Syndicate came out in the early 90s for DOS. It's a real time strategy game you control 4 cyborg agents working for a futuristic corporate regime, trying to eliminate all other corporations in around 50 other counties and cities all throughout the world.
There's around 40-50 missions or so, each one takes place in a different country or city. With all these missions, the areas still maintain a unique design to each. It’s fairly long to finish off all these missions, maybe 10-15 hours. Perhaps more, depending on if you had to retake any areas.
The AI in this game is very simple. The enemy agents will stupidly run around buildings while you cut them to pieces or persuade them to join your side. Being able to persuade enemy agents is a great way to replace dead ones if you lose some, or just fill up your ranks. It’s unlikely any will die if you’re careful, and since you can only use 4 agents at a time, it’s not totally necessary. You really have to control your agents carefully or they'll get lost (or killed) while playing. But the map makes controlling them very easy, it shows little dots like civilians or enemy agents as red, and it works perfectly.
A few weapons to mention are - Uzis, flamethrowers, miniguns, long-range riffles, gause guns. Most of them are quite useful. Sometimes having a bit of each can help, as in giving everyone LR Riffles to hold off enemies from far and than Miniguns for closer battles. I usually have miniguns and LR riffles, rarely waste inventory space on gause guns. Flame throwers last a long time, having one flame thrower can kill more people than 8 miniguns, but the range is only good up close. Usually best to use them when you are on a corner and are expecting enemies to come around the corner, or using them to take out vehicles quickly. The armour on your agents are cybernetic upgrades like new chest, arms, legs, skull, and eyes. Researching gives you more high tech and powerful choices, letting you get better and stronger upgrades for your agents and their weapons.
Graphics in this game are still nice to this day, even from being from 1993 they still look very nice. It was interesting to see all the dead bodies you killed or burned up with the flamethrower to still remain in the streets till mission end. Seeing the end carnage of a big fire fight is really freaking sweet. Music is used quite well also, the pace of the background sound changes when you are in danger of attack.
The storyline comes in mission briefings, many which involve assasinations, killing of other enemy agents and the persuading of enemy corporate leaders. From the intro of the game, you see how dark this future really is when you witness a random person being turned into one of your agents by ripping their limbs off and replacing them with cybernetic ones, than being implanted with a brain chip to follow your orders.
This game is unique to this day, nothing quite like it has been made since. It’s a classic and one of my all time favourite games. This is one of Bullfrogs classics.