Syndicate Wars Appreciation Thread

[Jim Miles]

I remember my friend bringing this round when we had PS1 multiplayer sessions. We didn't really take it seriously enough, but playing it 1-player I saw it's very very very good. Easy to get stuck on a mission though. Or maybe I'm crap.

I felt G-Police took the same kind of setting. I love G-Police, it was the first game I played to really exploit the analogue controller.

[meanface]

.::: Hmm, I had the PS1 version, but it never really clicked. It felt too 'loose' and the controls were too forced for the standard PS1-controller.

I did manage to put some time into it. Sort of nice, but it ahd more pontential than I got out of it. I think a remake would be in order.

something I'd like to try one day, is playing this with 4 players. When is the next London meet? I'd actually turn up for this

[MK-1601]

That's the first I've heard that it sold well. It is on the underdogs wesite ( www.the-underdogs.org) for underrated games. If so that pleases me as it deserves to. Did it chart on the PS?

But it's not a game that seems to have been remembered much over the years. I want a sequel god damn it!

Maybe it didn't sell too well in the US?

Mind you, the underdogs website seems to carry anything they can come up with a vaguely plausible-sounding excuse for pirating, so it's not a great indicator.

[ianinthefuture]

I fucking LOVE the Syndicate series. I used to play the Amiga version all the time. Wars is one of my all time favourite games. It's simply magnificent.

Need money? Blow up the bank and rob it.

Bored? Blow shit up!

Even more bored? Kill shit!

Great stuff.

And the Persuadertron noise off the original was the bestest noise ever. And on Wars when the guy said "CATACLYSM" when you selected the Nuke Grenade.

So many memories.. So much love.. So much need for a new version..

The penultimate mission when you have about 40 agents. Star Bar.

[zy]

Syndicate wasn't really Molyneux, of course. It was Sean Cooper, and Alex Trowers, and others with whom I had the pleasure of working closely. I must have played that game more times than was healthy.

It was a real-time squad game when other squad games were still turn-based. They even balanced the base stats with early multi-player matches on their office LAN, although it was too early to include that as an option for release.

I was really drawn to the freedom of it all, years before other games followed suit. Ambush a convoy head-on? Nah, let's plant bombs in its path and trigger them with a sniper rifle. Getaway car blown up by the cops? Well, stop the traffic and indulge in some car-jacking. It had line-of-sight when you needed to bodyguard, it had faux-physics when agents were hit by explosion or shotgun blast -- enough to knock an enemy off a catwalk, tactically -- and there are some little Bullfroggish details in there too: every level had a wind factor, for instance, affecting puffs of smoke and flamethrower jets.

Bullfrog was still packed with talented people when I was there. Unfortunately, EA wasn't interested in letting them work on the games they wanted to make. It kept teasing them by letting them work on prototypes, then canning the projects and sending them back to work on tired franchises. So many promising games appeared and then vanished, never to be mentioned under pain of NDA. Cautious marketing decisions and safe play have obviously been very profitable for EA when putting out sports titles and high-profile licences, but it's not the way to run a building full of creatives who want to make their own IP. Why bother employing all these people if you don't trust them? By the end of it, EA had stomped on so many ideas that they weren't releasing enough games per year to support a studio of that size.

Ooh, sorry everyone, I normally hold all that in. It must be Monday morning.

I've got a Nintendo beta PCB right here with an early version of the SNES Syndicate ROMS. Yes, the actual ROM chips. I suppose I was expected to give it back at some point. Anyway, the Gauss Gun still looks like a penis and the flamethrower still flames things with blue flames, all of which I was led to believe wouldn't be in the final version. No idea if that's true.

[Systemshock]

The two Bullfrog games I guess that I've really enjoyed were Magic Carpet and Syndicate Wars, both not (bloody) God games interestingly enough. I wish Peter Molynuex would stop making surreal strategy God-em-ups and create either 'real' strategy games (try and compete with Creative Assembly maybe) or even bring Magic Carpet or Syndicate Wars up to date. Fable and B.C. sound the right direction to be going in but, not having an Xbox, I'll need PC ports and I don't think they'll happen.

[Uncle Mike]

Syndicate wasn't really Molyneux, of course.

Which is why it wasn't shit! </controversial>

[Systemshock]

Which is why it wasn't shit! </controversial>

I must admit to not being a Populous fan, nor a Dungeon Keeper fan nor a Black & White fan. Didn't Bullfrog also make a pretty crap driving game once too?

[squ1ffy]

I played this game so much. It was phenominally addictive - mainly because you so wanted your research to finish and get new weapons/harder agents - so you perservered through some of the levels in the hope the research will be done when it ended. And god, some of those levels were so damn hard - and no mid ways saves made it ruithless (and bloody tense as you neared the end!). They were sods as often right at the end of the level they put some punks with bombs which all went off when you killed them and took all your men out...grr! That tension when you heard the bomb countdown noise and manically scour the bodies with your mouse to try and find and pick up the damn thing before it destroys you all...

I played it so much I had an extraordinary experience - I woke up one morning after a heavy Swars session, in that groggy, half awake state. I thought 'ok, I'm awake, but what about the other 3 of me?' I genuinely thought that I was actually 4 people in one like in the game. It took about 15 seconds to work out what the fuck was going on and I was only 1 person. Pretty fucked up eh?

[polygon_monkey]

I must admit to not being a Populous fan, nor a Dungeon Keeper fan nor a Black & White fan. Didn't Bullfrog also make a pretty crap driving game once too?

Hi-Octane.

I strangely liked that game

[fasteasyfree]

I thought 'ok, I'm awake, but what about the other 3 of me?'

If that's not bullshit, then it's one of the best game-problems that I have ever heard. Kinda like after a session of F-Zero, jumping on your PC for a bit of browsing, and wondering why the web pages aren't moving faster

[RJames]

The program you're after that can slow your PC down (very useful for Ultima VII as well) is called 'MoSlo' -- you can tell it what percentage of the max speed you want your PC to run at.

Has anyone got old PC games working 'easily' with VMWare and an old DOS install? Including sound? What about SVGA VESA compatibility?

Syndicate Wars was absolutely awesome. Full rotatey-zoomy 3D, character development, vehicles, huge range of weapons, squad control, 100% destructible environments, hidden upgrades and secrets, varied missions... it was way WAY ahead of its time. Even the control system was superb, aiming and controlling 1-4 of your guys, raining destruction.

I always loved the graphics of those red lasers that started wide and then kinda focused upon where you were aiming. Also the way it said 'apocalypse' everytime you selected one of those apocalypse tac-nuke grenades!

I got stuck on a ridiculously tricky mission where you just have one samurai guy to control. I can't remember the actual objective but I tried it a LOT before giving up...

-J

[squ1ffy]

Syndicate wasn't really Molyneux, of course. It was Sean Cooper, and Alex Trowers, and others with whom I had the pleasure of working closely.

Still in touch with them? How about persuading them to write a nice Direct X patch so it works well in Windows with hi-res accelerated loveliness!

[Dr Derek Doctors]

In what way is this game 'underrated' ?

I've never heard anything but praise for it.

Not that I've played it myself.

In the US it got pretty darn low scores all around, bizarrely. It seems the UK Press loved it, but the US Press wouldn't give it the time of day.

[squ1ffy]

If that's not bullshit, then it's one of the best game-problems that I have ever heard.

Yup, totally true. It really was bizarre. Thing is, I was in that limbo-land of being just awake - if I'd thought that fully awake I'd probably be concerned for my sanity!