Satellite Reign

At first glance, there is nothing not to love about this game. The Setting is perfect cyberpunk, the graphics are AMAZINGLY beautiful, and the game play is addicting. ... well, in theory. Yes, infiltrating facilities with your clones is fun, but it is also very frustrating, particularily because a lot of the time, things just don't work as they should. The game is full of those tiny, pesky little bugs that would almost go unnoticed if they didn't ruin your day every important split-second of the way. Try to shoot an enemy in the head from behind? Good luck getting your agent to actually do it. Trying to hardwire a door so that you can have an open escape route? Good plan; except that this time the rules change and the door will lock, preventing you from finding your way out. The good news is that the game actually gets easier as you get better ger from infiltrating facilities, and that can help alleviate some of the frustration. All your agents can get stealth, use vents... do everything... it really makes the latter half of the game feel somewhat superfluous. My gear was, at that point, so good that i just skipped most of the side-missions and still had a fairly easy time beating the game. But really, that doesn't mean that this isn't a good game. It is, and in fact, I would give it 4/5 stars if it weren't also for the story. Yes, the general idea that you are leading a group of clones to take down a mega-corp that is ruling the world through its ability to immortalize people, but it's hard to care about the details. There are all sorts of terminals around the world that give more information as well, but it's hard to care about them. I went through the game and found it hard to care about the ending or any of my decisions. At the end of the day, this is a great game, and raiding complexes can be fun, but there are a lot of bugs that simply make the game feel unfinished. Shadow Tactics is a good alternative, but if this game attracts you, by all means....

First of all. Ive been huge zealot of original syndicates. Hell, Im the generation that when I got new graphics card, syndicate wars logs were spinning 3x times faster. This is why I got this game. To relive what I remember from my childhood. First of all - some folks claim this game is not tacti-cool because in original games you could draw firearm and be done with city block. 1. This is tactical, just different set of precoditions are in play. 2. In syndicate games you turn soldiers into terminators. In this one, you just augment certain parts, it is not full conversion. 3. soldiers become specialized based on roles and augments( so it is way more tactical than S). 4. mind/tech control has way more impact on game - since you can either control powerful soldiers or tech. Some soldiers bring more ordnance to game, some bring heavy firepower. Second of all - this is a great game on its own. For this price? Even without a sale!( 25 to 4$ ). It is visually pleasing, has good mechanics, has a lot of different angles for most missions etc etc.

Fun tacticool game that plays in realtime with no tactical pause ???? and you control a squad of 4 absolute units. Controls are awful, base mechanics aren't fleshed out properly, stealth is busted and difficulty loves jumping from a mild inconvienience to instant death mode on a whim. Areas are big but poorly structured, enjoy walking around the city as you'll be doing a god awful amount of it. Despite these flaws there is an extremely engaging tactical game here where the drive to upgrade your team and gear keeps pushing you to play one more hour. If you're not planning on buying the game I would highly recommend the soundtrack as it contains some of the best game tracks of all time, they still pop into my head 8 years later.

It's basically a Syndicate successor done right. And by successor I mean it builds upon the Syndicate scheme with new mechanics than have become quite common (and rewarding) in other modern titles. The game introduces 4 agents, all with different skills. It allows you to play in various styles. (Although complete annihilation is - luckily - not one of them. It wouldn't make sense to be able to masacre all security forces in the whole town!) Are you the stealthy type? Eliminating lone guards with silenced sniper rifles and/or close combat "katana strikes". Or do you prefer more direct approach using hacked drones, soldiers, grenades, and other mayhem tools? All is possible. The lore is well put together explaining all the cloning/mind transfer logic and "why it doesn't really matter when you die?". Yet, you still lose some experience when dying so there's an incentive to not do stupid things and plan ahead. (Your support agent can - besides healing and buffing your team - scan the environment exploring electricity conduits, power generators, and system accesses, which your other roles can exploit then.) Quests are interesting and varying - assassinations, bribes, hacking - again coming with good lore behind them for those who are not shy to read. Controls are very thought through! From time to time it's tough to control 4 agents in the middle of a fight, but the controls are quite clever and they allow you to have all 4 selected together and by hitting ability shortcuts which are different for all agents, the game executes the desired ability with the correct person without the need to select the individual. Same goes for right clicking any interactible objects. You can have all agents selected and when accessing a hacking spot, the person with best chances of success performs the hack! And the best feature of all - up to 4 people can coop together each controling their own agent! This is when the game TRULY shines!

This spiritual successor to the genre-defying (or maybe defining) 1996 Sydicate Wars takes players back in time to an era of game design that had the art and the fun front and center. You will not find microtransactions or an Internet connection requirement for a single player campaign or design by marketing feature list or any of the other afflictions of modern corporate enshitification. What you will find is a surprisingly immersive role-playing adventure accross a sprawling cyberpunk cityscape.