Over the last few years, the FPS genre has become so oversaturated that you really have to deliver something special to stand out these days. And though Starbreeze Studios’ sci-fi shooter “Syndicate” boasts some pretty great ideas on the surface, the game’s sum is never quite equal to its parts. For starters, the story is a complete mess. Set in 2069, it imagines a world run by three mega corporations that are at war with each other for market dominance. You play as Miles Kilo, a bio-engineered enforcer for leading syndicate Eurocorp, which has tasked you with uncovering a mole working within the company. There’s not much else to the story beyond that, aside from a few incredibly predictable plot twists (hint: you’re not working for the good guys and you know it) that make the single-player campaign even more laborious to slog through.
The game’s combat system offers some innovative ways to take down enemies – by hacking into the bio-chips implanted in their heads, you can persuade them to commit suicide and switch allegiances, or even cause their weapons to misfire – but it eventually grows old, especially when you’re forced to rely on the same three tricks over and over again. Although that doesn’t make for a particularly memorable single-player experience (despite the involvement of actors like Brian Cox and Rosario Dawson), the online co-op mode fares better by turning each mission into a team-based effort for up to four players. There are nine missions in all, some of which have been re-imagined from the SNES cult classic, that tell a separate story revolving around a new syndicate on the rise.
Along the way, you’ll earn chip upgrades and weapons to use in future missions, providing a level of customizability that pales in comparison to the single-player campaign. But while online co-op may be the highlight of the game, it’s still just a sideshow to the main attraction. Players will certainly appreciate the added value that co-op delivers, but if you don’t enjoy the nuts and bolts of “Syndicate,” it won’t make much difference.
