Syndicate

Players looking for a truly innovative first-person shooter will find glimpses of one, but not as a single-player experience. Syndicate's world is oppressively violent and cynical, which doesn't do its messy story any favors, but when opened up for 4-person teams and a standalone mission structure it makes perfect sense.

Syndicate is a fun shooter but it falls short of being great. The campaign is on the short side and feels slightly generic, although the action itself is immensly entertaining. The separate co-op mode adds some great value and ends up being the stronger part of the package.

There's a lot to like about Syndicate's mechanics and recoil-rich gunplay, and your cache of cybernetic powers elevates the game above most rote corridor shooters. But Syndicate doesn't know what it wants to be at its core, and its dry protagonist blasts through hyper-violent environments with no motivation or desire.

It's an above average monthly achiever; a confident performer that pushes itself hard, but never quite goes the extra mile to secure employee of the month.

Solid shooting and a handful of suicide-inducing party tricks can only get you so far, and it's this absence of atmosphere and lack of connection to your surroundings that holds Syndicate back from becoming a fulfilling experience.

Awful bosses, poor story, and unimaginative level design bury sexy guns and good looks. [Apr 2012, p.92]

Thanks to the flawed fundamentals, all the great mechanics in the world can't save Syndicate. [Apr 2012, p.84]

The co-op mode saves it from complete failure but this is a disappointingly timid update of the original, that squanders its potential in both gameplay and storytelling.

Swapping freedom and tactical depth for twitch-based thrills and teamwork has certainly made it a viable multi-platform release...However, those with longer memories may argue that rebooting Syndicate as yet another FPS, complete with identikit hero, is a bit like remaking Citizen Kane as a rom-com starring Adam Sandler. For all its multiplayer merits, I'm afraid I'm with the Luddites on this one.

I can look at Syndicate from any angle I want: In the end it stays a mediocre, though not entirely charmless Shooter, whose only real redeeming factor is the coop-mode, which also comes off a little bit half-hearted.