Syndicate Catch-All

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

able to unlock a bit of what is clearly a crazy huge customisation system.

Well, that cooled my interest in the game significantly.

Scratched wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

able to unlock a bit of what is clearly a crazy huge customisation system.

Well, that cooled my interest in the game significantly.

Is a customization system really that big of an issue in a game that doesn't have competitive co-op?

nel e nel wrote:
Scratched wrote:
Parallax Abstraction wrote:

able to unlock a bit of what is clearly a crazy huge customisation system.

Well, that cooled my interest in the game significantly.

Is a customization system really that big of an issue in a game that doesn't have competitive co-op?

From my perspective it's still an issue. Less of a fairness issue, although I guess there's still the "I want to use this thing in this mission, but I'm locked out from it" aspect, but more of how I want to play.

I think that the unlocking of improved guns and tech is very much in line with classic Syndicate. After each run you need to research and purchase upgrades. As it stands now, I dont dare play high difficulty with the guns and apps I have.

I'm sold on the idea because I'm happy to play horde mode in Gears just to unlock better turrets and razor wire.

gains wrote:

I think that the unlocking of improved guns and tech is very much in line with classic Syndicate. After each run you need to research and purchase upgrades. As it stands now, I dont dare play high difficulty with the guns and apps I have.

Yeah that sounds Syndicate-enough to me as well. With no demo for the PC I don't see myself getting this at launch. Maybe on sale at the end of the year.

Also worth noting that Alien Swarm is a co-op shooter thing with character progression too.

Have this downloaded and very interested in giving this a whirl tonight. Their co-op structure sounds promising. Reinforcing and rewarding actual co-op play is not easy.

Friend requests/invites please if anyone feels up for it.

Had a go at the demo last night. Servers must have been overloaded, because it was pretty herky-jerky. When it was relatively smooth, it didn't blow me away. Not sold on this quite yet.

Happy Dave wrote:

Had a go at the demo last night. Servers must have been overloaded, because it was pretty herky-jerky. When it was relatively smooth, it didn't blow me away. Not sold on this quite yet.

Yeah, that was my take on it as well. It's...competent...which in and of itself makes it a good game, but it wasn't anything 'special'.

Playing Too Human right now, and having put in 180+ hours into Skyrim, I think I can wait til ME3 to get my sci-fi-upgrade-special-powers-and-shoot-stuff on.

Maclintok wrote:

Friend requests/invites please if anyone feels up for it.

I would, however, like to try the demo out with some coordinated effort with friends.

Fun tip for breaching; though you need line of sight and a close range to begin a breach, you can move back out of range or even behind cover and the connection will continue. When fighting the boss, I run up, tag him and then run back for cover, circling around so that I'm behind him once his armor locks up and I can unload a clip or two.

Same trick works for rebooting. Duck in, start the process and run out of harm's way. The connection will stretch with you. Another point to remember, your hands are still free while breaching so it's no excuse to stop firing!

Played with some pubbies last night. Really short session... I essentially joined in just as the group was approaching the big armored bad-ass battle. I could heal downed teammates with consistency but as others have mentioned, getting the lock on to do the breaches or hacks or whatever was finnicky, either due to lack of feedback or too much feedback from all the floating/animating HUD elements.

I also found the aiming a little slippery. It would be cool to play a mission from beginning to end to get a better feel what the game has to offer. Nel e nel I'll be looking for you this weekend

Dammit, I'm liking this now.

Played with 3 Syndi n00bs last night and despite all their hundreds of hours logged in MW3 I *trounced* them in scoring. Easily double what the 2nd place player earned. I'm glad to see the amount of emphasis that this game places on support roles and mission objectives. I don't think they even realized how many times I saved their asses when a grenade landed admidst their huddle and I breached it.

I have been tweaking the aim sliders quite a bit and the narrow FoV is troubling at times but this is what you get from console shooters.

So I saw there's a trailer for this now and it surprised me to see that it's out next Tuesday.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/02/15/sy...

I've seen the previewers who "get it" comparing the co-op to MMORPG raids rather than a bout of CS. Some early reviews complained that they didn't see what was so tactical about it. They were the ones who didn't get it. This game is reliant on teamwork. Even if that team is 3 tanks and one buffer/debuffer/healer. Which has been me every time I play with pubbies.

Ghost in the Shell MMO-FPS-RPG. Right now. Make it happen!

I just played the demo for the 360 last night with a couple friends. We had allot of fun but it crashed multiple times for all of us sometimes hard locking the systems. Also we saw allot of glitches that seemed to occur from network bugs. Hopefully the demo was based off a much earlier build and not representative of the final product. It's very promising but I'm going to wait for reviews and probably a price drop.

So is this mostly a pvp game and I should just ignore that it exists?

You should have a more open mind!

Actually, I think this game is single-player and online co-op only. No competitive MP.

I am teetering on the edge of purchase. My favorite game reviewer has his copy, hoping he can tell me what's up before Amazon's $20 credit with the game is gone.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Actually, I think this game is single-player and online co-op only. No competitive MP.

There's no MP as far as I know. The co-op mission in the demo was a pleasant surprise, to the point where I am more interested in the co-op than the campaign. This and Mass Effect 3's co-op seem to be following a very similar design template.

Hmm. So, Starbreeze layed off 25 after finishing the game, which seems to happen pretty often now. But why would the Chairman also resign?

Either way, I preordered like an idiot. Amazon credit chains are straight from the devil.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Hmm. So, Starbreeze layed off 25 after finishing the game, which seems to happen pretty often now. But why would the Chairman also resign?

Either way, I preordered like an idiot. Amazon credit chains are straight from the devil.

I just saw that. Is that actually common? I don't recall the last time that happened but I don't really keep track.

Agreed that something is amiss with the chairman going too...

Between this and the very little information around, even on the official website (the entire faq talks about the demo?), my being on the fence is leaning toward a pass.

That's sucky. It's not entirely uncommon for studios to staff up on temp workers to push a game to the finish line. Studios will have a new project lined up but have no need to hang on to extra testers, coders or whoever during pre-production.

25 out of 93 cuts sounds like they perhaps didn't get a new project in the pipe ready to go. I wouldn't be surprised if Tornquist was already planning to move to greener pastures.

Maclintok wrote:

That's sucky. It's not entirely uncommon for studios to staff up on temp workers to push a game to the finish line. Studios will have a new project lined up but have no need to hang on to extra testers, coders or whoever during pre-production.

It's extremely sucky.

The greedy gamer in me says, "I hope this doesn't wind up being tremendously flawed, I've got money in on a preorder and the trailers looked awesome," the human being in me says, "Game production is such a racket! Why the hell do I give these guys my money?", and the gallows humorist in me chortles, "An industry shifting tons of money around and treating people as throw-away commodities when they've gotten their use of them? How apropos!"

Er, I think I'm going to go turn on the stove and put my hand in the fire.

From what I've seen theorised, Starbreeze had to cut people because they haven't yet been able to find another "work for hire" contract (which is how they've made all their money up to now) because so many publishers are scaling back the number of AAA titles they put out per year. Apparently they're now working on a self-funded new IP but that's apparently their only project and they didn't have enough work for all their staff after Syndicate was completed. I really enjoyed the demo and I really hope this sells well so they can get back on their feet. Starbreeze always puts out solid content.

First sniff I've had of a real review, from Jeff Gerstmann of Giantbomb via twitter:

Anyway, I'm working on getting a Syndicate review done. Probably won't have it until tomorrow, but the short version is that I like it lots.

And some food for thought:

Writing the Syndicate review and I can't help but wonder if people will ever stop kneejerk-hating reboots that make old games into shooters. You'd think that Fallout 3 would have maybe softened people a bit. And, in conclusion, stop talking sh*t about the XCOM shooter. It looks neat!

I pre-ordered.. looking forward to it.. some of the powers look cool.

It comes down to reserving judgement until you've actually come into some first-hand experience with the game in question. A pretty difficult task sometimes when you have the Internet at your fingertips and a marketing machine all too ready to manipulate your initial impressions of something before you've even seen any actual gameplay footage (not speaking to Syndicate specifically, just in general).

That said, they put out an interesting demo. At this point the single-player portion feels like it may play second fiddle to the co-op stuff. No horde retread this time but some actual designed levels and an emphasis on teamwork.

Blind_Evil wrote:
Writing the Syndicate review and I can't help but wonder if people will ever stop kneejerk-hating reboots that make old games into shooters. You'd think that Fallout 3 would have maybe softened people a bit. And, in conclusion, stop talking sh*t about the XCOM shooter. It looks neat!

It's not just reboots in games or even media. I find that a lot of people have this inexplicable tendency to crave failure on the part of others, regardless of the fact that such a failure in no ways benefits them personally. Working in a high-end bike shop, I keep up with the latest technological developments in componentry, frame materials, and the like. *Any* time any manufacturer brings out something new and different, there's this tremendous concurrent Female Doggo fest that basically boils down to, "Oh my gosh, it's new and has X, Y and Z features and these in no way benefits me and what I do with my application of the hobby! And it's so expensive, and I wasn't even in the market for it anyway! How DARE these companies make products and have the audacity to sell them! I hope they fall on their faces over this gross offence!"

I can understand hating something that's poorly made, and in the case of EDIT: reboot games, movies, comics, etc., there's the subjective experience of "this taints my nostalgia" (though usually phrased as "raped my childhood"), and I get that - it's personal. But that reflexive hunger for failure is ultimately stupid. It's as though variety and options in a market place concerning things you enjoy in your liesure time are bad things!

Ultimately, I'm stoked to hear that there's at least one positive review coming for this game. I spent a lot of today's idle moments thinking about how I really really don't want to be disappointed in something that looks as cool as Syndicate does.

I'll be interested to hear some GWJ impressions on this game. I thought F.E.A.R 3 got a gaping head-wound from its obvious focus on co-op, and I wonder if this title will suffer similarly for a focus on same.
I will admit that the trailer filled me with trepidation. Is it possible to be a good guy in this game? I don't want to make people kill their friends!

Eager to hear some thoughts.

I am pretty interested in this too. I was really disappointed by Deus Ex and Brink, EYE was a non-starter really and I haven't gotten around to Hard Reset, but what I'm hoping is Syndicate has an interesting story to tell with the cyberpunk aesthetic. I'm definitely going to keep my eye out for reviews here and elsewhere.

Include me on the "color me interested, I want to hear what braver souls think" list.