The difficulty doesn't so much spike as transform into a thousand-foot tall stalactite of infuriating, grinding cruelty. Syndicate comes across like Human Revolution's half-wit cousin even at the best of times, but even more so at the worst of times - these godawful boss fights. These fellows are silently immune to your Breach powers, but invariably you'll use exactly the same E-and-hold mechanic to temporarily deactivate their energy-shield then attempt to whittle away their big fat health bar before they drop their annoyingly over-powered special attack on you. On top of that, the game is sternly determined to deny such fun whenever a boss or miniboss appears, something which becomes an aggravatingly frequent occurrence in the later stages of the game.
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As is the infrequently-visited upgrade tree, which offers only faint choice between more health and more damage. It's smartly blended with the shooting, in that it becomes an intuitive and effective additional layer of mob management, but it is always the same. All of these result in there being one or two fewer enemies in front of you. Persuade turns a single enemy to your side for a short while, but if there are no other enemies around he'll commit suicide.Īll of these happen by pressing and holding E. Suicide makes a single enemy execute himself, but if he's in a group he'll do it with a grenade. Backfire causes a spot of damage, makes an enemy fall out of cover and makes them temporarily extra-vulnerable to your bullets. Also, their effects are largely pretty similar, so it's really a matter of which one has finished recharging rather than applying any strategy. There are three of these, although two are pointlessly deactivated for a long stretch mid-game. A very simplistic cover system and recharging health are your major allies here, but the key difference from other shooters is your Breach powers. Primarily this is in the form of shooting enemy soldiers in the head with a small but ultimately ludicrously powerful array of guns. You're a walking war machine, so go wage war.
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It takes the concept of being a hard-as-nails cyborg enforcer in a near-future world dominated by sinister corporations and leaves you free to indulge in the power fantasy, rather than worrying about what the right thing to do is, how to build the most efficient character spec and whether you've found all the side-missions.
You can find my rather more positive thoughts on the co-op mode here, but below is my take on the campaign mode, and the tale of the hysterically-named Eurocorp Agent MILES KILO.ġ) Whether Syndicate is a decent first-person shooter or not.Ģ) Whether Syndicate 2012 is anything like Syndicate 1993.ġ) Syndicate is Deus Ex: Human Revolution without the stealth, hacking or conversation.
I've only done a little dabbling in co-op, a report on which I will present very soon (so far: better than singleplayer, but very much in the unlock/ranking modern multiplayer idiom). I've been playing EA and Starbreeze's contentious FPS reboot of the legendary Syndicate.