Syndicate Catch-All

XBOX players, I invite you to join StanliTech syndicate. Together we can reach a future of golden opportunities for synergistic growth.

Our primary business is the export of bullets. From guns. To faces.

gains wrote:

Our primary business is the export of bullets. From guns. To faces.

Hell of a pitch!

The consensus I'm seeing here and elsewhere is, unless you're doing multiplayer, skip it for now. It'll probably be DNF priced in a month or two.

I'll check back in two months.

ibdoomed wrote:

The consensus I'm seeing here and elsewhere is, unless you're doing multiplayer, skip it for now. It'll probably be DNF priced in a month or two.

I'll check back in two months.

That's kind of every game, really. You can get just about anything not published by Nintendo for $20-$30 less two months out. I consider it a $40 purchase because of the $20 Amazon credit I got.

I really love the gun registers in Syndicate. Makes the Modern Warfare sounds I'm used to seem super fake.

The combat is very satisfying...they capture the feeling of being a bad ass super agent very well...just finished mission 6

TheGameguru wrote:

The combat is very satisfying...they capture the feeling of being a bad ass super agent very well...just finished mission 6

Yeah, mechanically it's really satisfying, especially once you open up the other breaching abilities. Shooting feels good in a way that Starbreeze games haven't quite nailed in the past.

I'm a fanboy of both Richard Morgan and the Syndicate franchise, and so far I'm really enjoying the game. It's got a nasty, hard satirical edge that is missing in a game like Deus Ex, and the stylistic nods to the original Syndicate are great. In particular, the train station where you encounter the first "boss" had me grinning.

It looks great on PC, and runs very well, with one exception. Once each map the game would hang for several seconds with a stuttering audio loop. Sucky, but not game breaking.

By the way, the manual is in the Extras from the Main Menu. It's brief but the print is much larger than elsewhere in the game. Oddly.

Blind_Evil wrote:
ibdoomed wrote:

The consensus I'm seeing here and elsewhere is, unless you're doing multiplayer, skip it for now. It'll probably be DNF priced in a month or two.

I'll check back in two months.

That's kind of every game, really. You can get just about anything not published by Nintendo for $20-$30 less two months out. I consider it a $40 purchase because of the $20 Amazon credit I got.

I really love the gun registers in Syndicate. Makes the Modern Warfare sounds I'm used to seem super fake.

Sorry but not quite.

Instead of saying $20-$30 less, let's assume we're basing that on a typical release price of $60, so what we're really saying is roughly 30-50 % off. So a release priced $20 game like dungeon defenders would need to be $10-$14 and it's currently $15 on steam.

Just pulling up some of the splashed games on steam finds this:

Skyrim - released 11/10/11 (104 days ago), release price $60, current price $60
Modern Warfare 3 - released 11/8/11 (106 days ago), release price $60, current price $60
Anno 2070 - released 11/17/11 (97 days ago), release price I thought was $40 but I could be wrong, either way it sits at $50
Arkham City - released 10/18/11 (127 days ago), release price $42 (that's what I paid), current price $50
Dungeon Defenders - released 10/19/11 (126 days ago), release price $20, current price $15
Duke Nukem Forever - released 6/13/22 (254 days ago), release price $50 (or was it $60?), current price $20

Now sure there's going to be little discounts here and there and deals (at one point DNF was $5) but generally speaking I'm just trying to point out that not all games are heavily discounted in the months following release. Crappy ones definitely drop faster.

"Budget" titles tend to hold their price a lot longer than $60 price point games that struggle to meet sales goals.

I don't think we're suggesting retail standard falls so fast. After that couple of months, the amazon gold box and steam sales kick in, knocking it down $20 for a day or a weekend, assuming you catch the sale.

EDIT: Either way, who cares? I have a chip in my head that can talk a grenade out of exploding!

I bought Skyrim for I think $25 recently. I don't think the point it's that list process drop, but that with a little shopping you can get deals.

Fine. Whatever. I don't understand the hostility. I give up.

MannishBoy wrote:

I bought Skyrim for I think $25 recently. I don't think the point it's that list process drop, but that with a little shopping you can get deals.

This is what I thought he was saying as well.

*Do what now? I didn't see anybody saying anything that seemed remotely hostile?

On another note, anybody up for some co-op on the PC tonight?

ibdoomed wrote:

Fine. Whatever. I don't understand the hostility. I give up.

Dude, I think you may be projecting a little bit. No one is being hostile.

Watched the Giantbomb Quick Look. Thought, "Hey, this looks pretty cool." Went to Steam. It's not there, what the hell? Who published this? Oh, it's EA. That's a shame. Looks like I won't get to play Syndicate.

I'd buy the game if I thought there would be enough of a PC multiplayer community to keep the co-operative mode strong, at least for a while. Unfortunately from what I've seen so far, this has been a disappointing PC release. Origin is still a backwater, and EA failed to market Syndicate. They didn't even bother to make a banner for the Origin's store mainpage. This game just slipped out too quietly.

From what I can tell, there are only about 4 GWJ PC players around.

The "OMG Origin is the devil" stuff is getting really old. It's practically identical to Steam, only it's better than Steam was for about the first 50% of Steam's lifetime. It does all the same things and it's done them so far without many of the growing pains. Yes it could be improved significantly in some ways, but it's not nearly the anti-christ of software that people seem to insist.

It's like a bunch of EA employees ran around at some point and kicked everybody's pets and I just missed the outraged news articles or something.

Don't. Get. It.

Is this is response to me? Because Origin is a backwater, its storefront doesn't have the strength as a platform that Steam does. It is a matter of visibility. Maybe that will change, but for now a quiet release on Origin isn't the same as a equally quiet release on Steam.

Tannhauser wrote:

Is this is response to me? Because Origin is a backwater, its storefront doesn't have the strength as a platform that Steam does. It is a matter of visibility. Maybe that will change, but for now a quiet release on Origin isn't the same as a equally quiet release on Steam.

It's more a general gripe. I keep seeing "It's on Origin. Not buying it." and the arguments presented are never related to the quality of the game or even the quality of the Origin software itself. It's always just straight up crabby "I fear change and will stubbornly resist forever" type arguments.

As for the strength of the platform or the storefront, fine, but that's only because people seem to be boycotting it for some of the most disingenuous reasons you can possibly come up with. And that's if it's even true.

I had three consecutive nights of GWJ only games on the Mass Effect 3 demo multiplayer over Origin, with a game filling back up basically every time someone left for a few hours. I expect I could get another full game going again tonight. EA has too many big franchises that draw too many buyers, even on PC, for Origin not to gain some mindshare in a relatively small amount of time, especially relative to how long Steam took to build the reputation it has now. No, Origin's not as slick a piece of software as Steam is at the moment, but let's not forget that Steam took nine years to get the way it is. EA's doing a fine job with Origin so far, particularly given how relatively new it is.

I get part of it. I'd be happy if all my games were in one big list too. Really I would. But that is now and will always be a pipe dream. More and more publishers will go the Origin route the very moment they're capable of doing so. It won't make things any more convenient for us as gamers, but I'm pretty sure it's where things are headed eventually. All those other publishers are only going to be happy giving Valve a piece of the pie for so long before they eventually find a way to keep those dollars for themselves.

As one addition, I'm still more than a little surprised Activision hasn't gotten together with Blizzard and made Battle.net their own equivalent of Steam/Origin and called up Valve to let them know they're taking their ball and going home, Call of Duty and other franchises in tow.

Steam exists to take your money and make Valve and their partners money. Origin exists to take your money and make EA and their partners money.

A game thread should be about the game.. negatives.. positives..experiences.. it should serve the community to learn more about the game in question and help others in various ways.

So with that in mind..

This game is succeeding in one way.. I'm at work.. and I really want to leave early and go play some more.. it might be generic.. but the combat is really good.. so much so that I want to go shoot things.. like now!!!

As one addition, I'm still more than a little surprised Activision hasn't gotten together with Blizzard and made Battle.net their own equivalent of Steam/Origin and called up Valve to let them know they're taking their ball and going home, Call of Duty and other franchises in tow.

It seems inevitable.

TheGameguru wrote:

A game thread should be about the game.. negatives.. positives..experiences.. it should serve the community to learn more about the game in question and help others in various ways.

This is another part of why all the continued anti-Origin griping gets to me. Every new EA game thread gets more and more cluttered with the posts about it. With that said, I'll drop it for the sake of the thread. I've just been trying really hard to ignore it for a long time and my cup finally just started to spill over I guess. My bad guys. Won't happen again. At least in relation to this topic

Elysium tweeted a note about Syndicate playing significantly better with a 360 controller than it does with mouse and keyboard. Anybody else have that experience or tried it to see?

I'm going to give it a whirl both ways and see how I feel anyway, just wondered if anybody else had made the same observation.

Thin_J wrote:

It's more a general gripe. I keep seeing "It's on Origin. Not buying it." and the arguments presented are never related to the quality of the game or even the quality of the Origin software itself. It's always just straight up crabby "I fear change and will stubbornly resist forever" type arguments.

Reflexive crabassery does indeed exist everywhere, but I read the posted remarks about Origin's "backwater" status as being part of the reason Tannhauser fears there won't be a sizable PC multiplayer community growing around the game and why he doesn't feel compelled to buy it. That's pretty sound reasoning when there's a sizable consensus that the multiplayer aspects of the game are its strongest points - if you can't find a diverse enough crowd in which you can reliably find people you would enjoy playing with, it might not be worth your money.

TheGameguru wrote:

This game is succeeding in one way.. I'm at work.. and I really want to leave early and go play some more.. it might be generic.. but the combat is really good.. so much so that I want to go shoot things.. like now!!!

The same thing happened to me today. I really like the weapons systems and I spent a lot of time thinking about how I want to master combining the backfire breach with a well-placed shot.

"Oh, wait, I'm typing in forum? Excuse me, I have to go do horrible things to my enemies now."

It's a pretty cool feeling. Maybe I like this game more than I initially thought (and I dug it anyway).

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Watched the Giantbomb Quick Look. Thought, "Hey, this looks pretty cool." Went to Steam. It's not there, what the hell? Who published this? Oh, it's EA. That's a shame. Looks like I won't get to play Syndicate.

This is more the kneejerk reaction that Thin_J is referring to, I think. If one wants to be platform exclusive, that's their business. But do so with the knowledge that some games won't be available to you. It is the same as different console platforms. The part that doesn't make sense to me is that there's no $250+ buy-in to playing everything on PC. It's like having a PS3 and 360 but refusing to buy Uncharted because you don't play exclusives.

I know that's not apples to apples exactly, but Gameguru is right on this one. Except on Syndicate being generic. I don't see how the term applies, not with the negative connotation. Are all cyberpunk shooters generic?

Blind_Evil wrote:

I know that's not apples to apples exactly, but Gameguru is right on this one.

Hrm..yeah, I see what you mean. Particularly in light of "this looks cool" (and I can assure you it is quite cool). Maybe there's an underlying objection that's legit and EA's a personal windmill?

Anyway.

ianunderhill wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

It's more a general gripe. I keep seeing "It's on Origin. Not buying it." and the arguments presented are never related to the quality of the game or even the quality of the Origin software itself. It's always just straight up crabby "I fear change and will stubbornly resist forever" type arguments.

Reflexive crabassery does indeed exist everywhere, but I read the posted remarks about Origin's "backwater" status as being part of the reason Tannhauser fears there won't be a sizable PC multiplayer community growing around the game and why he doesn't feel compelled to buy it. That's pretty sound reasoning when there's a sizable consensus that the multiplayer aspects of the game are its strongest points - if you can't find a diverse enough crowd in which you can reliably find people you would enjoy playing with, it might not be worth your money.

Well, Origin is required for BF3. So if it's good and promoted properly, just being on Origin won't kill MP potential.

But I'm more and more in the Thin_J camp here. I don't know how many threads we need discussing how much Origin sucks. We already have an Origin thread. But then I feel the same for all the GFWL talk, too.

Want to play this right meow but need to wait a couple of weeks in order to save $17 or so. Hope there's a sizeable GWJ 360 contingent going by then.

I'm really enjoying the singleplayer. It's a simple "kill the holy living sh*t out of everything that moves" style shooter but the guns are so satisfying in every way that I find it impossible not to have fun. The atmosphere and setting are way fun, and I'm not completely sure, but I'm almost positive I just hit a fairly big branching path moment shortly before I stopped. I hadn't heard anything about it before playing so maybe the game ends up in the same place regardless, but I'm certainly curious to find out.

Thin_J wrote:

I'm really enjoying the singleplayer. It's a simple "kill the holy living sh*t out of everything that moves" style shooter but the guns are so satisfying in every way that I find it impossible not to have fun. The atmosphere and setting are way fun

All that, yes. Plus, I like how it has all the tactical juice of more deliberate shooters while still allowing for a break-neck pace. Great stuff.

I didn't mean to start an Origin "thing". All that was meant by it was pretty much what Rebel Blob said. I don't have any faith in being able to regularly find coop games on Origin so I'm not going to waste my time. I'm not happy with the way EA has acted but I'm not specifically boycotting them. I made a comment about a game that I legitimately wanted to play but has a feature that, to me, makes the game a nonstarter. I'm sorry I didn't come in here to praise everything about the game and I guess I should refrain from making any negative comments in the future.

Also, it's nice to find out that my reasons for being unhappy with EA are disingenuous. I'm going to run right out and buy every game that they make right now. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways.