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28 Sep 2015 - 27 Dec 2015
There are two classes of people: the immortal and the dying. You are the head of a startup who wants to compete in the market of making the latter the former, and for that you'll need to steal the technology. It's going to be a long and violent road to make those ends meet.
If you've never played Syndicate from Bullfrog Studios, then you can play this game instead and get a similar experience.
Whether it's better or not is up for debate. There are a lot of similarities, to be sure. Technologically "convincing" people to come to your side is more limited, but arguably more tactically adventageous and makes sense thematically. Not being able to get into a car (or even blow one up) limits the tactical options, but forces you to use others. And so on.
It is a very fun game, even without those aspects, and because of a few more additions. Ziplines, for instance, can make entering a restricted area simple, but can also strand you behind enemy lines with no way out. Short-circuting doors can stop an influx of reinforcements, but can also trap you. And the large mechanoids are absolutely terrifying, no matter whose side they're on.
I like the way they broke up the city into distinct parts, and restricted access to each part. That gives a good sense of progression and really lets you know when things have stepped up a notch. Unlike a lot of games, money doesn't ever become trivial (I'm pretty sure we were struggling with our funds throughout the whole game), so it's always a matter of proper management and deciding what's important to buy now.
The tech tree looks a little sparse at first blush, but it's actually fairly well spaced out, and we ended up reaching the last branch just in time to meet up with the final boss. So that was timed out pretty well, either by chance or by design. While you could just stick around in one place and build up your funds to afford everything, the story keeps you incentivized to push forward.
There were a couple of buggy bits, but nothing that can't be patched out, and nothing that stopped progress at all. I wish that units that were "persuaded" stuck with you between saves (I lost a mech that way), but that's a minor thing, and with the right application of technology, I could get it again.
The only thing that I have a problem with is the ending, but that's possibly because I was talking at the time and it just caught me off-guard. So the bad guy really, really doesn't want to share his technology, and so the rest of the world dies with him? Too bad that there will never be a sequel. If there were some way, somehow to find out about his failsafe and prevent it, that would be nice. I didn't see any sidequests that led down that way, though it's possible I just missed it.
I'm not usually a fan of real-time strategy, but if they were all like this, I would play more of them. Good fun with solid mechanics and lots of laser fire.