ElPoco
Hardcore Member
Finished Satellite Reign this week-end. It's a spiritual successor to Syndicate. I have really fond memories of both Syndicate (especially for its big maps full of people (for the time)) and Syndicate Wars (especially its approach to the arms race, that forces you to update your tactics) so I was curious to test this one.
It's a more complex games than its predecessors. It's not just about shooting, you've got hacking (to open doors, take control of turrets or disable cameras), stealth, different approaches (bribing, vents, etc.). Even combat is a bit complex with lots of options. Each agent has its own role (soldier, support, hacker, infiltrator) and skills. This makes the real-time approach and tad more complicated to deal with than in the other games. There is an option for "pausable real-time" but it has to be enabled before starting your game. I didn't and wished I did later on.
Missions don't each have their own map. The whole game takes place in the same single city (though it's divided into sectors) and there are secure compounds that you have to infiltrate in each sector. So most of the game is spent planning and executing heists in these compounds. These are fun, with lots of tension (especially due to patrolling guards not having clearly predictable patterns), different possible approaches, plans that come together just fine and other times where everything goes wrong and you have to improvise. Thanks to respawning agents, I never had to reload an old save and just accepted defeat or less than ideal infiltrations and that made the game much more fun than having to reload after every mistake.
However, even if each compound has its own design, forcing you to adapt, the game loop soon becomes a bit repetitive. And since you spend most of the game doing things there, the rest of the city is mostly ignored. And it's a shame because it's gorgeous. The art direction is wonderful, it's full of atmosphere, teeming with diverse looking NPCs that you just don't pay any attention to. I wished it had more "city" sections. There are a few cases where you have to assassinate someone or talk to someone or retrieve something but the game mechanics aren't really used here. I would have loved to have ambushes leading to chases or intense fights in the city, but it never truly happens.
This left me at the end paradoxically both a bit bored with the game and wanting more. It's still an impressive achievement for a small team, but I can't help but feel that it could have been much more.
It's a more complex games than its predecessors. It's not just about shooting, you've got hacking (to open doors, take control of turrets or disable cameras), stealth, different approaches (bribing, vents, etc.). Even combat is a bit complex with lots of options. Each agent has its own role (soldier, support, hacker, infiltrator) and skills. This makes the real-time approach and tad more complicated to deal with than in the other games. There is an option for "pausable real-time" but it has to be enabled before starting your game. I didn't and wished I did later on.
Missions don't each have their own map. The whole game takes place in the same single city (though it's divided into sectors) and there are secure compounds that you have to infiltrate in each sector. So most of the game is spent planning and executing heists in these compounds. These are fun, with lots of tension (especially due to patrolling guards not having clearly predictable patterns), different possible approaches, plans that come together just fine and other times where everything goes wrong and you have to improvise. Thanks to respawning agents, I never had to reload an old save and just accepted defeat or less than ideal infiltrations and that made the game much more fun than having to reload after every mistake.
However, even if each compound has its own design, forcing you to adapt, the game loop soon becomes a bit repetitive. And since you spend most of the game doing things there, the rest of the city is mostly ignored. And it's a shame because it's gorgeous. The art direction is wonderful, it's full of atmosphere, teeming with diverse looking NPCs that you just don't pay any attention to. I wished it had more "city" sections. There are a few cases where you have to assassinate someone or talk to someone or retrieve something but the game mechanics aren't really used here. I would have loved to have ambushes leading to chases or intense fights in the city, but it never truly happens.
This left me at the end paradoxically both a bit bored with the game and wanting more. It's still an impressive achievement for a small team, but I can't help but feel that it could have been much more.
