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Title Syndicate
Game Type Combat simulation
Players 1
Compatibility All
Submission Mark Parsons mparsons@mcb.net

Review
Syndicate is an all-time classic. The sort that should have a coveted
place in everyone's collection, along with the likes of Flashback. It
could even go between Turrican 2 and SWIV if you put your games in
alphabetical order! (What about Switchblade 2?? Stop being pedantic!!)



But *why* is it a classic?

Well - several reasons, mostly along the lines of:
"it's a good game",
"it's fantastic",
"*I* like it",
"it's got big guns and blood in it",
and probably many more.

Perhaps these coherent arguments won't sway you, though. In which
case, read on, and have your appetite well-and-truly whetted...


First of all, if you haven't got an '020 or better, then you won't
think that this is as good as I'm plugging. Well, it is, until you
blow something up. And since the entire objective of Syndicate is,
more or less, to blow things up (usually the enemy), then a slower
processor will dull your enjoyment. Trust me. As soon as you see a
slow-motion shot of your rocket-attack at a vehicle, you'll
instinctively *know* that it is time to upgrade!!



Basically, Syndicate puts you in charge of a squad of Cyborgs -
biomechanically modified soldiers with *serious* attitude problems.
Your job is to "relieve" the different countires of the World from
the tyrannical machinations of the Enemy Syndicates (Boooh!!). This is
usually achieved by killing all the Enemies present in that region,
but can be something as simple (Hah! Yeah...) as kidnapping someone,
or assassinating a leader, or stealing some weaponry. The choice of
mission types is varied - you have a limited kind of decision as to
what to do next, although the eventual aim is to complete (conquer,
dominate, and maintain control of...) each country.


In the game, you look down upon the battle region from a zeppelin of
some description (even though this is supposed to be the future...),
where you can see everyday folk wandering around, doing everyday
things.

Of course, all this changes when your agents stroll in (or crawl if
you have a slow computer...) - civilians flee in all directions,
windows cave in as your shots go wide, policemen bravely (stupidly?)
chase after you and get mown down in a pool of blood. And then there's
the Enemy Agents. Some, well - most, of these are really stupid, and
just run towards you, only to be cut down in a hail of MiniGun fire,
or a LaserBeam, or a Rocket, but there *are* some devious, sneaky
types out there....They run away, and hide around corners, or in
buildings, or snipe at you from the roof of a nearby building. If your
agents start to die, and you can't see who it is, this is often the
cause ;) A swift 360-degree blast of hot lead or explosive rockets
usually sorts the problem out!
Luckily, there are often several opposing Syndicates in a region, so
you can sit tight in a safe place, and watch the Enemy cut each other
to pieces before venturing out and cleaning up! Most people would say
that doing this is boring, but what the heck! ;)


Whilst all this distant warfare is happening, everything can become
rather confusing; You may have up to 4 agents to control, either
individually, or as a team. It is therefore very easy to lose track of
where each of them is, and you suddenly find that they're falling like
Autumn leaves as you concentrate on the action elsewhere. Whoops!

Fortunate then, isn't it, that you can alter the performance of each
of your Agents! Implanted within each Cyborg is a "Drug-Hormone Level
Adjustment Thingumbob" (C)(R)(TM)(etc.) that you can fiddle with.
There are three options to change - Intelligence, Perception, and
Adrenalin. These are manipulated by the simple act of moving a slider
bar - to the right increases the level of drug, making the Agent more
Intelligent/Perceptive/Responsive,or the left to decrease the
characteristics. It is very useful to be able to boost an Agent's
attributes in this way, and then leave him to fend for himself - He'll
react with pinpoint accuracy to any threats, and run away if
necessary. Of course, as with any drugs, there is a downside. After a
sustained period of exposure to the drug, the body's tolerance
increases, and the net effect of the drug increases - more is needed
to achieve the same effects as before (i.e. addiction). This game is
no different, the longer an Agent is "Maxed-Up", the greater his
"tolerance level". This is indicated by a line on each of the
drug-level indicators, and once it reaches the same level as the drug,
the effects start to wear off! A bit of a nightmare if you aren't
watching your Agents carefully, since your (previously) Intelligent,
Observant, Responsive (if a little psychotic) Agent soon turns into a
total imbecile who can't hit the side of a barn at five paces ;)

Whilst your cyborgs are battling away, the territories that you have
already "liberated" are busy living life as usual, getting taxed.
Of course, you may have guessed that you can set the tax levels!
Funds appropriated in such a manner can be used to buy better weapons,
and enhanced cyborg limbs. Money can be spent researching new weapon
developments, or making your Agents stronger, fitter and more
resilient to enemy bullets! Great!
Naturally, if you get greedy, and tax your poor subject-nations, they
will rebel (with the aid of the Enemy Syndicates, of course!), and
you'll have to go back with your guns blazing to teach them a lesson!!


Overall, this game is offers a fantastic, often frenetic, always fun
blend of out-and-out glorified shoot'em up violence, tactical
planning, and the need for cool-headed patience (especially on some of
the later levels!!). If you have a few spare pennies, this is
*definitely* worth a look!

Oh, by the way - throughout this review I have referred to the Agents
in the masculine sense. This isn't entirely fair, since Female Agents
are also available - they're just as hard, and can carry just as much
equipment, although I'm not too sure whether they can drive as well ;)

The Making of Syndicate
========================
Format: PC:
Release: 1993
Publisher: EA
Developer: Bullfrog

"I used to get friends, around five of them, to come in at the weekends. Instead of going to the pub…” Sean Cooper’s train of thought momentarily stalls, and he pauses. It’s over ten years since he led the Syndicate project; more than a decade since Bullfrog’s dystopian opus beguiled gamers and critics with its combination of progressive, squad-based shoot ’em up, strategic planning and – for the time – refreshingly freeform environs. “What I wanted to do with my life at that point was work – I didn’t want to go to the pub or chat up girls,” Cooper continues, with disarming candour. “We’d come in and play it multiplayer. We’d all go round trying to kill each other, and I’d hear someone say: ‘Ah… that’s shit’, and then I’d try to fix the problem. It was just a great atmosphere in which to create a game. We had no one telling us what to do. We did what we wanted to.”

The most adroit explanation of Bullfrog’s success in the early ’90s is that its staff genuinely enjoyed themselves, making games that, first and foremost, they wanted to play. You can discuss Peter Molyneux’s qualities as a game designer, Glenn Corpes’ coding prowess, Les Edgar’s business nous, or highlight the quality of the post-Populous appointments to a growing company – individuals like Alex Trowers (who went on to work at Kuju and Lost Toys), Cooper (now an independent game developer) and Paul McLaughlin (now head of art at Lionhead), among others. But if you really want to understand why Syndicate worked so well, had so many innovative features, and is invariably namechecked in Best Games Ever! lists, know this: Bullfrog was very much its own best customer.

Syndicate, once called Cyber Assault, first took shape during a liquid lunch. “It really just evolved,” reveals Corpes, the former Bullfrog uber-coder who went on to found Lost Toys and is now about to release his first iPhone game. “I have very vague memories of a lunchtime design meeting in the pub, talk of multiple characters. I think it was an overhang from an older game. Flood – a 2D platformer for the ST and Amiga – originally had four players with their own cameras, and you could switch any camera to the main screen. It didn’t work at all, and Flood evolved into a completely different game, a cutesy platformer. But a few people were kind of attached to the four character thing…”



Actually, Cooper tells us, Syndicate once had eight on-screen charges for players to control. With all but himself and Trowers apparently finding this large number of heavily armed cyborg agents unwieldy, the decision to reduce the number of agents was to prove pivotal. “The eight players versus the four… that was a big transition,” Cooper admits. “It didn’t feel that good with eight, but we reduced it to four and, all of a sudden, it really worked. And you could set them up differently – you didn’t really have time to do that with eight.”

Syndicate was Bullfrog’s first game to lead on PC, an announcement that led to cries of anguish from Amiga users (later mollified by Mike Diskette’s excellent port). “I think the decision to switch was based purely on the fact that the PC allowed us to do all of the cool city stuff that we wanted to,” explains Trowers. “The Amiga, bless its cottons, just wasn’t powerful enough. Early versions of the fully isometric 3D, full-screen engine never used to get above 12fps with any more than a handful of guys running around. Even on the PCs in those days, we had to do some pretty nifty graphics stuff to get the whole thing to work at a reasonable speed. I think all of it made us think that the Amiga had pretty much run its course and that the PC would take over as the main platform. And we were intrigued by all this wonderful network stuff. The Bullfrog philosophy on making games was to try the whole thing out multiplayer and then make an AI to emulate the human players.

“Suddenly we weren’t restricted to just two players. I think we all got very excited about this potential.” Just as Populous evolved through multiplayer matches between Molyneux and Corpes, networked games of Syndicate were a staple component of lunchtimes and late nights at the Bullfrog office. “We were playing it before a line of AI code had been written,” says Corpes. “The gameplay evolved by playing it multiplayer over the network. This is the best way of designing games and should be done more often, rather than hacking multiplayer in as an afterthought.”

“We’d get a few of our mates over after work and just play the thing multiplayer,” recalls Trowers. “By doing that, we worked out what was fun and how the AI should operate and just built on that. It was a very iterative process and the most fun I’ve had in this industry – we’d play the game, make changes, whack out a new version and try the extra stuff.”

"My biggest regret is that we didn’t put enough destruction into it. I would have really liked to have, you know, fired a rocket launcher at a building and have a hole appear in it. But you just couldn’t do it at the time. I wanted to see people flung into the air, people landing on buildings, people landing on cars that screech to a halt, all that kind of behaviour, that kind of world. But we just didn’t know how to do it." Sean Cooper

Inspired by these network sessions, Trowers began to build Syndicate’s singleplayer missions. “Once the maps were all built, it was a simple case of populating them and messing around with the layout of bad guys until it felt ‘right’,” he explains. “There was no overall plot or story that had to drive the levels – each was a disparate, modular experience. I was completely free to design each mission as I felt at that time. Rather than the majority of missions in today’s games, where there is a linear, set path to completion, a Syndicate mission was more of an environment where the player was free to attempt it in any way he liked. Once you have the basic rules of the world established, these are very easy to create… but they can be an absolute nightmare to balance.”

With an ambitious and evolving brief – particularly its ‘living’ cities, populated by enemy agents, police, pedestrians and vehicles – Cooper toiled night and day to create a solid engine. “It was riddled with complexities – getting the city to display, moving people behind other stuff,” he recalls. “It was kind of driven by one function called ‘coversprite’, I remember. Basically, the guys were drawn, then you drew over the top again to cover them. Sorting that out went on for about a year.”

“I sort of inspired the isometric engine,” says Corpes. “I’d been working on an optimised scrolling isometric engine some time before it started that worked by only updating the parts of the screen that had changed – as opposed to Populous that just redrew the whole scene – but it went nowhere. Sean basically rewrote this a year or so later when we moved to the PC.”



“Glenn was the expert programmer, and I was… well, I’m still rubbish at it,” laughs Cooper. “For me, it was just about keeping things simple. But he knew a lot about technical stuff. I’d call him up at, like, four in the morning, and I’d say: ‘Glenn, I’ve got a problem. You’ve got to come in sort it out, because I’ve got to put it on to these disks and send it off’. And he’d be like” – Cooper makes an exasperated, theatrical sigh – “‘Oh… bloody hell! Right, I’m coming in’. And he’d come in and just sort it out.”

Corpes, originally hired as an artist, is arguably the great unsung hero of Bullfrog’s meteoric rise to the videogame development A-list. “Glenn was instrumental in that way,” enthuses Cooper. “He could see the engine; he could see the technology. He couldn’t necessarily see the game, but he could see the technology – raising or lowering the land in Populous, ways in which we could have really tall buildings in Syndicate and have people going behind stuff. And then there was Magic Carpet. If you take him out of the equation, I don’t think Bullfrog would have been anything, if you see what I mean. He was an inspiration. He’d come up with a technical idea, and we’d be, like: ‘Fuck me, that would be awesome! We could do this, and this, and this…’”

Drawing obvious inspiration from a certain Ridley Scott opus, Syndicate’s hi-res cityscapes were highly striking. “Paul McLaughlin and Chris Hill drove the visualisation side, and I was a right pain for them to work with,” admits Cooper. “We had to build these sprites, and they were all cut into little pieces: heads, bodies, legs.”



“Sean was always a pain in the arse,” says McLaughlin. “He’s mellowed a bit in recent years, I gather, but in the old days he wasn’t much of a ‘people person’. If he wanted something he’d ‘tell’ you rather than ask, and if he thought it was shit – which he always did – he’d tell you that, too. He got quite frustrated with his requirements being lost in the programmer-artist translator. Often he’d end up red in the face with Chris and myself just staring at him with smiles on our faces. It was cool, though: we were all learning together, really, and everyone on the team did have a sense of humour.”

“The sprites were a nightmare, though,” McLaughlin explains. “They had separate heads, torsos and legs so we could assemble a variety of characters. Creating something that looked like a person on that scale, let alone the cool superdetailed images in our heads, was such a struggle. We made a deliberate decision to sacrifice colours for dots. This was one of the first ‘engines’ that used such high resolution and we were really excited. Not seeing pixels and noticing aliasing was such a revelation – we felt the future of computer graphics was upon us.”

“It ran in 640x480 while everyone else was writing in 320x200,” Corpes contributes. “Everyone thought it was SVGA because of the resolution, but it actually ran in a very well chosen 16 colours and worked on any old VGA card thanks to the way it only updated parts of the screen at a time. It was all really sneaky stuff.”

“Looking at the game today, what you see on screen has very little to do with what was in my head,” continues McLaughlin. “Chris Hill and I had visions of dystopian futuristic cityscapes like in Blade Runner, with lots of trash, hover cars and atmosphere. Of course, very little of this came across in the end, and I’m now convinced that future civilisations won’t be tile and sprite-based.”

Syndicate’s unusually dark feel was not restricted to its countenance. Long before Grand Theft Auto, the populations of Syndicate’s isometric stages were populated with bit-part, bitmap victims. Self-appointed moral arbiters may blanche at the suggestion, but engaging in wanton, pixel-based slaughter was one of the game’s principle pleasures, and was always designed to be just that.

“I wanted to flame them, I wanted to shoot them, I wanted to blow them up,” says Cooper of Syndicate’s sprites. “I think we didn’t quite implement it as well as we could have. I’d liked to have seen bodies flying through the air; I wanted to minigun people and have them pinned to a wall. All those things we so badly wanted to do, but we’d have been adding another year to the project time, or so it felt at the time. Memory constraints were the big problem.”

From the explosive gauss gun – originally an EMP weapon, according to Trowers – to what must be the most satisfying implementation of a minigun in videogame history, Syndicate was packed with a wishlist of excellent armaments, upgrades and gadgets. “Once we’d developed the gameplay and we’d got the squad-based shooter element, people started coming up with ideas for weapons,” recalls Cooper. “The persuadatron came out of nowhere, really – I don’t know to this day whose idea it was. I think Peter’s still convinced that it’s his. It created something interesting: being able to build an army, and was actually quite simple to do. It could be done a lot better… Ah, if we were to do it again now…”



With a management component that drip-fed new gadgetry as players progressed through its many levels, Syndicate’s frontend was a perfect complement to its tense, often frantic in-game combat. Strangely, Trowers remembers it with a certain regret. “In hindsight, it was a bit of a pain to implement as it made it quite easy to break the game,” he admits. “You could just sit there and wait for the next thing to be ready. The balancing of the
mid-levels also became a bit of a nightmare as you couldn’t guarantee what the player had access to at
the start of the mission. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it was a cool feature, but I’d do it differently nowadays.”

Obviously, certain features had to be dropped; working with 80386-based PCs and needing to maximise compatibility, sacrifices were made. Cooper has one piece of trivia that may surprise one-time Syndicate devotees: its vehicles were only ‘locked’ to roads at a late stage in its development. “We had, at one point, allowed players to get into a car and drive anywhere,” he reveals. “The reason I took it out is because it didn’t look very good – we didn’t have enough memory to store the eight different directions for each vehicle and had to reduce them to four. And when playing multiplayer, what was to stop players from simply running over the other agents? We couldn’t come up with anything that solved that. It was quite late on in the alpha when I took it out.”

However, the biggest disappointment for the Syndicate team was the enforced removal of its multiplayer mode during the QA process. “EA couldn’t get the network game working on their system, so we had to drop it,” laments Trowers. “This was a major blow in my opinion as the multiplayer game was so strong and not many people got to experience it that way. It was how we used to play it, and it was the way it was designed to be played. Snipers behind buildings, carjackings and drive-by shootings take on a whole new dimension when it’s your mate you’ve just ambushed.”

Although later reinstated for the American Revolt mission pack, the loss of out-of-the-box network play was a huge shame. Might Bullfrog be regarded, with id, as a pioneer of network gaming were it to have been fixed in time? Who can say? Listening to Trowers, though, it’s clear that the published version of Syndicate lost a killer feature. “People who would normally leave at six on the dot would hang around for hours to play the game,” he explains. “If you weren’t on your toes at lunchtime, the game would fill up and you’d be left out. I’m not sure how much of this is rosetinted specs, but I’m pretty sure, even at the time, we knew we had a classic on our hands.”

“It was Sean’s first crack at leading a team, and he really did everything he could to make it work,” says McLaughlin. “In all honesty I think it’s one of the most fun titles I’ve worked on. It’s certainly the one I remember playing at lunchtimes, after work and at home even when I didn’t have to.”

Syndicate shipped to the sound of critical approbation and a healthy rustling of cash changing hands. Closing our interview, we ask: how does Cooper feel about it now? Does he have any particular regrets? “Looking back now, it’s a bit of a masterpiece in some ways,” he replies. “It was one of the highlights of my life working with Glenn, with Alex and with Peter. Looking back on the working relationships we had, on the team, that was the big thing.

"My biggest regret is that we didn’t put enough destruction into it. I would have really liked to have, you know, fired a rocket launcher at a building and have a hole appear in it. But you just couldn’t do it at the time. I wanted to see people flung into the air, people landing on buildings, people landing on cars that screech to a halt, all that kind of behaviour, that kind of world. But we just didn’t know how to do it.

“It was my second game, and I’d only just started to get to grips with C at that point. We were there until four in the morning most days, getting in at 11 in the mornings. We were so inexperienced, all of us: a bunch of guys going into so-called work, and it was a hobby! Someone was paying us good money to go in and do it!”

Review by Andy Nuttall for Amiga Format, Issue 49, August 1993, p.p.83-85

CYBORG TECHNOLOGY

synd_amiga_inmenu_team_mods_none
Suffering because your cyborgs are just a bit too nerdy? Try buying one of the range of add-ons that Syndicate offers you to modify your agents.

ARMS
Enables your 'borg to carry heavy items with no loss of speed.
LEGS
Moves the cyborg more quickly around the mission zone.
CHEST
Metallic chest plate to help survive direct hits. Also contains explosive charge for self-destruction.
HEART
Improves overall physical strength and stamina of cyborg.
EYES
Helps fire more accurately, and react to hazards more quickly.
BRAIN
Make your agent more aware of his surroundings, and quickens decision-making under pressure.

Syndicate, sindi-kat, n Abbr. synd. An association of people or companies organised to promote a common interest. The new game from Bullfrog, makers of Populous 2, is sinister. If you have ever seen films like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner or Gerorge Lucas' THX 1138, you will know what I mean - futuristic science-fiction which is eerily life-like, and eminently plausible.

Syndicate is a strategy game, where the 'common interest' is to complete takeover of the world. Of course, this ahs been the subject of films and games since the year dot, bur rarely has it been as effective as with this game. What is different here, though, is you are not the megalomaniac seeking ultimate power. Instead you are an agent who works for the big cheese, the syndicate, trying to do a job and get up the employment ladder. Morals are out of the window - you have to do what you are told, no matter how weird or immoral the orders are.

Cybermen
You are in charge of a number of cyborg agents, who are programmed to follow your orders via remote control. Your monitor progress using the display screen, which is also used to give you orders and progress reports. The cyborgs are either sex, but all basic models have a similar strength and resilience.

You are given a certain amount of money to equip your 'borgs through the first mission. After this, raising further dosh is all up to you. There are lots of ways to raise money, including raising the taxes for the people in the territories which are controlled by your syndicate, and capturing enemies and their weapons so that your syndicate can use them in their research. They pay well for any enemy materials you bring back.

The manual blurb is worth a mention: "After winning a mission you have earned the right to levy outrageous rates of tax on the helpless citizens... If you are as popular as the Sheriff of Nottingham as a result, who cares! He did not have armed psychotic cyborgs for back-up".
(Syndicate Amiga screenshot from Atlantic Accelerator mission)

Mission possible
The first mission is easy. You buy a pistol, and maybe a shotgun or a medikit for each of your four active cyborgs. It is not worth investing in extra body parts yet, because the mission is really easy and you have not got much money.
It is, however, a good idea to plough funds into researching new equipment. In the alter missions you will need powerful weapons and well-equipped cyborgs, so it is best to research into advanced technology early on.

You can actively research in two main areas: Modifications and Equipment. The Mods are things like more powerful legs, and a strengthened chest cage to protect your 'borg - see Cyborg Technology. The equipment is split into three: Automatic, Heavy and Miscellaneous. Investing in Automatic will bring in weapons such as an Uzi sub-machine gun; heavy will yield weaponry like the Gauss gun; while Miscellaneous will produce useful items such as an auto-mapper or an access card. See 'A Call To Arms' on the next page.
A CALL TO ARMS

synd_weapon_uzi synd_weapon_minigun synd_weapon_longrange
Syndicate, being a game based around a violent futuristic world, naturally places a range of powerful weapons at your disposal. Let us take a look at them...

PISTOL
The weakest of all the weapons, but available for no cost. Medium range, useful as a back-up weapon.

SHOTGUN
Pump action shotgun with a large spread of shells. Useful at close range.

UZI SMG
Quick-firing weapon with a medium range. Fires many shells and costs very little to reload.

LONG RANGE RIFLE
Highly accurate, with a very long range. Single shot, useful for assassinations.

FLAMER
Produces a stream of napalm-like ignited jelly which sticks to target and burns. Highly sinister.

MINI GUN
Heavy motor-driven machine gun with a fairly long range. Most devastating when fired in short, accurate bursts.

LASER GUN
Small high-powered laser with a long range and high accuracy. Useful for sniping and disabling vehicles.

GAUSS GUN
Portable long-range rocket launcher, with three rockets. Useful for destroying tanks and massacring crowds of people.

TIME BOMB
High explosives, complete with timer and detonator. Leaves structures intact but erases people and vehicles.

PERSUADERTRON
The single most important weapon of all. A very short range of weapon which fires a chemical at a target, and brainwashes the target to your way of thinking. The target then follows you zombie-style for the rest of the mission.
If you 'persuade' 16 civilians you may also 'persuade' a police officer. Persuade 32 civilians and you can go grab an enemy agent to add to your cryogenic stock of cyborgs. You are paid at the end of each mission for all the 'persuaded' civilians who survive.

Once you have set the research going, and kitted out your crew, mission one begins. This involves going to a city, and killing two enemy agents. They do not put up much of a struggle, and you soon hear a robot telling you "Mission completed".

Syndicate will tell then display a world map showing the amount of territory which your syndicate controls. The next ara available for a takeover bid will flash, so clicking on it will accept that mission. Later you will find there is more than one route available, so if you get stuck in a level you can always try a different route.
By now your research should show results. The Equip screen will have a larger list of available equipment - for a price - and you can select these for your 'borgs. Now may be the time to add more money to the research plan, but how much is up to you.

Heavy policing
The 50 missions vary in size and complexity, but rarely can you complete a mission first time. Fortunately you can save your position at the end of a mission, so if you screw up you can always try again.
In most areas you will find a police presence, who do not really bother you until you draw your gun. If you shoot your gun, then both policemen and enemy agents will rally round and try to shoot your cyborgs. If you manage to take any of them out, they will die and leave you their weapon. Sometimes it is an advanced weapon like a Gauss gun or a laser, and if you keep it until you finish the mission you will be paid for it. Your syndicate will then be able to create the weapon. Using this method you could obtain a Gauss gun on mission seven, whereas using research would take much longer. Neat touches like this abound - it is very like real-life, in that everything you do in a mission will have a knock-on effect in the rest of the game.
synd_amiga_ingame_mission2_car
synd_amiga_ingame_largefire

All engrossing
Syndicate is a very involved game, mixing strategy and arcade elements for a truly fun game to play, and one which will keep you coming back for more. Unfortunately for A500/600 owners, the game does run rather slowly on these machines - it is still playable, though. Still, if there was ever an excuse to upgrade your machine... Although there have been power-struggle games before, Syndicate approaches the genre from a new direction, and playing it is a refreshing experience (as well as a damn good tension release). Also, Bullfrog have other missions in the pipeline, along with a multi-player version where up to eight people can play against each other, each using a separate Amiga.
Syndicate
£34.99

* Adrenaline-pug action mixed with clever strategy to give a supremely polished and well-thought-out game.
* Superb Blade Runner-style graphics and effective sound give the game a dark, doom-laden atmosphere.
* Controlling the vehicles is a bit fiddly.
* Pure, unashamed violence...
* ... and/but incredible fun to play.

Verdict: 91%

Although Syndicate is incredible fun and massively addictive, I would have trouble recommending it to kids. There are some disturbing overtones to the game, which occasionally go beyond simple sci-fi.
Head Bullfrog Peter Molyneux commented: "I did not originally set out to create a violent game, but having said that I did not want to pull any punches. Obviously it is violent... but there is nothing I would like to see more than ratings in computer games". Well, if Syndicate had a certificate, it would be 18. Having said that, I have told you that it is violent, so if you are easily 'persuaded' steer clear. You have been warned.
Andy Nuttall

Review by Dave Cusick for "Gamer", Amiga Computing, Issue 65, October 1993

Yes folks, time to indicate your intention to vindicate yourself with Syndicate. What a load of Bullfrog...

Yesssss! It has arrived! Raise the flag, crack open the champers, stick a plum under a viper and rejoice, for Syndicate has finally tumbled gently through the letterbox. I had begun to think it might just never appear, fading away into the mists of time as one of those games that was supposed to happen but did not. But no. I need not have fretted, because all along it was being nurtured and developed, and at last it has crept onto the shelves of computer game emporiums from here to sunny Slough.
But before we embark upon a fascinating excursion into the dark, dank depths of Peter Molyneux's imagination, let me take you on a reflective stroll down memory lane.

Aeons upon aeons ago, when the world was young and Paul Daniels had hair, Bullfrog released a product unto the masses with the cunning title of Populous. It was a revolutionary concept because it filled a niche in the market and gave birth to the "God game" genre. It was also a damn fine piece of software to boot.
Consequently, Bullfrog established quite a reputation for themselves, and deservedly so because since then every release has been heralded as a classic. Syndicate looks to follow suit.
It is set in the future. But it is not a happy, flowery type of future. You won't find communities, rallying together in a soap-opera type way here, by Jove. I mean, let us face it, you could not make a very good computer game out of someone going around being nice to people, cutting their lawns, washing their cars and buying them nice presents, could you? Of course not, and the blokes at Bullfrog know that. So instead, they have opted for a slightly different picture of what awaits us in the near future.

You know how some people think the future will be really crap? Whoever wrote Blade Runner obviously did, painting a picture of a society in which everyone is out for themselves and people like Marcus Tandy are seen as ideal role models (oh, how I miss those frequent forays into the events in Los barcos).
Well, that is the image of the future that Bullfrog has, and that is the future in which Syndicate is set. Apparently, the world is controlled by vast multinational corporations. The other major development is the invention of the CHIP by some boffin. Inserted in the neck, the CHIP is the ultimate drug, cutting the users off from the real world. I suppose today's equivalent is simply getting "out of your tree" and listening to The Orb (or so Simon assures me). Anyway, this development enabled the syndicates to move in and basically control the people through suggestion via the CHIP.
VISION
G G G G G G G G G *
AUDIO
G G G G G G G * * *
DIFFICULTY
G G G G G G G G * *
LASTABILITY
G G G G G G G G * *
A modern masterpiece. The self-respecting gamer should ensure they have Syndicate nestling snugly on the games shelf as soon as possible. 92%
Publisher:
Developer:
Disks:
HD Install:
Size: Electronic Arts
Bullfrog
4
Yes
1 Mb

URBAN SPRAWLS
The syndicates are now warring with one another, using cyborgs to do the dirty work. As a young chappie working for one such syndicate, you control a group of cyborgs, and you have got to carry out a number of missions set in the massive urban sprawls of the future.
However, before you dart into the bathroom to top yourself with a razor blade, let me tell you that Syndicate is a very absorbing and interesting game. In fact, I might go so far as to say it could become a classic.

The brilliantly atmospheric movie-like intro sequence does a marvellous job of setting the scene. You really feel as though you have been catapulted into the dreary streets of tomorrow, especially since at regular intervals between the missions you are shown more groovy animations.
The ultimate goal is to take over the world, but obviously you are not going to achieve this all in one go. You must be systematic and take things one step at a time. First things first, you can customise your Syndicate by selecting a logo design and colour, and by naming it too. Then you will be presented with a map screen, and starting from your one lone sector you can move into adjacent sectors and conquer them by completing a mission.

The gameplay consists of using the mouse to shift your lads around, and opening fire at regular intervals by way of pressing the right mouse button. The interface is simple enough to understand. In a few short minutes you will be cavorting around the cities of tomorrow opening fire on many an innocent passer-by.

You can select one of the four agents you control simply by clicking on one of the four numbered boxes in the top-left-hand corner of the screen. You can also choose to move all the agents together by clicking on an icon depicting four little stick men.
Each agent can carry eight items, be they guns, scanners, or other special devices. When you have selected an agent you can then select the item you want to use. If you select a gun and then use up all the ammunition in the heat of battle, the computer will cleverly switch to a weapon with ammo in it, allowing you to get on with the task in hand, namely that of wasting people.

Some of the missions involve you traipsing around searching out scientists and "persuading" them to join your cause with the help of a Persuadertron gun. Others involve you being accosted by copious numbers of enemy operatives, and your task is simply to explain to them the folly of their ways, with the aid of an Uzi sub-machine gun. If at all possible you should try and avoid robbing helpless civilians of their lives.
If you spot any cars, you can either pump them full of lead or leap into them. You can have great fun cruising around the town, opening fire on anybody and everybody who just happens to be nearby.
On some missions you can also hitch a ride on trains, whch are fortunately far more punctual than BR ones and won't be cancelled due to leaves (or dead bodies) on the line.
synd_amiga_ingame_aiming1

The graphics throughout are varied and somewhat tasty, being of the variety that will make you leap up and down in glee whenever you come across a new type of building or feature. Sound also helps conjure up the image of a sad, grey future, and the gun effects are certainly beefy enough.
The way in which everyone else goes about their business until you do something against them adds considerably to the gameplay, because you feel you really are just a small part of a major city.
Between missions you can invest in research into new weapons. You can also choose different cyborgs for the missions from your stocks. Weapons and equipment can be bought and taxes on provinces you rule can be adjusted to increase the amount of cash in your reserves.
There is bags of depth, with so many provinces to take over. Each mission is subtly different to the previous one, so you won't get bored quickly.

This is one of the best games released for ages, and it deserves a lot of success. Another classic from the boys at Bullfrog who, it seems, can do no wrong.
DAVE CUSICK

"Gamer", Amiga Computing, Issue 65, October 1993, p.p.116-117