Written by: PlayDevil.com

 

 

 

So, the Syndicate co-op demo is now out, and despite what you might think about this classic strategy game getting an update as a co-op FPS, this is one game that is on many people’s radar this spring. Thanks to the combination of stylish cyberpunk story and graphics, and the promise of 4-player co-op, Syndicate has been getting some heat.

 

Judging by my first impression with the demo, the servers were also getting too much heat. My first game I got a server error during the load. Then the server list wouldn’t refresh. Then the game hung on the loading screen. Then I got into a game, but got kicked after about a minute by the server. There are currently, some of the most severe sever and matchmaking issues I’ve ever seen in a game.

 

When I got into the game the first time, it also wasn’t at all clear I was actually at the last checkpoint, and had dropped into a game, as opposed to starting the game from the beginning of the level, so there are some UI issues as well.

 

When I finally managed to start the level from scratch (this took literally 20 minutes or more), nothing actually seemed much clearer. Despite some garbled introduction in the loading screen, there was no cut-scene to introduce your team or really go over the objectives. We, as a team of 4 genetically enhanced agents, were immediately thrust into a firefight. The enemy character models animated well, but all look exactly the same, which was a shame. However, the AI and gunplay were tight, and you definitely need to think about your strategies. You have little health, and whilst you can partly recover this, you need to stick together to heal each other. Going down is not the end, but a full reboot is much more time consuming than healing others. The AI, especially the tougher enemies, are ruthless, and our little group failed the mission 3 or 4 times before we got to the end. Whilst we were up against a variety of enemies, the lack of variation did make it feel much more like a single-player level in an arena shooter- there was a generic, re-spawny feel to things, with generic levels and enemies that you don’t expect in a AAA game in 2012.

 

Despite this sounding like the game’s infrastructure is ramshackle at best, and that the gameplay is also unintuitive and overly harsh, I remain really interested in the game. I can’t really put my finger on it.

 

The co-op aspect, if it works, should be interesting, whilst the ability to just do almost anything nearby by holding down LB is also pretty awesome. The ending trailer also gave me hope that the demo is a lesser area, and there is more to the gameplay than fierce firefights, endlessly respawning enemies, and holding down LB. So I guess I am in two minds about Syndicate. It’s got a lot of promise, but a lot of it is a turd. You can only polish a turd so much, but I’m quietly hopeful that the final game has far more of the awesome bits than the bad bits. We’ll find out with a full review in just a few short weeks.