Yet another Head2Head that pits two beloved games against one another, in this case the cynical yet absorbing Syndicate Wars and the massively popular yet still strangely divisive Halo: Combat Evolved.
Produced in 1996 by Peter Molyneux at Bullfrog, Syndicate Wars was the second sequel to the incredibly popular Syndicate, and combines elements of tactical shooting real-time strategy and RPG into a single, cyberpunk package in which your futuristic and decidedly immoral Eurocorp does battle to stop your brainwashed civilians from being re-brainwashed by a corrupt religious organisation, The Church of the New Epoch.
It’s essentially badguys vs badguys, and you’ll find yourself stealing buses, bombing city centres and using your ‘persuadertron’ to recruit mobs of innocent people and hurl them, unarmed, into battle with the Church’s heavily armed agents. Mission by mission you’ll shoot, bomb and brainwash your way through confrontations with the Church, and depending on how you do you’ll have the money to upgrade your team of agents with better weapons and bionic limbs, as you progress towards a battle with giant robo-spiders and a final showdown with the Church of the New Epoch in their base on the moon. That’s right, bionic mercenaries battle giant religious robo-spiders on the moon! How can anyone not love Syndicate Wars?
I still remember breaking the game’s 12 missions up over a week of co-op evenings back in 1998, with everything else taking a backseat to the desire to buy better robo-legs or send another mini-riot of brainwashed drones charging into a laser fence. It has to be said, Syndicate Wars hasn’t aged that well.
The character designs, particularly those of the church’s caped agents, are brilliant, but the whole affair is presented in isometric, semi-top-down view, and the tactical element of the game largely consists of making sure that your outnumbered agents are positioned to only ever engage a few agents at a time.
Rumours abound that an updated Syndicate Wars is in the works, which is enough to get us incredibly excited, but until that materialises, you can still find the original game, Syndicate, as abandonware. Try abandonia for starters…
And then there’s Halo. Mighty Halo. Conceived as a strategy game for the Mac, Halo’s beginnings couldn’t have been more offputting for it’s eventual audience, but when developers Bungie were bought by Micrsoft, Halo mutated into one of the most popular first person shooters ever seen, one that has attracted so much praise amongst it’s devoted followers, the Halo Nation, that the backlash now insists that it’s really not that special at all. As always, the truth lies somewhere between both versions.
There’s no getting past the fact that Halo’s decision to limit players to carrying just two weapons added a degree of agonising choice to your inventory management, as you’d never be quite sure if you were equipped to tackle whatever the game planned to throw at you next, while the much vaunted '30 seconds of fun' design ethos combined with the recharging shields made for a repeating stream of brief, furious and thoroughly satisfying engagements.
On top of that, Halo frequently abandoned the corridors or arenas layout of most first person shooters in favour of wider spaces-the first chapter of Halo seems comparatively commonplace as you battle aliens within the corridors and vent shafts of your ship, but it’s all a ruse designed to make your first taste of the wide open spaces of Halo all the more impressive.
Just to add polish to the idea, the enemy AI takes advantage of the extra space, with the villainous Covenant charging one moment, flanking the next and even retreating if you pick off the leaders.
Add to that a coherent universe, a genuine sense of threat to humanity from the strangely cartoonish Covenant, and the wonderful array of vehicle levels, full of skidding Warthogs, lumbering Scorpions and swooping Banshees, and you’ve got a thoroughly enjoyable game that stands above the average shooter and has understandably influenced the genre.
- Originality – Parc Xerox were rumoured to have had an FPS running way back in the seventies, and we’d all seen Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein and the like before Halo ever came along. It may have polished the genre, but it didn’t create it. Syndicate Wars on the other hand, offered a unique merger of tactical, shooter and strategy gameplay in a unique universe. Winner: Syndicate Wars
- Longevity – Neither game is a massive time-muncher. Halo clocks in somewhere between six and eight hours, while Syndicate Wars will take much the same, but while there will always be other shooters out there to play, it’s Syndicate Wars that still produces wistful sighs and instant bonding amongst gamers. Winner: Syndicate Wars
- Graphics – Even for it’s time, Syndicate Wars was good rather than great, while Halo’s use of lighting and lens flare along with some great designs give it the edge here. Winner: Halo
- Sound FX – From the comedy shrieking of the grunts to the deadly crack of the sniper rifle, Halo’s sound effects are a vital part of the game, but Syndicate Wars midi-synths for the music and the faceless voices barking orders over the tannoy’s of this dystopian future mean that Syndicate Wars is just a bit more evocative. Winner: Syndicate Wars.
- Replayability – At first glance, Syndicate Wars should walk this one. After all, you could replay to try out completely different enhancements and weapons, or replay to see if you could have accomplished with a rifle what you accomplished with a bomb, whereas a shooter really only has one long linear stretch of gameplay, right? Well, technically, yes, but Syndicate does show it’s age, and much of its original variety now seems to come down to little more than engaging two or three troops while keeping a building between you and the rest. On the other hand, even when you’ve played through it once or twice already, Halo’s string of fast and furious encounters still provide that same visceral buzz each time, and for every interminable corridor sequence there are three or four great fights for territory. Winner: Halo
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