fire at the baddies. The result of this one burst of firepower was 2 enemies killed instantly, the car they were standing beside exploding (blowing away several innocent bystanders), my car exploding as it was parked too close to the first car (this blast blew more civilians, enemies and even my other 3 agents all over the place). By the time things had stopped exploding and dying, the quiet public square was littered with bloody bodies, burning cars and burning people (still running around in flames screaming until finally dying and dropping to the ground quietly). I was left with one agent, standing alone, presumably with mouth agape, with the innocent-looking flame thrower still smoking in his hands. I had no time to mourn, though, as already the police were moving in! The combat really is that exciting! And I must add, as a final point, the flame thrower is by no means the most powerful weapon available!!!! GRAPHICS The graphics are excellent. The intro to the game contains quite simply the best animation I have seen in an Amiga game. It looks like a couple of scenes out of Blade Runner (though a darker, better imagination would seem to be at work). Most impressively of all, the animation is FAST... extremely fast. It reminded me of the animations in EPIC, but much smoother and 20 times faster. There are in-game animation sequences too (though these CAN be turned off to speed up the game). So far, I have only seen two (those where you succeed and where you fail a mission!!), and these are also excellent; up to the calibre of the intro. The hilarious "failure" animation involves an irate syndicate leader throwing an object through a hologram of the mission blueprint in disgust - very, very slick. The initial screens where mission briefings, mission hints and enhancements and so on are given; and those where you choose and equip your team of cyborgs are beautifully drawn. Full details and nice pictorial data of all the available weapons, espionage devices and bionic implants are available. In the game proper, the cities are absolutely gorgeous. They really do have a dark "Blade Runner" futuristic feel and are extremely detailed - right down to the ever changing animation on the huge electronic billboards that decorate the buildings! The people are tiny (about 1.5 times the size of Sensi Soccer players) but still big enough to have enough detail so that you can see what they are. [Your cyborgs for example look like 1940's gangsters with long overcoats and hats shadowing their faces appropriately]. No matter how nice the little folk look, no one will ever convice me that they don't look best when blowing to pieces (or burning)! :-) SOUND Curiously, the docs make quite a fuss of the music but I haven't heard any yet! The spot effects are good, my favourite being the agonised scream of burning civilians! There is digitised speech in places too. GAME PLAY I would be lying if I said I got the hang of the game immediately. I still haven't got it. I found it difficult to control my team of cyborgs, especially when I was under fire and panicking (though a panic button is available). I definitely think the control interface could be greatly improved in "Syndicate". I also am completely bewildered by the agents' stats bars (Intelligence, Perception and Agility) and how to use these bars to change an agent's capabilities! However, I can see light at the end of the tunnel, as I could easily detect improvement in my game as time went on. Since the control system uses both mouse buttons (one to tell the agent where to walk and the other where to fire at), I foresee the time when I improve enough to have my agents shooting and ducking like natural born killers! Another couple of gripes. Whenever your agents enter buildings, you cannot really control their actions nor tell what they are encountering inside - in these circumstances it seems a bit hit-and-miss to me! Massive room for improvement here. Final gripe: the AI given to my agents seems to result in them wandering off on their own for no discernible purpose when I don't want them to. Though I suspect at this stage this is simply because they (even with only version 0 cyborg brains) have much more of a clue on how to accomplish the mission than I have! The manual suggests that intelligent agents will act on their own for the good of the syndicate, so maybe this is OK. GAME PERFORMANCE Disk swapping: None at all so far! With Disk 1 in DF0, and Disk 2 in DF1, I played the game for 5 hours last night without having to swap disks once. Disk Accessing: Once every time I accepted a mission (no doubt loading the mission itself - took around 1 minute), and once every time I went into research mode to develop new weapons (no more than 30 seconds and you can only do this between missions). Once just before all in-game animations (just under a minute again; they only appear between missions). Since the few missions I played each took between 30 minutes and an hour, I would say that disk access is not a problem (and the animations can be disabled)! Game Speed: Fast enough for me! I haven't seen the game run on anything else so I can't compare. There is a tiny bit of slow-down when a lot of people appear on screen, but in general I needed the extra thinking time to spot what they were doing or who was shooting at me and so on. However, a screen shot on the back of the box shows a train station with over 50 tiny little people in view... how fast it will run in those situations is anyone's guess. My motto: if it slows down because of the people... blow some of 'em away!!! PACKAGING The box is nice and big, and the instruction manual is huge and very clearly and wittily written (though I suspect Australians may take offence at some of the comments made about the Tasmania Syndicate - a rival syndicate originating from down under!). The manual implies that the game has been in development for a LONG time (over a year) and that every feature incorporated in the original (I assume PC based?) version has made it into the Amiga version. It even confesses how SLOW the game ran until some programming genius (whose name escapes me) came along to accelerate the graphics routines. CONCLUSIONS I like this game a lot (even on my ancient 500). It gives the exciting sensation that "I ain't seen nothing yet" as far as the few missions I have played go. It absolutely eats up time. I played for 5 hours and this felt so much like 1 HOUR. I had to be convinced it was 1am and not 9pm when I finally finished! There is a great "dark future" atmosphere around and many, many little features help to enhance this (the animated billboards on the buildings just have to be seen to be believed!). I still think the control method is a bit awkward, but I have every faith this gripe will vanish when I "get better". All in all, I'd say buy it: you have never seen a "play God" type game with so much detail and atmosphere that is so much fun to play! Also, if you get a pirate copy, you will get nothing out of the game without the manual - so don't bother. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Anyone can reproduce any bits of this review wherever they like and for whatever purpose. +---------------------+------------------------------------------+ | Gary Bradley | "You receive a love letter from me and | | ORACLE Corp, UK | you're f*cked forever!" | | Edinburgh, SCOTLAND | - Frank Booth ("Blue Velvet") | +---------------------+------------------------------------------+ | Email: gbradley@uk.oracle.com | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | G O D D A M N T H E C E N S O R M A N | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews