Score: 6
"Innovative, but lost in it's own expanse."
date: November 27, 2009
Sindicate. First, let me say that the gameplay mechanics that were created for this game are sound. Buying and selling henchmen, taking over businesses, robbing stores and such are all very well executed and gorgeously animated with a distinctive art style. The ability to arm your mob with guns and uniforms, as well as having several pre-made gangs to choose from, greatly adds to the game. However, the three game modes are not perfect. The single player mode would be a smash hit, if it didn't take only 15 minutes to complete. Even some of the game mechanics are broken. In one mission where you supposedly can't rob any stores, you can burglarize to no end and have no repercussions. The Skirmish mode would have been a huge online strategy hit, but this game lacks online functionality. It's an up-to-4-player strategy game on a single computer. This is where the game's biggest flaw rears it's head; the map is too large. It takes a long time just to scroll across the full map, and while it's ripe with businesses, it would take forever to capture them all. 2 friends and I tried a 3-player game, and it took an hour before we even had two of our businesses on the same screen. Try keeping 4 players entertained enough to sit in front of a computer for 2 hours, taking turns and patiently waiting for a chance to play! Any multiplayer game will end long before a single player conquers the whole board, and even if you have the patience for it, it will most likely end in a power struggle, going back and forth for hours. The other players who have been defeated will have left long ago. In addition, at the end of your turn, your screen warps back to your base, so you have to scroll all the way to the business, which may be a long ways away. You'll get lost in the map's expanse. Placing silent doctors to heal your crew is a good idea on paper, but you'll forget where they are. Fighting the computer is painful, too. If they take over a business, and you fight for it back, it'll only pay out 10% of it's default daily revenue. The sandbox mode is a good idea, but with no opposition it gets boring fast. You could try to take over the entire map, but it would waste many hours of your life. Even more annoying than the giant map is the collection of game-breaking bugs. Trying to name your gang results in your name being "undefined". Sometimes, attempting to take over a business results in no result being displayed; you can then rob and take over businesses as many times as you want in a turn, which gives a tremendously unfair advantage. Worst of all, when you finally reach a rival gang's compound, there's about a 50/50 chance that taking it over will nullify the whole game, making you unable to click any businesses, compounds, police stations, anything. This is very frustrating when you've spent an hour fighting your way to the compound, only to have the game break at your most triumphant moment. This game means well, but the bevy of bugs, high difficulty level, and the sheer massiveness of the open world brings it down. Lack of online, decent sound effects, and minor graphical glitches bring it down even more. Although the gameplay is a very innovative take on the strategy genre, its many problems prevent me from giving it more than a lukewarm recommendation. It is fairly entertaining, as long as you are willing to fill in a few blanks with your imagination.
