>Review of Syndicate Wars Demo

From           smvakil@students.wisc.edu (Stephen Vakil)
Organization   UW-Madison
Date           19 Sep 1996 20:23:53 GMT
Newsgroups     comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Message-ID     <51sa4p$2kl2@news.doit.wisc.edu>

Well, I finally finished the mission that accompanies syndicate wars' demo.  
Before I begin, here are a couple sites you can look for it:

ftp.avault.com - heinously slow lately
happypup.com in pub/charles/pc - faster

Please note that I am going to speak of the demo as if you have played the
original in some places, just ignore them if you haven't :)

Let me say that I am wholly impressed with the new engine first.  The true
virtual world is really cool.  After figure out how to rotate the view (I was
starting to think they didn't address the biggest problem with the original --
that stuff gets in the way of your view) I was really enjoying the game.  The
buildings are very slightly pixelated, and the npc's are pixelated a bit more
even, but overall the graphics are good.  Not great, but good.  When you
add in the true virtual world thing, they become amazing.  

Details:

The game can be run in VGA or SVGA.  VGA flew on my system, and SVGA
ran fairly smooth (I have a p150+ with 16 meg of edo, 512k pbcache, and a
crappy 1 meg pci video).  

The interface is very similar to the old one, but a bit more streamlined.  Instead
of having the entire inventories, you have 4 areas on the top each with the
current weapon in use, health and all that stuff, and a little + whose purpose
seems to be for making that agent use another agent's items on that agent (eh?).

To change weapons, you click and drag on the current weapon.  to arm/disarm,
you click on the weapon once.  

Grouping took me a while (as did the rotation bit) because I didn't have any docs.
But it *can* be done.  

More on Graphics:
The buildings are a bit less cartoony than in the first one, which makes me like
them better.  In addition, they are *destructable*.  A couple buildings had bombs
in them, and I was in awe when I saw them blow up, and then my agents
got hit by an extending shockwave.  Very cool.  

The cars look a little bit slower than they did in the first, but they do look very
smooth and realistic.  Oddly enough, the people and other things don't seem
as detailed as in the original, probably because they are true 3-d objects now.

When shooting, the minigun doesn't have the cool little mini-explosions on the
ground anymore, but it does sound cool.  An interesting addition was that
agents have "shields" which will take hits and then once down will affect
the health of the agent.  The shields look pretty cool, very similar to wing
commander 3/4 but not quite as detailed.  

Sound:

The sound effects are a little different, and not quite as loud.  I like the sound
of the new minigun, and the shields, and the persuadatron.  There is a guy
who announces what item you are using, he sounds kind of like an agent
himself.

Gameplay:

Gameplay is nearly identical to the original, with a few exceptions:

There doesn't seem to be a way to center the view by clicking on the map, so
if you want to send agents far away, you have to guestimate by clicking on
the approximate location on the screen.

The rotation thing is *very* nice.  It really helps me orient myself so I can get
the best view of things (and the best line of fire).  The only limitation I
see so far is that you still don't seem able to see what's going on inside of
a building.  Interestingly, I think they might explain this by claiming that you
are controlling your agents via some sort of drone in the sky (which would
explain why you could rotate views, etc., but not see in buildings).  One
thing I didn't try extensively is some sort of weird infra-red type thing which
you can turn on via a button.  This might be the solution to that problem.

One thing that is sort of annoying and yet at the same time cool is that
cars will not hesitate to run you down anymore.  Fortunately, cars don't
do as much damage anymore.  However, *many* times I was run down
by a seedy yellow car when trying to cross the street (btw, cars now
go on the left side of the road, tho it might depend on where you play it
in the final release).

So let me get to the final verdict:
Syndicate Wars is an outstanding engine.  However, in order for me to say
the final game will be really good, it absolutely *must* have some new things
in the game.. tons of new weapons, maybe new mission types, and most
importantly *good* multiplayer.  We haven't really figured out how the
original syndicate multiplayer works, as every time we go into it, a bunch
of guys start toasting us with gauss guns :)

If you have never played the original syndicate, this is the game to get!  The
engine is very cool, and you will experience for the first time the thrill of
subjugating (or blowing away) innocent bystanders, and eventually having
such a big collective will that you can subjugate enemy agents.  And of
course the carnage is non-stop :)

Some notes for those of you who don't know:

To group, click on the three small bars on the left that are next to each other.
I'm not sure if those decide who groups with agent 1 or who groups with
the current leader, but it works.

To quit the game, try control+alt+escape
To get rid of the menu displays on top, try control+alt+f10
to initiate gamma correction, try f11... tho I WARN you, there's no going back
   so if you hit it to far, hit f12 to do whatever the heck that does :)
to mess with the view, use the cluster of page up/home/page down/insert/delete/end
keys.  Del and pagedown rotate counterclockwise and clockwise, respectively.
To move the currently selected agent(s), left click on the spot.  to fire,
right click on the area/person.

Questions/comments welcome.