Its amazing artistic design and good playability make this innovative Syndicate reboot one of the best shooters of 2012.
Originally permitting consumers to directly connect with the "Dataverse" without needing an extra electronic device, the adrenaline-fuelled bio-digital implants are re-designed to incorporate militarized functionality and highly advanced AI: the "Datascape Access and Re-Tool" --DART v6-- allowing to scan and hack environmental objects and sub-systems in real time and even to upgrade itself by analyzing the chips extracted from high-value targets.
Playable character Miles Kilo is one of the chosen few; yet while the nineteen year-old Kilo --27 thanks to Cell Growth Acceleration (CGA)-- was eligible due to his genes and excels through his high-level intelligence and physical resilience, it was the psychopathic traits of his mentor and antagonist Jules Merit (Michael Wincott) that made him apt aged nine to being at special service for EuroCorp, the first and one of the dominant mega-corporations since the world's largest merger in 2017 and yet known from the original Syndicate, Bullfrog's isometric tactical shooter from 1993.
Jack Denham (Brian Cox), CEO of EuroCorp's North-American branch, is sort of a father figure to both Kilo and Merit; his own biographical background: early interested in how "individuality corrupts social structures", his father, a judge in the US Supreme Court, had been involved in the US Congress' (anti) Antitrust vote of 2018 opening the doors for the Syndicate's forthcoming dominance, does make him seem predetermined as the influential leader of one of the three Global Syndicates (EC, Aspari, Cayman Global) waging a war for bio-cybernetic supremacy against each other.
And there is also Dr. Lilian Drawl (Rosario Dawson) --commonly Lily--, EuroCorp's Lead Biotech Engineer born to "Downzone" parents though politically distanced from her family, in particular her brothers due to whose American Revolt-like anarchist tendencies, and one of the brains behind DART's successfully re-designed architecture.
Formerly related to Kris Delaney, now organizer of the Downzone anarchy movement TWB (Towers Will Burn), a splinter of the international terrorist group CONFA, it is she however who intended the DART 6 chip to instill human traits in Syndicate agents in order to them to care about society's chipped and un-chipped civilians.
In a world where industrial espionage between Syndicates has become the norm, Kilo's initial though not really first mission --nor probably one of his last given the story's open end--, consists in eliminating scientist Gary Chang of the rival Aspari corporation, said to having developed a device similar to DART 6 and as turns out, thanks to information leaked through Lily herself. Kilo retrieves the chip and with this the first of subsequent upgrades thanks to the self-improving capacity of his own DART implant.
Yet Lily, not Kilo, is in the focus of common interests: upon her betrayal she is consecutively being spied, seized, spared, sequestered, saved, but not stopped until she gets the kill switch-enfeebled Kilo to push the vengefully destructive Denham to death in EuroCorp's very New York HQ. Now, with the latter in ruins and both of them freed from its controls, albeit the Syndicates' War for world dominance going on, a weapon in his hand Kilo is now for the first time also free to decide himself what going to do next...
More open-level unlike the twenty stages of the story-driven campaign the cooperative mode with its nine additional missions proves that the war is far from being over, and more perceptibly than the former also takes up the spirit of the original Syndicate with up to four agents engaging in deadly missions against rival syndicate operatives all over the globe --the world map familiar from the original game--, and with an upgrade system similar to that of the singleplayer.
The gameplay in both single and coop mode allows for a thrilling mixture of traditional shooting and additional chip hacking that together with the overlay luckily can also be employed at the same time: the main man-hacking methods called Suicide, Backfire, Persuade --a reference to the Persuadatron of the original game-- learned in short vector space-like training sessions, are variations of the more general chip-to-chip breaching applied to turrets, drones, grenades, armor, as well as simpler mechanic sub-systems like elevators and doors rarely opening normally, but which consequently can be used against the chipped population only while largely unavailable in the Downzone areas where un-chipped non-consumers passively (hobos) and actively (terrorists) defy corporate mandate.
As to expect those standard breach functions like suicide or persuade cannot be used against the bosses, either, which require their alternative use in order to decrystallize and overpower immunizing armor, reverse set guns and explode UAVs, or defuse grenades and retarget missiles, giving those fights a refreshing variety.
Upgrading as mind-hacking alike might remotely recall games like Mindjack highlighting a more psychological kind of future warfare where "psychosis-induced self-destruction" and coerced defection --usually also ending with suicide when running out of targets-- together with the "Backfire" sabotage may be a welcome way to save time and ammunition.
Whereas in the campaign mode upgrades are available only after extracting the chip of one of the defeated "special foes", playing online permits earning points and tokens to enhance one's agent's life functions, weapons, and applications which in a way similar to the singleplayer allow boosting breach or regeneration and reducing/increasing taken or inflicted damage, during DART Overlay as well as thanks to the body implants, to which the multiplayer adds also "Fast Crawl" (when hurt) or "Infinite Sprint" (without fatigue).
In addition to improving implant performance, unless jammed DART Overlay permits also scanning objects and localizing enemies even behind cover in the current environment, recalling somewhat the GPS of Army of Two, though the grayish slow-motion blur makes its use not always an advantage but it at times difficult to orientate. The covering system on the other hand lets a weapon be hugged while close to a wall or barrier to automatically raise it when leaning over where it is useful that one remains crouched without having to hold the Strg-key.
The multiplayer provides two instead of three alternatively available breaching abilities, an extra memory slot is to be unlocked, yet a greater variety usefully adapted to cooperative play: Shielding and Squad Heal, Virus and Damage Link, Focus Target and Focus Breach, E-Drain and Battery, plus the default Breach, Heal, and Reboot, are applications which along with the weapons can be furthermore researched by means of unlockable blueprints, extractable chips -- from certain high-value targets on a first-come-first-served basis as in the singleplayer, and investable tokens, thus rather altruistically profiting also the partnered coop players (who on the other hand can also be kick-voted).
The in total 21 available weapons including also the yet familiar Gauss gun, formerly a lethal rocket launcher, now a handy machine gun useful above all through its lock-on permitting to hit targets in all kinds of bent trajectories, offer a satisfying gunfight single-playing as well as online, where the more extraordinary ones allow for upgrades that largely surpass the usual muffler, ammunition, damage, velocity options: names as exotic as Electrochem Booster (Electron Mace), Thermate Injector (Thermite Gun), Multi-Beam Projector (Coil Laser Rifle), or Dud Mode (Riotlance Dart Shooter), are likely to make weapon research & development attractive also for the players themselves.
The online tasks --steal tissue samples or server cases and deliver them to a dropship or protect an UTV while laser beaming sealed doors-- as well as the mutual healing and helping functions may lively recall games like Brink (where downed one too might observe one's pals while waiting to be reanimated), save that except choosing between three classes --Defense, Offense, Support-- and different upgradable weapon layouts, customization is not possible here but every player gets randomly assigned a cool cyberpunk rather than cyborg-looking character that can be either male or female. To add that in reverence to the title players can also gang up in individual "syndicates" to more effectively rampage against the others.
The game's unsettling futuristic atmosphere in both the homogenized, milky lit Upperzone and the corroded, graffitied Downzone reminds that of great sci-fi movies like Blade Runner or Matrix and represent one of Syndicate's incontestable strengths: a minimalist artistic visual and synthetic sound design depicting a sober, functional world economic in its use of "fleshy" elements like conversation or music, albeit the occasional puzzle of elevator or interrupter activation to ease tension, while assigning part of the narration to the Journal entries --main characters, historic background, technology-- obtained during the game.
In a world prioritizing market shares and consumerism also the missions' descriptions obey the rules of corporate speech, where "soft assets" have to be terminated and "high-value targets" liquidated while the Syndaq Rating after each of the successful "negotiations" attributes the Agent-player an operational rank like "middle management" or "executive", taking into account parameters like accuracy/headshots, breach spikes, rampage, adrenaline, and damage/time (plus kills, heals, and reboots in case of the multiplayer).
Yet the opposition rarely sleeps, in this case the TWB mining EuroCorp's propaganda through "resistance graffiti", visible in DART Overlay mode and presumably one of Lily's ideas to wake up Syndicate agents like Kilo himself, unaware of his being nothing but a "case". So "Working for Your Future" reads "working for corporate power", "Building a Better World" -- "...for them to exploit", or "DART 6 - Access the world" -- "and sell your soul". -- Did it actually work? The subversive text being readable for chip users only aren't they likely to believe rather whom they owe their reason of being? And which would be the alternative: deactivate one's chip to remain digitally locked out, societally "out of sight and out of mind", like the many hobos vegetating in the Downzone slums; adhere to an international terrorist network like the CONFA (Council of non-federal Anarchists); or even the Church of the New Epoch known from Syndicate Wars working by means of indoctrination methods similar to those of the proper Syndicates, the style of Verse 9:11 of the Book of Cataclysm: "To take a life is Sin." -- "TO TAKE MILLIONS IS RELIGION."
Explosive stuff, indeed: this is no subversive game but one which in a plausible way gives an alarming picture of a social dystopia in the line of its 1993 model and earlier sequels, and one can only be curious about how this story will be continued. -- Will there be another, more livable form of resistance?
The cooperative multiplayer currently offering only nine out of Syndicate's originally fifty territories, including Western Europe, Mozambique, Colorado, Argentina, too will certainly add more playable missions to fill up the world map with exciting counter action.
This late Syndicate reboot doesn't but refrain from innovation: its amazing artistic design and good playability enjoyably combining firing and breaching functions in both single and coop mode make it surely one of the most remarkable shooters of the present year 2012, half a century still from the related events.