Syndicate Game Features

The acclaimed science fiction writer behind the Takeshi Kovacs novels and the story for Crysis 2 has been recruited to write the story for Syndicate. A common theme in Morgan's work is dystopia. In Syndicate, three mega-corporations, known as syndicates, battle it out for power by any means necessary. By the year 2069, politicians are no longer the governing force over the world's populations. They are controlled by the mega-corporations, who influence, control and abuse the public via neural chip implants.

On the surface, these chip implants revolutionize the ways consumers interact with corporations throughout their daily lives. Diving deeper, the neural chips are just a way of linking every person together to form a giant network of ever-growing information and control.

Richard Morgan's bleak vision of the future is a great setting for an entertaining and illuminating first-person experience.

As Miles Kilo, an agent of Eurocorp, one of the devious mega-corporations, you are equipped with bio-engineered and chip-augmented powers in order to carry out your missions. The agent's of these corporations are the first line of defense, and offense, when it comes to defending against, and taking out, enemy corporations.

Using neural implant abilities, called breaches, agents can breach weapons, environments and even people. Agents can breach enemy bio-chips to persuade them to fight alongside the player as a temporary ally or to commit suicide to end the threat immediately. Additionally, agents can breach enemy turrets to attack enemies or enemy weapons so that they backfire in the middle of combat.

One of the best new Syndicate game features is that these breaches can be upgraded to enhance their abilities and extend their uses throughout the game.

In addition to the enemy and environmental breaches available to every agent, a special, too awesome to use ability can be used every so often that combines the usefulness of Batman: Arkham Asylum's detective mode with Max Payne's bullet time. When entering this superhuman state, your weapons do more damage, enemy weapons do less damage, time slows down and enemies and other points of interest can be seen through walls.

Seriously, was there anything else the guys over at Starbreeze could cram into this ability? Unfortunately, the trade off is that this state only lasts a mere matter of seconds. After that, the only way to refill it is by getting into some adrenaline pumping firefights.

The year 2069 may be bleak, but that doesn't mean the future hasn't seen the firearm industry flourish. Expect one of the Syndicate game features to be the crazy weapons the agents will be using. Our playthrough included using the Gauss Gun, which allowed us to lock-on to enemies, find cover and watch as the bullets we shot wrapped around corners and over obstacles to hit our target. If this was in our initial playthrough, we can't imagine what weapons we'll find later in the game.

Besides the weapons, however, players can deliver some gruesome, context sensitive, melee kills. These include kicking in an enemies kneecaps, snapping their necks, sliding into enemies and just beating the snot out of them.