Syndicate

Syndicate is a cold cyberpunk work in which the player leads neither an army nor plays a hero, but instead runs four cybernetically enhanced agents from a skyscraper office and expands the reach of his corporation across the entire world. The world map is divided into territories that are conquered mission by mission, and every controlled territory pays a tax that funds research and equipment. The mission objectives are described curtly and dirtily: assassinate a rival scientist, kidnap a researcher, incite an uprising, or wipe out an entire enemy cell.

The action itself plays out in an isometric city full of billboards, cars, elevators and utterly indifferent pedestrians. The four agents can be split up or kept together, each can be assigned a weapon individually, and three sliders for addictive substances can be switched on, boosting perception, accuracy and endurance at the cost of faster exhaustion. A key tool is the Persuadertron, a device with which an agent subjugates civilians and enemy soldiers alike, turning them into an obedient escort, so that by the final mission you can walk in with an entire crowd of your own. Between missions, the lab researches better limb prosthetics, eyes and weapons ranging from shotguns to guided missiles, and the money earned is split between research and team equipment.

Technically, this was a very impressive game in 1993: the city is rendered in a dark, rainy palette, things explode and burn, and the whole screen can be rotated and zoomed. The music and sound effects create a stifling, depersonalized atmosphere in which violence is a routine business operation, which is one reason the title belongs in the hands of adult players. At the time, Syndicate earned great acclaim for its world and for its nerve in letting the player play the worse side, and its influence can be felt in later tactical games with small squads. Today the controls are clunky in places and the missions repeat toward the end, but the mood of that cold corporate world has aged remarkably well, and few later games have managed to replicate it.