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シンジケート
©1993-1995 Bullfrog Productions Ltd.
Release: 1995-05-19 (¥9800)
Cartridge SHVC-AFYJ
Action/Strategy game
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Released in America as
SYNDICATE
( SNS-AFYE-USA )
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Released in Europe as
SYNDICATE
( SNSP-AFYP-XXX )
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Syndicate is a cyberpunk-themed isometric action/adventure game by Bulfrog.
In a distant and sinister future, the world is controlled by large politically driven
corporations called syndicates. The player takes control of a marketing director employed
by such corporation to conduct various kind of dirty missions - assassinate members of a rival
corporation, blow up strategic locations, persuade political figures or to simply eliminate
competing agents. Interestingly, the gameplay gets the player to do all of this dirty business
through four remote controlled cyborg agents (from a stock of eight), all programmed to strictly
follow orders, thanks to chips directly embedded in their brains. The goal of the game is to extend the
corporation's territory and to rule more provinces and cities in order to increase the corporation's fortune.
Between missions, the corporation can spend its hard earned money in research and create new weapons
and equipment, or modify and upgrade existing ones. The game features two main sections - in the first
ones, called the "HeadQuarters", the player selects and edits his agents, sets taxes and
researches new materials. The second phase, the "Mission", is where the meat of the
game truly lies. On a top-down isometric playfield, agents can be controlled one at the time
(or all at once), and elements of the scenery can be used to fulfill the missions. An arrow points
at the current objective and this is where the cyborgs must head to. A password system allows
the player to save his progress.
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Syndicate was first released by Bullfrog in 1993 for PC Computers
and Commodore's Amiga. It was later ported for home consoles such as Sega's Megadrive
(1994), 3DO (1995), Nintendo's Super Famicom (1995), Atari's Jaguar (1995),
Amiga CD32 (1995) and Sega CD (1995). It was later included in a compilation called
EA Replay released by Electronic Arts for the Playstation Portable in 2006
(emulation of the Megadrive version of the game). Thanks to the success of the original game,
Bullfrog released an expansion pack (PC and Amiga only) in 1993 called
Syndicate: American Revolt. As a side note, a combination pack of Syndicate and
American Revolt called Syndicate Plus was released in 1994. A sequel called
Syndicate Wars was later released for PC Computers (1996) and
Sony's Playstation (1997).
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
O
V
s
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Porting PC Games to home systems is always a tricky business, and to be quite honest
their sole purpose is to often milk cash out of a successful franchise. The original PC
game was bad to the bone, each mission was a rampage where the player could shoot anything
for no reason - civilians, cops, cars, you name it. This conversion is surprisingly nearly
as bloody and violent as the original - it was seriously toned down, granted, but I thought a lot more would
have happened to it if you consider the censure usually attached to console games. Sprites
are larger and the field of view smaller, but the overall gameplay is fairly close to the
original PC game. I know, it is not fair to compare this version with its computer predecessor,
but I feel the overall experience is a lot less immersing here... if you know the original,
then there's no much point playing this conversion. If you don't, then you can still purchase
it, but you'll miss a lot of the features that made Bulfrog's game such an unique game.
All in all, an interesting conversion but nothing to go all crazy about...
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