Syndicate Four-Player Mode Reveal

Bullfrog's original Syndicate (1993) was an isometric action-adventure featuring a group of four-players hell-bent on global dominance, so it's fitting that EA's update offers a meaty four-player co-operative campaign that pays tribute to Peter Molyneux's original.

Of course, Syndicate isn't just about the past. It's also about a fictional near-future in which corporations wield all the power and will stop at nothing to enhance their interests. In the single-player campaign, the main character is raised as an operative for one such corporation. In four-player mode, you and your buddies, highly modified with weaponry and breach gizmos, create a new "Syndicate" that seeks to destroy its rivals.

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And then there's the present, a time-frame that is of most immediate interest to publisher EA and developer Starbreeze, as they seek to re-introduce this long dormant game-world into the collective imagination of the gaming public.

At EA's offices in Redwood City, California, IGN played a section of the four-player campaign, which will be a major pillar when the game arrives in February.

This is no mere run-and-gun bro-blaster. Players are given one of four standard classes, and are encouraged, nay forced, to make use both of their specific skills and of the game's technical-magical elements, which allow enemies to be breached in ways that can severely diminish their health. A player's refusal to behave as a medic or sniper, for example, will most likely lead to mission failure.

Valuable perks and kill-powers can only be gained by breaching enemy soldiers and their weaponry.

In this game world, mind-chips can be hacked in order to control enemies. Bosses, once killed, yield up valuable hardware, achieved through a brief and gruesome field-operation. There's a lot to be gained by playing together.

EA's marketing operatives say want the game to fit in between the shooters du jour like Battlefield 3, and futuristic RPG Mass Effect 3, due to arrive in March. The game takes its narrative cue from this fall's hit Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but four-player gameplay comes straight out of the gaming drawer marked "Left 4 Dead", with infected zombies substituted for smart warriors and grimy streets replaced with sleek corporate offices.

Syndicate is looking like a note-worthy title for early 2012, most especially for those who enjoy true co-operative gameplay.

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