Syndicate

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Description

In the future, the world is controlled by a handful of global corporations (syndicates). You are the Marketing director (hit man) 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.

Screenshots

Promo Images

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Trailer

Alternate Titles

• "הסינדיקט" -- Hebrew spelling
• "Higher Functions" -- Working title
• "Cyber Assault" -- Working title
• "BOB" -- Working title
• "シンジケート" -- Japanese spelling

Part of the Following Groups

• Gameplay Feature: Squad Management
• Syndicate series

User Reviews

Another classic Bullfrog game, this time set in a cool cyberpunk dystopia.	DOS	Evan Kerr (10)
Bullfrog’s Masterpiece	DOS	saladpuncher (24)
A unique strategy game with plenty of carnage, although at a miniature scale. The Mac port was done in-house by Bullfrog and is rock-solid.	Macintosh	Tashtego (156)
Very good and sometimes very frustrating game	DOS	phlux (4340)
Interesting at First, then Repetative	DOS	Tony Van (2855)
Simply The Best	DOS	Tony Chaplin (1)
It left a great taste in my mouth........ for almost 8 years.	DOS	oh noz (5)
Perhaps one of the most addictive action/strategy games of all time...	DOS	tritium4ever (38)
An original, addictive game...	DOS	Brian Hirt (10072)
An excellent and innovative game.	DOS	Tomer Gabel (4645)

Critic Reviews

Amiga Games	Amiga	Jul, 1993	92 out of 100	92
Amiga Format	Amiga	Aug, 1993	91 out of 100	91
Gambler	DOS	Dec, 1993	90 out of 100	90
Play Time	DOS	Jul, 1993	88 out of 100	88
All Game Guide	DOS	Jun, 1993		80
Just Games Retro	DOS	Jul 11, 2007		80
ASM (Aktueller Software Markt)	Amiga	Jul, 1993	4 out of 5	80
Video Games & Computer Entertainment	3DO	Sep, 1995	7 out of 10	70
GamePro (US)	Jaguar	Mar, 1995	3.5 out of 5	70
Game Zero	Jaguar	May, 1995	Unscored	Unscored

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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

Related Web Sites

• IGCD Internet Game Cars Database ((Game page on IGCD, a database that tries to archive vehicles found in video games.)
• Matt Chat 65 (Video interview with Sean Cooper about the development of Syndicate)
• MobyGames Classic: Syndicate (A reminiscent feature article on ShackNews written based on the MobyGames entry for the game, specifically drawing on the reviews and description.)
• "The Making Of: Syndicate" article by Edge Magazine (An article by the Edge magazine about the making of Syndicate.)