Review by E. P. magazine
Bullfrog have released only eight games in their nine year career, but unlike other more prolific games developers, most of Bullfrog's games have stood the test of time. The first, Populous, was a strategy game which put you in the mighty shoes of a God, playing with the lives of peasants and armies, creating religions and raising mountains out of the sea with only a click of the mouse. Something about its blatant grandiosity was utterly addictive and the game spawned dozens of copyists (including, of course, Populous 2) but the original outsold them all, eventually topping the 2 million mark.
Populous was like a game of chess in which you could design your own board and watch the pieces come to life but, like a chess game, you felt no compassion or empathy for the pawns you pushed around. What was needed was a personal touch, and that came with Syndicate in 1993, a game which is as exciting and impressive today as it was three years ago.
In Syndicate you take on the role of an imperialistic mob boss, floating above an urban cityscape and remotely controlling the actions of four cybernetically-enhanced agents below. On your whim, the cyborgs march blindly into battle against enemy mobsters, armed to the teeth with rotary machine guns, flame throwers and much more. As you build up their strength, speed and intelligence over the levels, they begin to develop characteristics of their own, giving the "God game" a whole new dimension.
Added to this are smooth graphics, a stunning intro sequence (although modest by today's standards), futuristic design and presentation, music which changes to reflect the state of play, ultra-realistic sound effects (from the buzz of the Uzi to the screams of a bystander caught in the crossfire), head-to-head play, and most importantly violence. Lots and lots of violence.
Although some of the missions involve "persuading" the enemy (by using a device which sends them into a zombie-like trance), the real fun is just opening fire on or blowing up anything that moves. And sometimes a few things that don't move, just for the hell of it. After a particularly successful showdown, you can be standing in a pool of blood big enough to float a small sailing dinghy.
But like even the best games, Syndicate had room for improvement. Its biggest fault was the design of the play area. You controlled your agents from above, looking down on them from a 45 degree angle (what is known in industry jargon as an "isometric viewpoint"), but although the city below looked three-dimensional, it wasn't really. When your agents walked behind a building, you couldn't see them and you couldn't move your position to get a better view. As a result, you sometimes couldn't tell if the enemy was waiting to ambush you. Even if you could spot them on the radar screen, you couldn't see what you were shooting at. It wasn't a massive fault, but it could be pretty annoying.
And so, with the benefits of several years of improved technology, the long-awaited sequel to Syndicate is finally on its way. Nearly. Initial previews of the game show that the fundamentals have not changed much. You still have four agents, you still control them from your vantage point in the sky, and they still walk around the city leaving a horrific wake of death and destruction. If you've played the original game, this one will look very familiar. Nothing to be disappointed about there. Moreover, the developers have now solved the problem of the player's point-of-view by creating a fully three-dimensional play area. You can now fully control your view of the cityscape spreading out before you, rotating it in any direction and zooming in and out.
Not surprisingly, it looks extraordinarily good, with buildings and streets rendered in real-time 3D (which, for the jargon-impaired, means that you get realistic textures and lighting on every surface without losing the freedom to move around).
Their are four main twists in the tried and trusted design:
Apart from that, it's more or less the same only more so, an enhancement of a classic game which should be a credit to the original. There is one disappointment, however. Early plans for Syndicate Wars promised that you would be able to switch from your top-down view of the play area to a first-person view, as if you were seeing through the eyes of one of your agents, walking through streets and buildings much like a game of Doom.
Clearly the restrictions of technology have set this enhancement just out of reach, which is a great shame. But when Syndicate 3 comes along, it may be a different story.
Syndicate Wars will be available on Sony Playstation and PC CD-ROM later this summer.