|
by Black Hitler 07/29/2004, 11:43pm PDT |
|
 |
|
 |
|
curst wrote:
Bitter wrote:
Not as good as Syndicate, especially the awesome mission pack.
I DISAGREE. Syndicate was damn fun for a long time, but the final mission's ridiculous difficulty basically made me quit. A friend of mine bought the mission pack and said that the expansion pack did nothing to alleviate the difficulty, so I never bothered.
It didn't simply not alleviate it, it pumped it up to insane and basically unplayable levels. Remember the Atlantic Accelerator mission from the original, where you had to start moving and firing within .5ms of the start of the mission, otherwise a swarm of enemy agents would rush you out of nowhere and gun down your entire squad in about three seconds? Half the missions in the expansion pack are like that. I was obsessed with the original Syndicate to the point that I even bought the Genesis port so I could play it on my Nomad (even though it was totally uncontrollable, like all the other console versions) but the expansion pack broke me pretty damn quickly.
The one thing that I think sucked about it: I liked the feeling you got that you were running a corporation that in turn was taking over the world. As you bumped off rival syndicates' agents and your influence spread, your profits increased, leading to more advanced technologies. In Syndicate Wars, you get money by destroying banks, carjacking armored vehicles, or brainwashing civilians (some of whom were a little richer than others). Yes, this is a stupid intangible thing, but with Syndicate you actually felt like you were running a ruthless corporation that was willing to resort to slaughtering civilians if they got in the way of rising profits, rather than a desperate terrorist organization doing whatever it could just to stay alive. You were a cross between Gordon Gekko and Charles Joseph Whitman.
The problem is that the money-raising system in the original Syndicate became pointless pretty quickly. Complete a mission, conquer a new territory, collect their taxes, watch the money roll in. Raise their taxes too high and they revolt, keep them too low and you eventually go bankrupt. But it's even more underdeveloped than it sounds -- there's no variation between different territories in terms of what tax levels they're willing to accept, so once you figure out the ideal rate (i.e. the highest rate you can levy without provoking unrest) the entire fundraising aspect of the game pretty much flies out the window. Complete a mission, set the tax rate to 30% or so (I don't remember the exact figure I came up with), and never worry about that territory again. Not much fun, really. In contrast, I liked robbing banks in Syndicate Wars because the rewards seemed more immediate. It's fun blowing up an entire bank and grabbing the little briefcase full of money conveniently left lying around in the rubble. In the original Syndicate you'd finish a mission, go to a menu screen, and learn that you'd collected $500,000 in taxes since the last mission. So what?
Of course, the entire reason they went with the terrorist approach in SW is because if you played as the other side (the Church), that's basically what you were. Rather than come up with different play styles for each side, all they really did was give you a different default weapon, change the names of some of the items (i.e. "Persuadertron" becomes "Indoctrinator," "Nuclear Grenade" becomes "Apocalypse"), and split the difference when it came to everything else, the result being that you could either control a Church with its own multi-million-dollar research labs or a global megacorporation whose entire income is apparently derived from bank robberies and kidnappings. A bit of a wasted opportunity.
I tried to play it on both Win98 and WinXP machines, only to watch it uncerimoniously crash to the desktop constantly at the same point. I want to say it's after I won a level and it tried to play the fireworks-celebration movie. Hopefully it's just my CD or some bizarre conflict on my PC that wouldn't affect others.
I had the same problem. At one point I tried copying the entire game CD to my hard drive, installing it from there, and deleting the movie file from the CD directory. I don't remember if it actually worked though, in all likelihood it just gave me an error message along the lines of "MXCD02.SMK not found" and kicked me back to the desktop.
My other big complaint about Syndicate Wars: apparently the society of the future is so debased that the only advertising allowed is for anime. No matter where you're supposed to be in the world, there's always dozens of trucks with the Manga Entertainment logo driving around, and every Jumbotron on earth is set to an endless loop of the Ghost in the Shell trailer, complete with a loudspeaker announcement to the effect of "Classic animation from the 20th century!" The upshot is that you can blow up the trucks, presumably incinerating thousands of copies of Ninja Scroll and Urotsukidoji in the process. |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
FABIO's forum arrogance article by Ice Cream Jonsey 07/26/2004, 2:36am PDT 
FreeSpace 2, etc. by Bitter 07/28/2004, 12:02am PDT 
that run on sentence needs trimming NT by FABIO 07/28/2004, 12:11am PDT 
Ya think? NT by Bitter 07/28/2004, 1:03am PDT 
Yes, so why did you post it? NT by FABIO 07/28/2004, 4:31am PDT 
Syndicate Wars by Bitter 07/28/2004, 12:05am PDT 
Re: Syndicate Wars by curst 07/29/2004, 9:44am PDT 
Re: Syndicate Wars by Ice Cream Jonsey 07/29/2004, 10:51am PDT 
well if we're going to go negative on FreeSpace 2 by FABIO 07/29/2004, 10:15pm PDT 
Re: Syndicate Wars by Black Hitler 07/29/2004, 11:43pm PDT 
Re: Syndicate Wars by Bitter 07/30/2004, 3:38pm PDT 
Planescape: Torment by Mischief Maker 07/28/2004, 12:39am PDT 
Re: Planescape: Torment by Lurker Shoomoser 07/28/2004, 5:34am PDT 
A decent man descends into desert... NT by Lurker Shoomoser 07/28/2004, 5:45am PDT 
Re: Planescape: Torment by Worm 07/28/2004, 6:47am PDT 
Re: Planescape: Torment by Unbitter 07/28/2004, 1:53pm PDT 
Nothin': just wanted the names consecutive like this by Bitter 07/28/2004, 11:47pm PDT 
Re: Planescape: Torment by curst 07/29/2004, 9:46am PDT 
Re: Planescape: Torment by Cog 07/29/2004, 11:13am PDT 
Re: Planescape: Torment by Gubbi 07/30/2004, 4:37am PDT 
Addendum by Gubbi 07/30/2004, 4:41am PDT 
Re: Planescape: Torment by Bill Dungsroman 07/31/2004, 2:44pm PDT 
Yeah, cutscene spells were annoying too. NT by Worm 07/31/2004, 4:04pm PDT 
Re: Yeah, cutscene spells were annoying too. by Debaser 08/01/2004, 4:34pm PDT 
Planescape question by FABIO 08/01/2004, 9:20pm PDT 
YES, STUPID FUCKER. ALSO: NORDUM IS AVAILABLE ONLY ON HARD CUBE by Snurf 08/01/2004, 10:05pm PDT 
I think all my spyware and browser hijacks are spilling over into this site by FABIO 08/02/2004, 2:09am PDT 
Re: Planescape question by Debaser 08/02/2004, 8:38pm PDT 
Re: Planescape question by Cog 08/02/2004, 11:46pm PDT 
Best thing about those Final Fantasy-wannabe spells by curst 08/01/2004, 11:23pm PDT 
Re: Best thing about those Final Fantasy-wannabe spells by Bill Dungsroman 08/02/2004, 12:47am PDT 
Re: Best thing about those Final Fantasy-wannabe spells by Debaser 08/02/2004, 8:41pm PDT 
More positive thinking! by curst 07/29/2004, 5:40pm PDT 
Re: More positive thinking! by FABIO 07/29/2004, 9:24pm PDT 
You're full of ass! by ROFL-MEISTER 07/29/2004, 10:02pm PDT 
Except for the jump-puzzles. NT by Mischief Maker 07/29/2004, 11:53pm PDT 
Re: FABIO's forum arrogance article by Mischief Maker 07/29/2004, 11:54pm PDT 
Re: FABIO's forum arrogance article by Ice Cream Jonsey 07/30/2004, 3:11pm PDT 
FS2 by Mischief Maker 07/31/2004, 5:05pm PDT 
Re: FS2 by Bill Dungsroman 08/01/2004, 8:51pm PDT 
Re: FS2 by Mischief Maker 08/02/2004, 5:24pm PDT 
Not me, MM. by Bill Dungsroman 08/04/2004, 7:54pm PDT 
Well aware of that by Mischief Maker 08/05/2004, 12:37am PDT 
Re: Well aware of that by Zseni 08/05/2004, 11:09am PDT 
Re: Well aware of that by THE GUY WHO MAKES JOKES ABOUT STUFF 08/05/2004, 12:22pm PDT 
Re: Well aware of that by Mischief Maker 08/05/2004, 1:21pm PDT 
Re: Well aware of that by Zseni 08/05/2004, 2:03pm PDT 
Re: Well aware of that by Mischief Maker 08/05/2004, 10:42pm PDT 
Re: Well aware of that by I need clarification 08/05/2004, 11:43pm PDT 
|
|