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[TheChosen]

First, I'd like to ask all those who didn't like the direction new X-Com is going to go read something else, because you wont be pleased about this one.

http://www.destructoid.com/details-o...s-211096.phtml

And remember

Truth be told, my first reaction to all of this was a "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" in the voice of a dozen movie characters. But after sleeping on it and going through it piece by piece, it actually sounds like it could be a neat game. Sure, you don't click your squad around anymore, but everything else still has the potential for a revamped approach that takes the old game to the current era.

Starbreeze doesn't mess around with PG-13 violence to appease the masses either -- Riddick and The Darkness were unapologetically violent and dark games. Whether or not we'll be able to Persuadertron 30 innocent civilians to pick up an arsenal of weapons, use them to shoot down police officers who are just trying to feed their families, tell them to stand outside a church or bank, and then blow up the building with suitcase nukes as glass and debris flies everywhere, we'll have to see.

Sadly such a scenario would not be very politically correct in this day and age, even though it was fine 18 years ago. We have to think of the children who are not allowed to buy M-rated games, after all. If Starbreeze can pull off translating the dark behavior that the original games' mechanics elicited, while trading the top-down perspective for a first-person one with 4-player online co-op, I'm willing to give it a try -- even if it's not exactly the same as the games I grew up with.

It looks a bit like the new Deus Ex. Not necessarily bad thing, taking cues from the latest hit game. Funnily enough, I just read a post recently where this one guy said that Deus Ex and Syndicate could belong in the same timeline, along with Metal Gear Solid games.

[Eagle of Fire]

I don't see the fuss. Syndicate is one of the few title on which it make perfect sense to turn into a FPS since the original game was pretty much the same.

You would really need to explain me the part about X-com though. I really don't get it.

[jonh_sabugs]

Dunno, I feel both these games (and some of their sequels) were great for specific reasons, their own format being one of them. Really, I can't see what bringing Syndicate into a FPS would contribute to this genre of gaming which, frankly, has tons of exemplars. There's already enough space to try all sorts of innovative gameplay anyway. In the end, I think it's all about what have been said so many times: plugging a famous franchise in a random FPS to draw attention to it. So sad (and so many franchises destroyed this way).

[TotalAnarchy]

Well it's sci-fi and from Starbreeze, which is already great in my books. I must agree with the above poster though. I don't think the strategy genre has reached its zenith - I believe there is still much to be done with it.

In any case, if we leave the genre discussion aside, the new Syndicate looks like my kind of sci-fi. I'm looking forward to it.

[The Fifth Horseman]

I think they're completely missing the point here. There was something very fitting about the Agents in the first two games being faceless and all but nameless tools of the corporations. take that out and it doesn't really feel like Syndicate anymore.

[Eagle of Fire]

Well, maybe I'm missing the point too because what I remember from Syndicate is an action game in which you had to do research and cyborize your agents to win. The fact that they were faceless never even appeared in my mind.

In fact, as far as I am concerned they were not faceless... They were M. Everybody you can meet on the street, brainwashed to work for you and do your evil deeds. That's what I believed was the appeal of the game in any case.

Me? I only played it for the strategy part of the game. Which was pretty much only in the research... And there was very little of it. The action part of the game always been very frustrating for me since there was no way to efficiently control 4 agents at the same time, so I simply kept my agents bunched together and used brute force in every level in which there was no need for a very specific different approach.

[The Fifth Horseman]

The point is that this "sequel" is giving the player a lot of reasons to identify with the central character. Having a named protagonist with some apparent backstory, the first-person perspective, and the cliche of the character being a prototype (read: unique goddamn snowflake).

Now let's remember what was there in the original: These are your agents. They have no individuality. No faces. Their single, non-meaningful "names" (or just designates given by the corp?) are the only way you can tell them apart. There's nothing for you to form an attachment over. They're a means to an end.

[RRS]

I hate that everything has to be FPS these days. Despite being FPS fan since Wolfenstein3D (when I managed to run Doom on my PC for the first time I even did that "hyperactive American teen" thing).

Syndicate was isometric tactical action. Why can't we have games like this today? I'm not following the news, so please point me to titles which play just as Jagged Alliance or X-Com, but use modern graphics. It is possible. Have you seen the demo for real Fallout 3 (I mean Van Buren) ? It perfectly blended 3D environment and rotating isometric camera view.
Isometric doesn't mean the game had to be backwarded technically. If you've added destroyable level geometry (think "Red Faction") and good particle effects it would look great on screenies and sell well too.

...unless they all want to brainwash us into console crowd?

[RRS]

Originally Posted by The Fifth Horseman

Now let's remember what was there in the original: These are your agents. They have no individuality. No faces. Their single, non-meaningful "names" (or just designates given by the corp?) are the only way you can tell them apart. There's nothing for you to form an attachment over. They're a means to an end.

...and remember those sliders next to them? Yup, they were constantly on drugs.

Let's count, guys: somebody gets kidnapped, gets control chip in a head, runs on psychoactive drugs, his augumented body is a killing machine commanded from the blimp you sit in... They were expendable cyborgs, no longer human individuals.

[Eagle of Fire]

so please point me to titles which play just as Jagged Alliance or X-Com, but use modern graphics.

Well, the first title is Ufo: Aftermath. It was supposed to be the spiritual successor of Xcom but failed more than miserably. I didn't bother trying the other games of that franchise.

I think many titles tried to revive the Xcom genre but failed mainly because they bumped their heads too hard at several things. One of those things is limit the recruitment pool. That got to be the highest problem, since limiting the recruitment pool make it so you either have to make things way too easy so your soldiers survive (you can do very little with no soldiers...), or make it too high and have the soldiers die anyways but without a way to replace them. That's also the biggest problem in UFO: Aftermath... You simply cannot afford to lose a single soldier because they level up and once you face advanced enemies you can't simply send fresh recruits and expect them to do the same job than your dead veteran.

Another big problem is trying to add things like realistic gravity simulators, mainly for when you need to throw grenades around or jump down a few levels with a squaddie. in Xcom it was simply: simply target a square and the game tell you if you can do it. And if you can't, you can simply hold the grenade indefinitely until you finally throw it, like a real life grenade. That's simple, and that's the way it should be. I've seen demos of games which tried to be yet another Xcom successor with stupidly complicated grenade throwing patterns. In short, you throw something and it bounce off anything... And you don't have an unlimited guess shadow to help you out. You can guess how "fun" it gets when you need to throw a grenade several stories down for a critical life or death shot...

And of course, there is also the obvious problem of graphics don't make a game. Some genre don't benefit much from modern graphics, if at all. An isometric game which rely heavily on strategy only need a display which is efficient, not jaw dropping. Adding modern graphics would simply not make a game as far as the strategy genre is concerned, and that alone put off a lot of gamers which simply can't play something without jaw dropping graphics...