SW QUINTIN STONE REVIEW

Syndicate Wars (PC)

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Review by Quintin Stone for The Rebel Programmers Society


I have been waiting for Syndicate Wars with bated breath ever since I found it that they were making a sequel to Syndicate. "Happy happy joy joy!" I declared when it came out. The first game had been so exciting, with sharp high-res graphics, a neat assortment of death dealing weapons, and mission after mission of hot electric death.

The history behind Syndicate Wars is this: after you conquered all opposition in the first Syndicate, the world was quiet, for a time. The populus lives in artificial peace, their entire lives a sham created by the utopia microchips implanted in their brains. Then, something happened to a team of your best researches as they investigated the technology of some kind of mind probe. They were driven insane, but vaulted to the level of geniuses. They left the syndicate, creating a new religion centering around technology, and began to disrupt the microchips in citizens' brains, creating chaos.

You can either play the Syndicate or the Church in this game, but which ever one you choose, you will be in for a shock. Playing this game is radically different from the original Syndicate. First of all, the perspective is not the isometric view of the first game, but a lower, sharper angled view. I found out later that you can actually lower or raise the angle of view, as well as rotate the scene to any perspective you want: useful when your guys are behind a building or other obstruction.

Each player has a personal shield in addition to their health status. Damage is absorbed by the shield, and transfers to health only when the shield is depleted. There is no physical/mental/perception drug-system in this game. Instead, you have two mind-altering substances at your disposal: blue, which induces incredible paranoia, causing your characters to attack anything they see, or red, which heightens the senses, making them react to armed and aggressive targets. Blue is on the left, red on the right, so you can use one or the other to any degree, but not both. And when using drugs, your health and shield recharge slower.

Also different from the original game is the lack of ammo. Instead, each agent has a power generator, and each weapon fires an "energy packet", or so the instruction manual says. Funny, though, how the description of the Long-Range Rifle says it fires depeleted uranium. Anyway, all weapons drain the agent's energy level when fired, some more than others. And if you pick up an enemy weapon that you haven't yet researched, using it can cause your entire power plant to short-circuit, draining it entirely (25% chance).

I must say, I was a little disappointed by some of the graphics in this game. The sharp high-resolution of the first game was gone, replaced by a low-res, but fully three-dimensional battlefield. Well, I played in low-res anyway, because anything else was too slow to do anything. Because the perspective can be shifted and turned to any angle, everything is rendered on the fly, so detail levels are much lower than the original Syndicate. This is the price you pay for the freedom of viewing from anywhere though.

I must say, though, that the game did have some fun moments in it. Hopping in a tank and driving around, firing death-dealing missiles at people is great fun. Lobbing nuclear grenades at groups of acolytes is a gas. Even better when the whole friggin' building comes crashing down around them! (Another bonus of fully 3-D environment). Explosions leave craters or worse, obliterating the grass and asphalt, leaving just the metal substructure. Hunting enemy agents in an air (not hover) car with LR Rifles, dealing death from above.

The last three of levels, though, are just too overwhelming and annoying. You cannot save your game after finishing any of them, even though they may take forever to finally complete. There is never a problem with trying them over and over again, though, without having to get new agents. However, trying to complete those last three levels all at the same sitting is an impossibility. Plus there are some things that you have to do on the second-to-last level that should have been explained, but weren't (such as there are "consoles" that your 4 agents have to surround on all four sides to activate). And there are certain bugs that need to be worked out in the game engine (such as landing an air car, and getting out, but not being able to get back in because your guys are on an inaccessible ledge by accident... ARGH!).

Syndicate Wars is fun, but I played it all the way through on the Syndicate side and didn't even give playing it again with the Church a second thought. While I played the original Syndicate many times through and the American Revolution addition pack many times through, with Syndicate Wars, once was enough.

-- Quintin Stone