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Syndicate |OT|

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Alright, leaving the Syndicate totally fixed my freezing issues in both co-op and SP. Will rejoin if it gets patched. PS3 people, run the game in 720p mode and don't join a Syndicate.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Is this worth buying just for the singleplayer?

No, unless you get it real cheap. I liked the SP more than most but this is definitely a co-op game through and through. The box doesn't even mention SP.
KuGsj.gif
 
I've only played (and finished) single player so far, but I would say that this game has some of the best and most responsive gunplay I've ever come across. The weapon sounds in perticular are incredibly punchy.

I could shoot dudes forever in this game. Co-op here I come :eek:
 

Dave1988

Member
Alright, leaving the Syndicate totally fixed my freezing issues in both co-op and SP. Will rejoin if it gets patched. PS3 people, run the game in 720p mode and don't join a Syndicate.

It's a I feared. Ah well, I guess the most sensible solution is to disband the syndicate for now and wait for a fix. The problem here is that you need to be in a syndicate if you want to Platinum this game. :/
 

robot

Member
Coop is a blast, except when your playing with guys with kinect as mics. I heard one kid getting yelled at for not brushing his teeth, and another with screaming kids.

How do I join an existing syndicate? I only see the option to create one.
 

frontieruk

Member
Coop is a blast, except when your playing with guys with kinect as mics. I heard one kid getting yelled at for not brushing his teeth, and another with screaming kids.

How do I join an existing syndicate? I only see the option to create one.

play in a lobby with a syndicate member and get an invite.

on Xbox all current members should be able to invite new members
 
I want to say there's only one more part, you kill a reactive and a liquid(?) armor guy and a bunch of grunts. Which has always seemed much easier to me than the part you're stuck on(partially because you don't have to protect anything anymore).

thanks, i think i'll push on but i'll need to grind a bit to get some chips to unlock invulnerability before dying..got a hold of binary domain so i'll breeze through that before i come back to it..
 
Ran into some weird issues in co op tonight.

1) sniper rifle stuck on iron sights; couldn't use scope for the remainder of the mission
2) somehow stuck with only one gun; could pick up other guns but it would replace the one I had, could not carry 2 at once
 
Is this worth buying just for the singleplayer?

I think the SP is actually a lot of fun; I've only played through the first 6 milestones on Hard (PS3 version), but I'm really enjoying it. The story could have been developed a lot more (so far), but the gunplay is so good that it's just a lot of fun. It's no Half Life or Call of Duty, but it's better than the Battlefield or Medal of Honor SP campaigns IMHO. Having said that, it's supposed to be fairly short so I guess it would only be worth buying for SP if it was very cheap.

To justify buying it at launch you really need to have your eye on the co-op, which is absolutely brilliant and worth every cent of the launch price.
 
It is too bad to hear about the Syndicate-related lockups in PS3 co-op. That forum Dave1988 posted isn't connected with Starbreeze... I guess the only way to talk to them about a fix would be their facebook/twitter accounts? :|

Well, my PS3 copy arrives today and I'll add folks to my friends list. I look forward to playing some co-op after I try a chunk of the single player.
My ID = Charles_Surge

Edit: I posted @ their twitter and to the facebook profile for Syndicate. They've responded to facebook posts before.
 
This is the official Starbreeze forum: http://www.starbreezeforum.se/viewtopic.php?id=1243

There's at least some developers/QA guys that responds there sometimes.

I saw this response regarding FOV-fixes:

That's really weird, it's almost like Starbreeze has no intentions of fixing anything if they're trying to divert everything to EA. Will the 360 locking up issue ever be patched? Because it is a fairly serious problem when you get booted randomly from matches losing all the XP you've earned in the round.
 

Raul_Atreides

Neo Member
It's a I feared. Ah well, I guess the most sensible solution is to disband the syndicate for now and wait for a fix. The problem here is that you need to be in a syndicate if you want to Platinum this game. :/

Noooo my syndicate challenges! Speaking of the platinum, breach 879 grenades? Really?
 
I don't have the game - i will pick it up for cheap later, but regarding the plot
is it the super cliché plot where the best agent of eurocorp almost executes/captures a target that tells him to see the light about eurocorp, and then you end up going on a rampage against your former company and eventually kill the big boss of eurocorp?

Or did they try something a bit more original?
 
I'm up to milestone 13 now (how many are there?) and still having a blast. I wish they'd fleshed out the story a little more: the setting and premise are great, and it feels like there are plenty of unexplored areas that would have made for new and interesting story and/or gameplay elements. Ultimately the gunplay is so fun though that it all just works.

At the moment I would rate it below Half Life 2 and the IW COD games, but well above the Battlefield, MOH, and Killzone games. I'm very happy with what Starbreeze have offered and I haven't even touched the co-op yet...
 
Beat co-op last night with a buddy and then something crazy happened. I was in my agent screen and saw the exclamation mark next to the Chip Upgrades, but I knew I had just spent my last chip. So I go in there just to look and sure enough it says I have 4 unused chips. I spend them as fast as I can and now I'm only missing one chip on the whole board (I'm level 24 btw.) I told my buddy and he didn't get it.

Has this happened to anyone else? I'm guessing it was an extremely awesome glitch.
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
definitely not. super disappointed with it (even when I got it for free, hehe). this is nowhere near darkness1 and riddick2. it's just extremely limited. too bad I have absolutely no interest in the multiplayer.

That's a real shame, because that's the game. You really should at least try the multiplayer. It's fantastic.
 
Finished the game a few days ago. It was decent fun but it's so not worth full price. The single player is short with numerous flaws and the multiplayer is severely unbalanced unless you necessarily have a party of 4 people to play with, which unfortunately is not always possible to manage.
 

fin

Member
So I finished the campaign last night. Don't really get all the hate for it. It does a lot of things right that so many other shooters get wrong. The breaching is a great mechanic , the implementation was kind of limited though. You can breach enemies, turrets at anytime, and in one milestone a turret follows you around helping you. In some areas they attempted some puzzles, hack objects in the correct order, use dart mode to breach everything before they reset. It's a mechanic that can definitely be build upon. But even just the tougher enemies that require breaching keeps the shooting varied and provide a few OH SHIT moments. Like others have said the shooting definitely feels like FEAR, and sometimes the AI is really good other times it's stupid.

Disappointing story about 2/3rd's through though. It's really predictable and honestly something I never wanted to do.
I'd rather have killed the chick and helped the corporation fight the war. Like really? They come in kill your parents. With GM of the EuroCorp in the same room? Oh and guess what? Now I want revenge! Fuck...
. Some total eye rolling moments. But the setting and the art is top notch. They have the right amount of violence to be cool but not cheesy. Think kinda like SinCity (the movie) violence. Like "Whoa, that just happened? That was awesome." I guess I really like the tone of the game. It's alot like Deus Ex in that way but cooler and less cheesy. Good VO too. I instantly recognized three of the characters. The bad guy from Xmen, the chick from clerks, and the bad dude from the Crow.

Would I recommend a purchase for just the campaign? I think so, the game is just cool. Ha cool isn't really a metric but whatever. If you don't have the money rent it for sure.

But the coop adds more value, I'm at level 27 now and just about completed all the levels on expert. Still not getting old, but seeing the end. I've almost maxed out everything. The coop has a bunch of cool apps. You get rewarded for all kinds of stuff, not just killing. It's like Battlefield 3s point system, with Left 4 Dead gameplay but cooler weapons and enemies. This has hooked me how I thought Left 4 Dead would have. I'd really like to see some more levels as DLC. Also build upon the Syndicate system, which are like clans. It's cool competing with other Syndicates, and trying to recruit people. They need a public lobby system, right now you can't just form a party and join a random game. You have to join quick play and hope that it isn't full, then invite your friend.

I'll probably double dip on this one when it goes on sale. Is GAF playing this game? Do we have a Syndicate? More 360, PS3 or PC players?
 
So I finished the campaign last night. Don't really get all the hate for it. It does a lot of things right that so many other shooters get wrong. The breaching is a great mechanic , the implementation was kind of limited though. You can breach enemies, turrets at anytime, and in one milestone a turret follows you around helping you. In some areas they attempted some puzzles, hack objects in the correct order, use dart mode to breach everything before they reset. It's a mechanic that can definitely be build upon. But even just the tougher enemies that require breaching keeps the shooting varied and provide a few OH SHIT moments. Like others have said the shooting definitely feels like FEAR, and sometimes the AI is really good other times it's stupid.

Disappointing story about 2/3rd's through though. It's really predictable and honestly something I never wanted to do.
I'd rather have killed the chick and helped the corporation fight the war. Like really? They come in kill your parents. With GM of the EuroCorp in the same room? Oh and guess what? Now I want revenge! Fuck...
. Some total eye rolling moments. But the setting and the art is top notch. They have the right amount of violence to be cool but not cheesy. Think kinda like SinCity (the movie) violence. Like "Whoa, that just happened? That was awesome." I guess I really like the tone of the game. It's alot like Deus Ex in that way but cooler and less cheesy. Good VO too. I instantly recognized three of the characters. The bad guy from Xmen, the chick from clerks, and the bad dude from the Crow.

Would I recommend a purchase for just the campaign? I think so, the game is just cool. Ha cool isn't really a metric but whatever. If you don't have the money rent it for sure.
That's a great summary fin and my thoughts closely mirror your own (having finished the SP last night).

My review:

The combat makes it a winner, and the art direction is great: the levels, weapons, vehicles, and character designs were all top notch. The sound design was right up there with BFBC2 as among the best I've ever heard. If there was a downer, it was that they could have done so much more with the story. It's certainly hard to believe that a top sci-fi author wrote it. They built up an interesting world but the actual events of the game make such poor use of it. Those elements they did make use of were poorly mapped out and somewhat predictable.

Getting back to the combat, the boss fights were fun (a rarity in the FPS genre) and the Breach mechanic makes combat so much more interesting. Combined with the DART overlay and the weapons that can shoot through cover, this game nailed the combat issue that soured Killzone 2 for me (the old 'whack-a-mole' combat) and UC3 to a certain extent. The enemy AI was not quite on the level of say FEAR (where you are constantly amazed by it), but it was definitely solid and made the combat a lot of fun. There are a few areas near the end where you're confronted with waves of enemies, and whereas in other games I find that really annoying, in Syndicate I loved them and looked forward to each new wave because it meant more people to fight :)

The voice acting was very good and the dialogue was fine, but again they could have done so much more with the story... and it could have been a longer game to boot without ever rehashing the same ground or wearing out its welcome. So many interesting gameplay opportunities passed up :(

All in all a very impressive game though. It's probably too short for me to recommend a purchase on the basis of the SP alone, but when you take into account the co-op as well it makes a pretty compelling case.
 

highrider

Banned
yeah, this game has some of the best combat i've played in an fps game. gun models combined with the audio is pretty compelling stuff. starbreeze games have always controlled beautifully, and this feels like a natural refinement of riddick and the darkness.
 

pmj

Member
I just spent some 5 hours with the co-op and it's so much better than the campaign. Being sent on missions, selecting loadout and choosing R&D really should have been how the campaign was structured. Hell, even though I normally hate multiplayer games I'd still be interested in a co-op-only sequel.

Most fun thing to happen so far was in Mozambique where the whole team had been downed by the flamethrower guy in the data storage room. I had to kite him up the stairs and out in the open, then run back down to reboot everyone, and then follow the people up and reboot two of them a second time when they were downed by the flamethrower guy again, and finally take the him out and chiprip him. Yeah, on Normal, but I felt pretty good about myself right then.

Anyway, I played and finished the Colorado map and the next one didn't unlock. Are there some requirements to proceed that I don't know of?

Also, what's the procedure to take out enemy agents? They keep getting back up again. In the campaign I think you need to perform an execution, but the end of the Atlantic Accelerator map is swarming with enemies and I couldn't get close enough to try. We finally managed to beat them, but I have no idea how as I was too busy hiding.
 
All of the Agents have 1 for support. Youll see it very clearly as the lines look like yours when breaching. Take them down first, and have someone ready to Chiprip or detonate...the latter is harder if its just one person breaching.

After that just shoot them in the face.

The co-op is great. Now I would like at least 4 new maps.
 

Natiko

Banned
Now the game is freezing on the main menu every time I boot the disc up. The disc is fine and my console plays every other game just fine. Clearly I wasn't meant to beat this.
 
I just spent some 5 hours with the co-op and it's so much better than the campaign. Being sent on missions, selecting loadout and choosing R&D really should have been how the campaign was structured. Hell, even though I normally hate multiplayer games I'd still be interested in a co-op-only sequel.

Most fun thing to happen so far was in Mozambique where the whole team had been downed by the flamethrower guy in the data storage room. I had to kite him up the stairs and out in the open, then run back down to reboot everyone, and then follow the people up and reboot two of them a second time when they were downed by the flamethrower guy again, and finally take the him out and chiprip him. Yeah, on Normal, but I felt pretty good about myself right then.

Anyway, I played and finished the Colorado map and the next one didn't unlock. Are there some requirements to proceed that I don't know of?

Also, what's the procedure to take out enemy agents? They keep getting back up again. In the campaign I think you need to perform an execution, but the end of the Atlantic Accelerator map is swarming with enemies and I couldn't get close enough to try. We finally managed to beat them, but I have no idea how as I was too busy hiding.

Hmm that's weird, could be a glitch. The next mission should unlock when you do the one before it.
 

frontieruk

Member
I just spent some 5 hours with the co-op and it's so much better than the campaign. Being sent on missions, selecting loadout and choosing R&D really should have been how the campaign was structured. Hell, even though I normally hate multiplayer games I'd still be interested in a co-op-only sequel.

Most fun thing to happen so far was in Mozambique where the whole team had been downed by the flamethrower guy in the data storage room. I had to kite him up the stairs and out in the open, then run back down to reboot everyone, and then follow the people up and reboot two of them a second time when they were downed by the flamethrower guy again, and finally take the him out and chiprip him. Yeah, on Normal, but I felt pretty good about myself right then.

Anyway, I played and finished the Colorado map and the next one didn't unlock. Are there some requirements to proceed that I don't know of?

Also, what's the procedure to take out enemy agents? They keep getting back up again. In the campaign I think you need to perform an execution, but the end of the Atlantic Accelerator map is swarming with enemies and I couldn't get close enough to try. We finally managed to beat them, but I have no idea how as I was too busy hiding.

Play it again it'll unlock, had it happen a few times that a level didn't open, it's to do with connectivity to the servers which aren't too reliable.
 

pmj

Member
Thanks for the answers, everyone. I finally figured out what detonating an agent means and it made short work of the agents when I tried it in Scandinavia.

How do you go about getting into the 360 GAF syndicate? My GT is tumvante. Is that enough info to send me an invite?
 
Thanks for the answers, everyone. I finally figured out what detonating an agent means and it made short work of the agents when I tried it in Scandinavia.
Could you please explain it? I haven't fought any Agents in co-op yet and it sounds like it isn't obvious.
 

Mrninjaman

Neo Member
Could you please explain it? I haven't fought any Agents in co-op yet and it sounds like it isn't obvious.

If it's what I think it is, essentially you just breach a downed agent and they self destruct. Pretty useful if you can't get close to chip rip. Be warned though it takes a while so have you team help or use breach focus right before.
 
Can I get an invite to the GAF syndicate as well? I'm Luvmusl on X360

Or if it's not as simple as just inviting me, who do I need to send a friend request to?
 
If it's what I think it is, essentially you just breach a downed agent and they self destruct. Pretty useful if you can't get close to chip rip. Be warned though it takes a while so have you team help or use breach focus right before.

OK, gotcha. So the enemy agents can revive each other if they have line of sight, much like in the SP, and you're obviously in a race against them?


Speaking of the SP, can anyone clear up the plot for me (only read if you've finished the game):

So what the fuck happened at the Reykjavík conference that all of the datalogs keep mentioning? I know there was a terrorist attack there, but what happened that brought Chang, Drawl, and that other guy who we hear got killed (Visi something) together? It talks about them discovering something mind blowing but they never let on what it was. How could it be worth all of them suddenly deciding to abandon their allegiances to their Syndicates and risk their lives to work together with almost total strangers? Also, what are Drawl/Chang actually sending/leaking between each other, and why the hell is it so important that both Cayman Global and Aspari decide to go to war with Eurocorp over it? What is Lily actually hoping to achieve with it? They never actually even tell us what it is!

And finally, what is the significance of the little tidbit you find near the end that suggests that the rebels/downzoners planted three sleeper agents (one amongst each of the major Syndicates)? Or is that just meant to let us know that the rebels do still have sources upzone?
 

frontieruk

Member
No demo? Or pulled from XBL?
EA were so cheap they only did a co-op demo which shutdown on games release date as it used the same servers as the release so they had to reset stats.

Thanks for the answers, everyone. I finally figured out what detonating an agent means and it made short work of the agents when I tried it in Scandinavia.

How do you go about getting into the 360 GAF syndicate? My GT is tumvante. Is that enough info to send me an invite?

Can I get an invite to the GAF syndicate as well? I'm Luvmusl on X360

Or if it's not as simple as just inviting me, who do I need to send a friend request to?

I too would like to join the GAF 360 syndicate.

gamertag: stephendedalus5

Gaf 360 syndicate :-

To gain access you need to of been in a in game lobby with

Frontieruk
Tomakasatnav
Angrypuppy
JTrov
Mrninjaman
Drifter444
The visualizer

Any of those members can invite you into the syndicate but as stated before you'll need to of been in a game lobby with them.
 

pmj

Member
Oh, that's rather annoying. I sent you a friend request, frontieruk. Hopefully we'll be online at the same time soon, just long enough to get into a lobby and do that invite.
 

Sojgat

Member
Just got my import copy (in Australia) no codes to redeem so the online co-op works without having to use an overseas account. Excellent ;)
 

pmj

Member
I'm not sure what happened (Xbox Live is a mystery to me), but I'm now a member of the GAF syndicate.

Thanks frontieruk!
 

frontieruk

Member
I'm not sure what happened (Xbox Live is a mystery to me), but I'm now a member of the GAF syndicate.

Thanks frontieruk!

No worries, sorry I didn't hang around for a game but the gym was calling and as soon as I invited you to join the game I had the option to invite you to the Syndicate I did :D
 
The co-op in this game is phenomenal (360). I can't remember the last time I've so obsessively played an online mode.

It's a shame, because I am already finding it difficult to get into certain expert maps populated with other players...
 

pmj

Member
Yeah, there's not nearly enough players for you to be able to play what you want. I just want to finish the maps in order on normal, and then bump up the difficulty and finish them in order again. I've been trying on and off all day and haven't found a single suitable game.
 

frontieruk

Member
Yeah, there's not nearly enough players for you to be able to play what you want. I just want to finish the maps in order on normal, and then bump up the difficulty and finish them in order again. I've been trying on and off all day and haven't found a single suitable game.

Ok let's make this happen
 
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