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

  • ההינדיקט - Hebrew spelling
  • ć‚·ćƒ³ć‚øć‚±ćƒ¼ćƒˆ - 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)

Interesting at First, then Repetative

The Good
The cyberpunk genre was new, and this game had the feel of it. The graphics were awesome too. The RPG element was cool, as you built up each of your team's skills and weapons.

The Bad
However, about 1/2 into the game, the novelty wore off. I had maxed out my characters, seen all the cool explosions and vehicle types, and was looking at hours of the same missions again and again.

The Bottom Line
Blade Runner meets Command and Conquer.

DOS · by Tony Van (2803) · 2000

Perhaps one of the most addictive action/strategy games of all time...

The Good
In Syndicate, everything came together to create a near-perfect gaming experience. With great gameplay mechanics, excellent graphics (I would say they are better than those of its sequel, Syndicate Wars) and cool weapons, playing the bad guy has never been so fun. The tactical part of gameplay was plain sadistic fun as your agents run around town mowing down cops and enemy agents (and for those with genocidal tendencies, the civilians too!), while the pressures of managing money and research gave the game a satisfying strategic component. Syndicate was a bit on the easy side, but no one will ever forget the first time they played the Atlantic Accelerator mission, where death came in mere seconds for an unprepared player. All in all, Syndicate stands as one of the best games ever created, and easily the best game to come from Peter Molyneux.

The Bad
The worst part of the game was the music. There were only two different tracks: one when nothing was happening and one when enemy agents were near. Brief music clips were played after mission success or failure, but other than that it was the same music mission after mission. To add to the tedium, both tracks were short and repetitive, which will make you want to turn off the music if it weren't for the fact that you could tell enemy agents were near without looking at the minimap just by hearing the "Enemy Agents Near" music. It's a good thing the sound effects are excellent, or you'd be seriously wondering why you paid good money for a sound card...

The Bottom Line
A classic game, standing tall beside legends such as Doom and SimCity 2000.

DOS · by tritium4ever (37) · 2023

Bullfrogā€™s Masterpiece

The Good
I first spotted this game at Babbageā€™s about a month before it came out. A huge pile of empty game boxes surrounding a cardboard cyborg and a few posters with awesome screenshots. I had just started getting into cyberpunk science fiction so I knew this was going to be a must have. I saved up for a month and got there right when the store opened on the gameā€™s release day. I even bought a sound blaster so that I didnā€™t have to use my PC speaker. A game that looked this good deserved the best. It took me over three hours of sound card IRQ wrangling and boot disk making to get Syndicate to run properly. Having only a 386 computer with 4 Megs of RAM meant that a lot of tweaking had to be done before I could play even the simplest of games. Then, just after midnight on the night of the worst ice storm that Texas had ever seen, the gameā€™s opening movie started and my jaw dropped. I had never seen a pre-rendered movie for a game before. Sure, I had seen games start with splash screens and pictures but never anything this smooth and slick.

The gameā€™s interface is very nice and immersive. As a matter of fact I have never seen another control system that makes you feel like you are IN the game as much as this one. Every action is controlled through a holographic computer aboard your luxurious corporate blimp high above the city. This gives a logical reason to why the action is presented from a third person view from above. Selecting your team, arming them, setting up research options, paying for hints from informants, and taxing the local populous are all done though this virtual computer and it really makes you feel like you are using a state-of-the-art OS from Blade Runner or Nueromancer.

The graphics still pack a punch today as they did almost ten years ago. While the scrolling can be a little jerky at times all of the animations are smooth and the color scheme fits the gameā€™s theme nicely.

The level of interaction is pretty amazing. You can blow up cars or steal them; set fire to trash bins and mailboxes, torch trees leaving burnt stumps.

The sound effects are perfect. Environmental sounds such as an explosionā€™s rumble or an electronic doorā€™s hum provide a lot of ambience. But how do the weapons sound? Uzis, lasers, rockets, and your Gatling gun (the best weapon in the game) all have a very full and deep sound.

You can choose to research weapons or agent upgrades between missions. You have to balance your budget to make sure you donā€™t spend too much on available equipment so that you can purchase future items as they become available. The research feature adds an entire new level of planning to tactics. Go into a territory without advanced enough combat armor or weak weapons and the enemy will smash you in seconds.

After you mow down enemy agents you can steal their weapons and equipment. If you steal a weapon more advanced than any that you are currently using it actually decreases the amount of time needed to research it. Nice feature! You can also hijack enemy agents using a weapon called the persuadatron and bring them back to your base to add to your talent pool of mercenaries. The persuadatron can even be used to seize control of civilians, police, and guards allowing you to form a large mob that will fight with you, picking up weapons as they go. Brilliant!

Upgrading your agents has a very noticeable effect on game play. Put some new cyber-legs into agent John and notice that he can outrun the rest of your team. Arms, eyes, and even brains can be augmented to the point that you can leave your agents to their own devices and they will ā€œhold the fortā€ for a while.

The Bad
There are only two musical pieces in the game and they get repetitive very quickly. You can turn the music off but since it changes to reflect when an enemy is near itā€™s usually best to keep it on.

The A.I. is pretty dumb. Enemy agents will rush you taking the shortest path possible. They never flank, set up traps, or try to create choke points when engaging you. They will never retreat either, just continue to advance to certain doom wading through cannon fire and bombs. Guess those advanced brain augmentations arenā€™t that helpful.

The Bottom Line
Syndicate is practically perfect in every way. Even after ten years this game has never left my hard drive! A classic that I highly suggest you play.

DOS · by saladpuncher (22) · 2003

[ 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 couldnā€™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 ā€“ Best Strategical in 1993 (Readers' Vote)
  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #67 in the ā€œ150 Best Games of All Timeā€ list
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #75 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1994 ā€“ 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. FM Towns, Macintosh, PC-98 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.