Syndicate (Jaguar)

(Review archived from October 8, 2014)

This is the second in a series of resurrected “archived content” style reviews which were originally part of a Random Game Review Project I participated in a number of years ago.  I’m on vacation during mid-July, so raising these moldy-oldies from the dead seemed like a good (i.e. lazy) means of keeping the blog active during that time.  The “Random Gaming Review Project” was the brainchild of an old online friend of mine named Spruitje.  Additional details can be found in the first article of this series, but essentially Spruitje’s vision for the project was as follows:

Being as this is an archival review, I should probably clarify a couple of points before diving in. In terms of emulators, Virtual Jaguar was probably the best Atari Jaguar emulator at the time of review (in 2014). According to the Emulation General Wiki though, that is no longer the case as Virtual Jaguar is no longer actively maintained and has been surpassed in terms of overall compatibility. When in doubt I almost always refer to the EmuGen wiki prior to emulating an unfamiliar system (or even one that I’ve not emulated recently). It’s a great resource! Secondly, I obviously wouldn’t use my Logitech F710 Wireless controller today (and I certainly wouldn’t advise using it to operate your deep sea submersible!) My trusty F710 carried me through many great years of gaming, but obviously in 2025 there are several more preferable modern controller options available. That said, if you’re looking for a simple, effective controller remapping utility (on Windows), Xpadder is still a great piece of kit. It remains a staple of my emulation toolbelt even in the year 2025. Lastly, if I were to play Syndicate today, I would undoubtedly opt for the Syndicate Plus version available from GOG, as I’d currently consider that to be the definitive version of the game.

Any hoo, without any further ado, let’s get on with this review! … Now officially in Syndication!

Today we are examining the classic real time strategy game, Syndicate as ported to the Atari Jaguar console in 1995.  I feel it’s pretty safe to say that this game is fondly remembered as a classic of its genre, although I wouldn’t say that it ever went on to attain a legendary status in the same way that something like Starcraft has.  All the same the game was popular enough that it warranted something of a series reboot in 2012.  The more recent title was a First Person Shooter … oddly enough.  Naturally Syndicate (2012) received a bit of a lukewarm reception among those diehard fans of the original game.  Despite the complete overhaul of gameplay and game genre, the reboot actually was set in the same in-game world as the original.  I think this speaks volumes to the enduring quality and allure of the sci-fi dystopia portrayed in the original game, the core of which constitutes a world ruled by corporate oligarchies each vying for world domination and marketplace success at any cost.  In terms of story, this game has character and charm for days.  That’s not to say that anything the developers were doing at the time was incredibly new or innovative from a storytelling perspective though.  After all cyberpunk themes and concepts were huge in the 90s.  But the Syndicate team did nail the theme they were going for with style and panache.  This game wears its influences on its sleeve, and they are of a wonderful pedigree although the game is certainly unique enough on its own that it never comes off as being overly derivative.  It’s a fantastic mix of Blade Runner, Terminator, and RoboCop in terms of its dark sense of humor and corporations run amok (I would say that the RoboCop vibe is practically tangible here).  I mean really, what’s a corporation to do when its advertising campaign is proving to be unsuccessful in the Urals?  Send in a heavily armed, cybernetically enhanced death squad of course!

So the story and world building in this game are really great and quite a lot of fun.  But having a great in-game world and fun story elements will only carry you so far if the gameplay is not there to support it.  It needs to be said that I’m not an acolyte of the RTS genre.  In my experience, there are not in fact a lot of casual fans of this genre.  I’ve got a certain group of friends who are willing to sink massive amounts of time into RTS games, learning the nuances of the gameplay, mastering the art of resource management, and discovering the fine details of in-game strategy no matter how esoteric.  On the other side I’ve got friends that simply never play RTS games.  I probably fall into the latter group.  Like I say I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who simply plays RTS games on a casual “every now and again” sort of basis.

So what’s an RTS noob like me to make of this game?  Well I’ll spare you the suspense to say that I really enjoyed it.  Syndicate does many things right, and once I had gotten my feet under me in terms of gameplay I really had a fun time.  That’s not to say that the game is without problems though.

Let’s talk first about what the game gets right.  As I mentioned before, the in-game world is great, and I would say that more than anything, it’s that wonderful atmosphere that keeps you coming back for more.  The missions are also a lot of fun, and I really think the game does a great job of managing the scope of its gameplay.  These aren’t epic sprawling missions with tons of variety, but rather they are tightly managed and focused missions (generally) intent on achieving a specific objective and getting out.  Conveniently, this fits the overall tone of the game very well.  When we’re talking about chaotic urban dystopia settings, it should feel very tight and claustrophobic.  It should feel as if there’s no escape from those who would seek to do you harm.  All told Syndicate is well put together from this perspective.

Secondly, I really did enjoy the resource management aspects of the game.  It’s a lot of fun deciding new weapons and enhancements to research, and then immediately applying that research to devastating effect on the urban battlefield.  I would guess that for a true fan of the RTS genre, the resource management in this game will likely seem paltry and light, but for a noob like me it was just right.

There are however some glaring flaws in the gameplay that become harder and harder to ignore once the intensity of the game really starts ratcheting up.  I would be remiss not to mention the menu system.  I would imagine that for any RTS game, intuitive menus should be a key component of play.  So much of RTS gameplay is the direct result of how and what you configure through in-game menus.  To this end, the one issue I had with Syndicate is that the game alternates what button is the ‘Selection’ button depending on what part of the menu you’re looking at.  And there’s not a whole lot of rhyme or reason applied to which button should be used in what context.  Syndicate has several components where you must memorize various key combinations to pull off specific actions in the game, but the in-game menus should not be one of those components!  

At this juncture we come to an important point to be made about the system we’re emulating here.  The controls for the Atari Jaguar were a complete mess to begin with.  I’ve mentioned in the past how I feel about “touch-tone phone controllers”, and the Atari Jaguar is a particularly egregious offender in this department.

Syndicate uses every single one of those buttons in the picture plus combinations of buttons!  With the help of Xpadder I was able to devise a controller mapping that didn’t feel completely alien, but even then it never felt completely right (or good) either.  So be prepared for a bit of controller wrangling if you plan on playing this game through emulation with a controller.

Once you’ve got your controls dialed in you’re still not out of the woods in terms of gameplay.  The biggest issue I’m going to mention here is that the AI is horrible in this game.  The enemies are none too bright, but to be clear the biggest issue is that the AI of your own team is horrendous.  Among other things you need to manage your movements carefully.  For instance I would click on a location somewhere in the middle distance, and my agent would start shambling off in that direction (the walking animation is hilarious).  I’d come back a few seconds later after managing the other members of my team only to discover that the first agent had entered a building and was trying to walk through a wall in order to get to my chosen destination.  It was as laughable as it was sad.  Worse though is when the squad AI actually becomes an active threat to your own team.  At one point when my entire squad was entering a vehicle, Agent 2 suddenly decided on his own that he was going to get the hell out of dodge and commandeered the vehicle.  In his mad rush to escape he actually drove over Agents 3 and 4, killing them dead.  We’re still working out the wording of the letters to send to their respective families.

Lastly the 2.5D isometric viewpoint can and will cause you problems.  The camera maintains exactly one angle, and will not adjust itself to aid in visibility.  Of course given the release date of this game this sort of thing is to be expected, so it’s hard to be too terribly vindictive on this count, but it certainly doesn’t change the fact that the problematic viewpoint can occasionally make for some frustrating gameplay.  In practice this means that you will often be put in positions where you are being fired upon from unseen enemies, or worse still that the entire battle will be obscured from your view.  This problem is compounded tenfold when you enter a building.  To be clear, you cannot see anything within buildings other than the numeric icon indicating your (rough) position on the screen and the positional pointer on the (even rougher) map.  This in and of itself wouldn’t be such an issue, except that the game requires you to carry out interior objectives on a somewhat regular basis.  God help you should you have to carry out anything more than the absolute simplest of tasks when you’re inside a building!

In summary I feel like Syndicate on the Atari Jaguar is a good game being held back from greatness due to a few noteworthy flaws.  I rattled on a bit about those flaws, but really there’s nothing so grievous as to completely mar the experience.  If you’re looking for a retro flavored RTS game, you could do a lot worse than Syndicate.  Given that this game is available on a variety of platforms, I would probably consider trying it out on something other than the Jaguar in the future.  I would venture a guess that this one might just be the best of the bunch, and after having put a fair amount of time into this Jaguar port, perhaps the conquests of my Retro Corp. will continue to wreak havoc on a whole new platform!

Final Verdict (adjusted for blog scale): 6 entirely plausible futures out of 10

Acknowledgement: I’d like to give a big ol’ shoutout to The King of Grabs. With his permission, I ‘borrowed’ a couple of these screenshots from his excellent article and screenshot collection for Syndicate on Jaguar. I had a small handful of my own screenshots leftover from the original 2014 article, but not enough to keep things ‘visually interesting’. So I’ll take credit for any of the blurry screenshots here that look like they were captured in 2014, but the nice-looking, crisp screenshots are all his. Speaking as an amateur enthusiast of capturing screen grabs from my own games, I highly encourage you to check out his blog. Both the articles and (especially) the screen grabs are phenomenal!