Syndicate’s chip idea deserved a better game than this 2012 shooter

Syndicate opens in 2069, in a world where national governments have been replaced by corporate republics. EuroCorp, Cayman Global and Aspari fight for control of the American market. You play Miles Kilo, an augmented agent with a chip in his skull that lets him slow time and hack the people around him. The premise is strong. The execution is not always.

Miles Kilo and the DART 6 Chip

Starbreeze Studios built Syndicate as a first-person shooter, a break from the real-time tactics games Bullfrog Productions made for the original series. Electronic Arts approached Starbreeze to revive the franchise, impressed by the studio’s earlier work. The game went back to the drawing board after a year, and the co-operative multiplayer mode was folded into the main game. Richard K. Morgan wrote the story.

Kilo carries the prototype DART 6 chip, built by EuroCorp scientist Lily Drawl, voiced by Rosario Dawson. EuroCorp CEO Jack Denham, voiced by Brian Cox, sends him to kill Lily’s counterpart Chang at Aspari. Kilo’s mentor is Agent Jules Merit, voiced by Michael Wincott. Chang shoots himself. Kilo pulls the chip from the body and learns Lily has been sharing DART 6 data with the rival syndicate.

That betrayal sets the plot moving. Denham keeps Lily alive because she is too valuable to kill, and Kilo and Merit watch her apartment. Cayman-Global kidnaps her. Kilo follows the abductors to a floating base in the Atlantic, kills a major Cayman-Global agent and brings her back. The two land in the Downzone, the New York district where the unchipped live. Lily betrays Kilo again and leads him into a trap rigged with EMP mines.

Breaching a Mind

The chip is the best idea in Syndicate, and the game knows it. Kilo can breach enemies through three options. Backfire makes their weapons malfunction and stuns them. Suicide makes them kill themselves. Persuade turns them to your side before they kill themselves. You can also tag enemies and objects through augmented reality, see them behind cover with the Dart Overlay, and slow time to raise your damage.

Syndicate ships 19 weapons, from assault rifles and rocket launchers to laser rifles, Gauss Guns with tracking bullets, and Riotlance Dark Shooters that paralyze. There are 87 attachments and 25 upgrade options, and upgrades can turn standard ammunition into cover-penetrating rounds. An execution mechanic handles melee takedowns. Bosses each carry unique abilities.

The game features a large variety of weapons; from standard pistols to futuristic guns.

The shooting is competent. The breaching is what separates Syndicate from the pack, and it is where the game’s confidence shows. Few shooters of this era gave players a menu of ways to turn an enemy’s body against him. The problem is that the game rarely demands you use the full menu. Backfire and Suicide do the work. Persuade is the most interesting option and the least necessary.

A Corrupted, Deceitful World

The setting has teeth. EuroCorp forms in 2017 from a merger of the world’s largest corporations. In 2025 it releases the DART chip, a neural implant that makes most electronic devices obsolete. Corporate republics called Syndicates take over. Only half the population accepts the chip. The unchipped are abandoned and denied the benefits their chipped neighbors get. Corporate espionage and warfare become normal, and that produces the agents: bio-engineered enforcers with a militarized chip who protect their corporate masters.

That is a clean piece of world-building, and Syndicate uses it. The Downzone gives the game a place where the cost of all this is visible. The floating Cayman-Global base gives it a target worth assaulting. The plot moves through Los Angeles, the Atlantic and New York without much breathing room. Kilo eventually learns that Kris, the leader of the subverters, is responsible for instigating war between the syndicates.

Here is what matters, ranked:

1. The breaching system, which is the reason to play Syndicate at all.
2. The DART 6 chip and the augmented-reality tagging that keeps combat readable.
3. The co-operative multiplayer mode, folded in after the game’s year-one reset.
4. The weapon upgrade count, which is generous but rarely changes how a fight plays out.
5. The story, which is well cast and moves fast but never slows down enough to let its best ideas breathe.

What the Reboot Keeps

Syndicate is a reboot that keeps the theme of the original and changes the gameplay completely. That was the stated hope of the development team: appeal to newcomers and to players of the Bullfrog games at once. It half works. The world is recognizably Syndicate. The play is not.

The campaign runs short and the shooting leans on familiar cover mechanics. The chip abilities carry the weight. When Kilo breaches a room full of Aspari guards and turns them on each other, the game is doing something its contemporaries were not. When it asks him to run, slide and hide behind cover like any other shooter of 2012, it is not.

The cast is the strongest argument for the story. Cox and Dawson give the corporate scheming a pulse. Wincott’s Merit is the right kind of cold. The campaign still never slows down enough to let its best ideas breathe.

Syndicate reviewed lukewarm at launch. Critics praised the gameplay, style, graphics and art direction, and found the rest uneven. That verdict holds up.

The breaching is the part worth remembering. Everything around it is competent and forgettable in equal measure.

breaching · cyberpunk shooter · DART 6 chip · game review · Starbreeze Studios · Syndicate