Syndicate

aka: BOB, Cyber Assault, Higher Functions
Moby ID: 281
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

In the future, the world is controlled by a handful of global corporations (syndicates). You are the Marketing director (hitman) for one of these companies. It is your job to take control away from the competitors. The job is not one of diplomacy, but one of brute force and physical control. Advance your way to the top of the corporation by successfully completing your missions and managing the money you make from your territories.

The gameplay is visually reminiscent of X-Com, with an angled top-down perspective, but it is real-time rather than turn-based. You have missions ranging from infiltrate and capture, to seek and destroy. In each of these, you direct a team of four agents as they move through the world shooting at anything that gets in their way.

You can upgrade and modify your agents, as well as equip them with tools you have researched or liberated from opposing syndicates. As you complete missions, you gain more funds to use for purchasing agents or researching upgrades and equipment.

Spellings

  • הסינדיקט - Hebrew spelling
  • シンジケート - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

68 People · View all

Game Design
  • Bullfrog Productions Ltd.
Producer
Management
Assistant Producer
Programmer
Computer Intelligence
Graphics
Level Design
Sound
Music
Technical Support
Intro Sequence
Additional Support
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 79% (based on 42 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 214 ratings with 10 reviews)

Another classic Bullfrog game, this time set in a cool cyberpunk dystopia.

The Good
The sheer thrill of sending your four fully armed, minigun-toting, adrenaline-fueled psychotic death machines into a crowd of defenseless civilians has never been surpassed. Customising your trenchcoat-clad death squad with all manner of cybernetic enhancements and high-tech weapons is good clean fun.

The atmospheric music and crisp, clear graphics greatly add to the feeling of immersion into Syndicate's dark, disturbing world.

There is a large assortment of missions on offer, ranging from generic "kill everything in sight" to the slightly more subtle "persuade this scientist type person to join our illustrious organisation's R&D department."

The game really draws you in with its very atmospheric and moody music and graphics. I remember great elation and excitement after assassinating my assigned target quickly turning to horror as my elite squad is ambushed and ruthlessly mown down by the forces of an evil enemy syndicate (fully equipped with trenchcoats and multicoloured hats).

Syndicate allows you to enact all your antisocial activities in the safe, private, reprisal free world of the computer game. Stealing cars, arming civilians, laying waste to entire cities with horrendously powerful weaponry, all this and more awaits you.

(Technical nit picker note) - The laser is realistically invisible! And it also vaporises people in a rather disturbing way.

The Bad
Once you get to the point that you can afford energy shields and miniguns, the game becomes slightly easier, as you can activate the shields in succession, and become effectively invincible. This doesn't really make the games easier though, because you must still drop your shields to attack.

The isometric viewpoint looks very nice, but can make things confusing when your agents are on different levels or moving around inside buildings.

It doesn't seem fair that the player only gets to play with four agents, whilst the AI can throw hordes of mindless killing machines at you. Then again, they all drop guns for the looting.

The Bottom Line
Syndicate is an excellent game with few faults. The story is absorbing, the features are well thought out and numerous, the difficulty level is almost spot on and the gauss gun is supremely satisfying. What else do you need? Buy this game, lock yourself in your room, don your trenchcoat and prepare to perform a "Hostile takeover" (of the world).

DOS · by Evan Kerr (9) · 2004

It left a great taste in my mouth........ for almost 8 years.

The Good
In the summer of 1994, I was sworn to my nes. Then one time I went to my babysitter's and he had this new game, Syndicate. I was unaware of what that was, and when I watched it, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. As I watched the blood spray up after he hit some innocent civilian with the minigun and received no consequences, my mouth hung down for a while. Instantly I began saving up for this game, and it took me almost 2 months. When I finally had the money to purchase this game, I went to my local Electronics Boutique, which was then very small, and dumped all my one dollar bills and change onto the table, and the cashier smiled, but then when he checked his stock, he was all out. He felt sorry for me, and without even my asking, he ordered the game for me directly from the publisher. This, of course, was way before people working at electronics boutique became arrogant pricks, and 2 weeks later, I finally got the game which started my love for pc games. The graphics were slick, the game was actual fun, and I spent a good long time till I got it beat. I loved this game, and I wish people gave it due credit.

The Bad
The music sucked, and there was no ending.

The Bottom Line
Along with Half Life, it's games like this that make me remember why I have to work so hard to balance games and school.

DOS · by oh noz (4) · 2001

Very good and sometimes very frustrating game

The Good
The graphics are of very fine detail (thanks to the use of VESA modes) and very nice to look at. The overall atmosphere is immense - from the cool introduction video sequence to the dark, mood-enhancing ingame music, everything reflects this cold future world where the syndicates rule.

The missions are suspenseful and you really got many different tasks to master. Rescuing some professor, killing the other syndicate's agent teams or just gathering some innocent people as new recruits are just three of the diverse missions you can encounter. The mission descriptions are always informative and sometimes even downright funny. With the huge arsenal of weapons and other stuff to research, you really have something to do even outside the combat action.

The best thing of all is the really high level of detail. There are innocent bystanders, running away in terror when I draw my gun. There is the brave policeman, trying to stop my team - but he has no chance against four miniguns :) You can shoot waste baskets which would burst into flames, you can drive any car you encounter (and blow them up)... and it's so suspenseful when standing in an empty street with your agents, watching for an enemy to come around the corner, hoping he won't have a Gauss Cannon or Laser which could fry you instantly... and on the other hand, you DO hope he has some major gun in his pocket which you can loot when he's dead :)

The Bad
Sometimes, the action could be a bit confusing - due to the fact that the perspective was static. You couldn't always figure out where the enemy agents were (because you didn't see anyone). One or two missions (Atlantis for example) were simply unfair and could only be mastered if you had luck.

On most 1993 PCs, the graphics were a bit jumpy (hires graphics and slow CPU doesn't fit too well).

Spoiler Alert: the endgame sequence is hilarious - one page of "Thank you" text and the game will exit to DOS :(

The Bottom Line
Syndicate is a very good strategy game with LOTS of intelligent ideas. If you see it - buy it! And play it all!

DOS · by phlux (4295) · 2002

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Syndicate appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Civilians

In pre-release versions of the game, the cities apparently also featured (in addition to the normal civilians) Mothers with baby-carriages and Dogs. These extra innocents were removed from the game before its release.

German version

In the German version, the blood was removed.

Influences

The architecture in the game, aside from more obvious cyberpunk influences, is also inspired by Surrey Research Park, where Bullfrog offices were situated at the time.

Multiplayer

An article by Edge magazine, dated December 4, 2009, and titled "The Making Of: Syndicate" features interviews with several developers of Syndicate.

Among other things, it is revealed that the game was initially developed as a multiplayer game. The developers built and tested it as a network game first. Then, based on the experience they gained from their network games, they started to build single-player missions.

However, during the Quality Assurance process, it was decided that the multiplayer component had to be removed because, in Alex Trowers' words: "EA couldn’t get the network game working on their system, so we had to drop it".

The American Revolt add-on would however restore the multiplayer capability of the game.

Player characters

Syndicate's four character design was based on a similar concept which had been removed from an earlier Bullfrog title, Flood, during development. At one point in production Syndicate had as many as eight on-screen characters to lead, but the number was cut back to four as the majority of the development team felt that controlling so many on-screen characters was unwieldy.

Programming tutorial

Bullfrog did a special feature with UK games mag PC Format, at the time ('93) in which they wrote a C Programming tutorial based on some of the Syndicate code. The tutorial involved using the internal graphics libraries from Syndicate to animate and move agents on the screen. Although the C tutorial was largely useless it was a fairly interesting read for those interested in the way Bullfrog operated.

Awards

  • Amiga Joker
    • Issue 02/1994 – Best Strategical in 1993 (Readers' Vote)
  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #67 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #75 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1994 – Best MS-DOS Game in 1993

Information also contributed by Agent 5, lulalurl, PCGamer77, phlux and Tibes80

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  • MobyGames ID: 281
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Brian Hirt.

Amiga added by Famine3h. Jaguar added by Kartanym. Windows added by Sciere. Amiga CD32 added by Kabushi. Macintosh, PC-98, FM Towns added by Terok Nor. 3DO added by Indra was here.

Additional contributors: xroox, Chentzilla, Martin Smith, Crawly, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, lilalurl, Rik Hideto, Victor Vance, FatherJack.

Game added September 19, 1999. Last modified February 7, 2024.