Syndicate Demo Gets Things Right

[Stark]

Well, putting aside the EA servers sucking and the demo hard-crashing on a semi-regular basis.

The art design is great - the world is cyberfuture, but the augmented-reality style UI is pure 90s. They use the high level of body awareness to sell the mass of your cyberman, and the UI sway is nowhere near as distracting as it appears in videos. The information is presented in such a way as it is immediately obvious what is going on at all times.

The reward system is solid, and superior to other games like BF3. All that matters is what your team does (to get unlock tokens) and what you do (to get points). Kills are irrelevant, what weapons use are using is irrelevant, only how much you help the team counts. You steal miniboss brain-chips to buy blueprints for upgrades, and then score points to 'progress' the 'research'. It is JUST LIKE SYNDICATE LOL, while not forcing you to use things you don't want or play a way you don't want to.

The teamplay stuff is super-solid. There are plenty of apps that help your squad (I take shield, which provides everyone with ablative damage reduction) and the user is rewarded for everything people do with them - with shield, I score points as it is blown off protecting my allies, which encourages me to use it when it is most needed. The 'special' enemies require teamwork and intelligent applciaiton of your breaches to kill easily - to the point where Sherry and I can do it faster than four people who mill at random.

The weapon breakdown (the limited selection in the demo) is archetypical but interesting. You get a primary and a pistol, and the primaries include a shotgun and a range of rifles from low dam/high rof to a battle rifle, with their own upgrades which include outrageous flavour text (like microscoping capacitors giving bullets knockback). The upgrades aren't tiered so you can choose the ones you want, and you don't need ot be using the gun in question to finish the research. The belt-fed shotgun (only available as a pickup in the demo) can be upgraded to a 10ga, double-barrel belt-fed shotgun controlled by mindchips, which is pretty funny shit.

The perks (or skill tree) has a bunch of different appraoches, mainly apps, health and gunplay. I imagine you get enough skill points at max level to buy all of them, which is a bit sad, but as you level up you get a lot of scope to make your dude distinct. The four coop guys are just skins adn don't affect your loadout at all.

In all its a really good coop experience, to the point that I know 8 people who are happy to just play the one level given. It uses a map from Sydnicate '93 for coop missions, which allows my tiny optimistic soul to hope they have DLC coop missions on the way, however unlikely that might be.

[Jordie]

How did you get the demo, is it up on the US marketplace for silver members?

[DPDarkPrimus]

How did you get the demo, is it up on the US marketplace for silver members?

It's a multiplayer demo, so why would a silver member be able to download it?

[Jordie]

Well, I assume you can play it split screen. I'm only asking because it's not up on the AU marketplace since the game has been denied classification here.

[Stark]

No, the demo is not available in AU. It works if you have it, though.

[Revy]

I played the original Syndicate on the Amiga back when I was a kid, loved it. Got the PC version a few years back. Awesome stuff. You could pull off some really cheap shit against the comp (it was all single player), like kitting your team out with personal shields and flamethrowers, or the utterly hilarious suicide bombing trick where you could self destruct your guys, then click on a medkit, allowing them to survive actually blowing themselves up so you could blow them up again.

Good times. Of course American Revolt was just sadism.

Anyway, I downloaded the demo of this but my net connection has been crap lately, so I haven't been able to give it a go. Is there any kind of tutorial mode to practice with? I'm a bit nervous of jumping straight into a team based game without any practice, because I'm liable to make mistakes and piss people off.

[Revy]

NVM, I got around to trying it out. Couldn't get a game with anyone, so I got fed up and went it alone. Christ was that hard. After about two hours I made it to the end level boss. I nearly managed to beat him as well - lured him to the control panel and then hid behind it in order to deactivate his armour. The panel blocked his gunfire and I was able to shoot him with impunity.

Until of course I ran out of ammo.

Pfft. Twenty failed attempts after that I gave up. It's called co-op mode for a reason. I think I'd like the campaign mode better.

[Stark]

Are you aware you can refill your ammo as much as you like in checkpoint rooms? Regardless, you should have some blueprints and be able to develop your favoured weapons and buy chip upgrades, which makes it much easier to solo (assuming you have literally nobody to play with).

[Zaune]

You know, I think this is the first time I've ever heard you actually praise a game. Might just check it out on the strength of that alone.

I don't suppose they changed the "hold X to hack turret/unlock door/anything but move and shoot" mechanic for using your implant to something a bit more challenging, though?

[Stark]

Are you a time traveller or do you just put special effort into being ignorant?

Are you seriously asking if a fast-paced shooter has hacking minigames?

Man, I wish my torrent client required me to arrange a series of coloured boxes correctly to make it work. To educate you, unlike tiresome single player RPGs that require padding in the form of trivial minigames to extend playtime or restrict player movement, faster or multi games require players to juggle multiple resources instead. Everyone I've played with thinks the combination of range limitations, breach speeds and adrenaline system works great, despite not requiring you to swivel left stick while in a gun fight; indeed, hacking things without looking while running/jumping/fighting is core to the flow of the game.

[Vendetta]

I did not quite believe Stark when he told me that the internet at large suuuuucckkks at this game. And then I played a game with randoms.

Do you know what happens when three out of four people cannot comprehend the fact that there is the word "Immune" where a health bar should be means they are not damaging the boss and do not know that you have to breach his armour with your mind hacking powers?

The one person that is playing the actual game gets more points than all of them put together, that's what.

Maybe when it actually comes out and the singleplayer campaign teaches the mongtards about these concepts that we literally picked up on instantly without prompting

It's also hilarious to see the videogame reflexes of "must be next to thing to interact" override the obvious UI prompt of if it says I can press LB to Do A Thing from here, maybe I can press it whilst I'm standing here and I will Do A Thing. I had people run up to me to heal, run up to every panel to hack it, and in a number of cases run right into a large gentleman with a minigun. Though they may just have been futilely unloading shotguns without realising it wasn't doing squat.

[CaptHawkeye]

Played it on PSN and largely had the same experience with public players.

Holy shit guys immune means press L2.

As psst, it's not Deus Ex guys, it's much much closer to Crysis.

[Havok]

Stark hates everything... except quality?

1st or 3rd person?
Dress up y/n
RPG or shooter?

I should already know this because I looked at the game in the marketplace when I saw you playing it the other day, but I don't remember.

[Karza]

- 1st person
- pick from 4 different characters, but no customization at least in the demo
- shooter, though you get to pick new abilities and whatnot as you gain experience

[Stark]

Karza droog it was a lol today - Zak and Vendetta and I steamrolled the demo on hard in about seven minutes

I mean four pubbies can't finish it on normal. :v. That said today I discovered you could poke your gun over cover without similar, which suited my smg spray attack just fine. It's remarkable how easily the game uses cover (both contextual and traditional) with their hacking stuff that requires line of sight to initiate, but not finish.

[Karza]

Funny thing is, it seems public groups are less awful on hard. Maybe it's because by the time people dare to try upping the difficulty, they've already figured out at least how breach works. You still see silly stuff, but the ever so lovely "what does IMMUNE mean?" -situation generally doesn't happen.

[Havok]

I'm gonna give this a try even though it is 1st person. I like the design.

I need peeps to play with though. I'm not doing a 1st person with those heathen animals on the interwebs.

[Stark]

Man those heathen animals are dumber than a box of hammers. I'm up for some Synd in 3-4 hours, though. Los or Aaron might be around, too.

I've got to try pub/hard, though; it'd be interesting if the self-selection meant they aren't so retarded.

[Havok]

Hit me up. I'm dizzle.

[Losonti Tokash]

I'll play a bit if you guys invite me but the servers for the ME3 demo mp just went up so I'll be wanting to do that too.

[Havok]

ME3 demo? Awww shit!!

[Losonti Tokash]

I got early access and the multi servers only just went up today. Demo gets public release tomorrow, but MP is restricted to people who bought BF3 until Friday, I think.