Sleep and games are among my favourite things. Certainly they're the biggest occupiers of my time, and thanks to my collection of chronic ailments they often overlap.
I have always struggled with sleep, you see. It doesn't happen regularly, nor when I invite it. It simply comes when it comes (I've tried whatever you're about to suggest, thanks), and I've learned that it's best to take advantage of it when it does. But games have sometimes helped, in those cases where the brother of Death lingered awkwardly on the doorstep. Here then, are some of the soundtracks I've consistently dropped off to.
]]>Australia is still burning, but over the last couple of days they've actually had some rain! While this is a big help to certain areas, there are still 83 fires blazing around the country, and there's a lot of people and wildlife still in trouble. It's good job then that there are even more game devs, companies, and communities banding together to help out our friends down under.
A new Humble Bundle, a donation from the makers of Warframe, and a charity initiative run by Eve Online players are just three more ways the games industry is raising money, and you can get involved to show your support too.
]]>Free stuff is always cool, and when that free stuff just happens to be two polished and relatively well-received strategy games, all the better. For the next 48 hours or so, you can snag Syndicate revival Satellite Reign via the Humble Store and the Heroes of Might & Magic-ish Eador: Masters of the Broken World via its Steam page here completely free to keep forever, no strings attached.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I never completed Satellite Reign, because fellow journo and one-time board game co-conspirator Matt Lees told me something that completely demolished my enjoyment of it. I won’t tell you that thing unless you come with me below the line, because I want you to know that this game is pretty good and you shouldn’t listen to me. It’s an isometric neon haze of cool cyberpunk freedom fighters who will get in and out of scrapes in supreme style, in a vast city that looks just as cool as anything Deus Ex has thought up. I recommend it. That’s all. You can go now.
]]>A syndicate of one is no syndicate at all. It's a small business at best. Something you run on the kitchen table. An Etsy store, maybe. No, if you want to be a syndicate - a megacorp - you really need cool killer cyborg pals. So huzzah! After a stretch in open beta, the Syndicate-inspired tactical cybersquad action of Satellite Reign [official site] is launching its four-player co-op. Four isn't quite enough to be a syndicate but it's perhaps enough to consider hiring a small office in an arcology.
]]>When I consider Satellite Reign [official site] as a whole, a grand canvas spattered with raindrops, neon and bulletholes, I'm in love with it. Yes, it looks and feels a little like Syndicate, but 5 Lives' Kickstarted RTS-RPG does not slavishly follow a model from the past. Its city is open, a series of district-hubs with opportunities and mission locations scattered across them, and there are many possible routes to victory.
Satellite Reign is, from the wide-scan satellite's view, a thing of beauty and promise. But I've been down in the streets for the last few days to take a closer look at the city. Here's wot I think.
]]>I haven't played Satellite Reign's [official site] yet. It's been in Early Access since December last year but I'm excited enough for a spiritual successor to Syndicate that I decided to wait till its rain-slick streets and neon signs were at their moody best. That's now due to happen in ten days when the game launches on August 28th, and there's a new launch trailer below.
]]>Rain-soaked, neon-drenched and corporate-haunted, Satellite Reign's [official site] urban setting is the kind of near-future city that feels like a convincing world of tomorrow. Through sleep-starved eyes, this morning's launch video looks a bit like the 'world of last Saturday night', to be honest. It's a gorgeous Syndicate-inspired team-based tactical shooter / ARPG hybrid and after a long stay in the augmentation chambers of Early Access, it's almost ready for release.
]]>Don't panic, I mean the original one, not the forgettable Starbreeze shooter (though it did have a decent multiplayer mode). Given Recent Events it's a good time to look back at glory days Molyneux/Bullfrog, a time when that studio's games were rewriting the rulebook. So, I heartily recommend grabbing Syndicate from Origin today, given it's currently free.
]]>In this irregular column, Marsh Davies stumbles across an impressive effect or neat bit of trickery and asks, “How did they do that?” his eyes brimming with tears of admiration and wonder. Then one of the developers tells him, hopefully using terms that don’t cause the soft mass of his brain to boil out of his ears.
Something about cityscapes at night triggers a very particular kind of excitement in me. I’m not sure exactly what it is - do the streets’ relative desertion imbue a sense of ownership over them which is not possible during the day? Do they feel forbidden or transgressive in some way? Is it about the contrast of light and dark; the possibility of both invisibility and of voyeurism? Whatever it is, some games evoke it with real potency - Deus Ex and Human Revolution, of course; Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is another; and the Splinter Cell games invariably offer some view of isolation and modernity from the blustery summit of a skyscraper. But perhaps the game which presses that button with the greatest insistence is a new one: Satellite Reign.
It’s an incredible aesthetic consummation: sound and vision conjuring a bustling cityscape of perpetual neon-studded night, simultaneously alive and lonely. And contributing to this in no small part is the rain. No game, I think, has done it this well - from the bleary streaks that flicker down in front of luminescent signs and sodium lights, to the shimmering, slick pavements with their pools and rivulets. I had to know how it was done.
]]>Spritual Syndicate sequel/remake Satellite Reign arrived on Steam Early Access last week. Can it possibly live up to its hallowed Bullfrog cyberpunk squad shooter legacy? I jacked in to find out.
The bad news: we're running out of things that we want spiritual sequels to! Everything we ever wanted is coming true! CRISIS IN VIDEOGAMELAND.
The good news: Syndicate remake (of a sort) Satellite Reign is hot.
]]>Prepare to download jubilation and dispense judgement, agents: Satellite Reign has arrived on Steam Early Access.
The game's been covered a-plenty on RPS since it was teased all the way back in May 2013, and that's undeniably been helped by its promise to be the successor to long-forgotten series Syndicate. I said long-forgotten. What's an FPS?
]]>You and your squad find yourselves in a neon alleyway somewhere in a dangerous electro-future and set out into the night. Your hacker hacks doors and cash machines, your infiltrator sneaks through difficult areas, while your support man heals and your soldier does what soldiers do - he shoots things real good. You're a formidable team, and one with the option to tackle missions in a number of different ways. I can imagine why our Jim had such a good time recently shooting, bargaining, sneaking and hacking his way through the cyberpunk dystopia of Satellite Reign.
It's a shame that only Kickstarter backers have a chance to try the game out before release. Oh wait! Satellite Reign will enter Steam Early Access some time in December. Here's a new trailer:
]]>Back when I interviewed Syndicate-veteran Mike Diskett about his plans for Satellite Reign, I was buoyant with excitement: he spoke of systems, not scripting, and of sprawling cyberpunk cities playing host to mad shoot 'em freedom, just like we were promised in the old days. Now, having spent some time with the "pre-alpha" test release that the team have put out to backers, I can say that this excitement was, mercifully, a precursor to an even deeper feeling: intense anxiety.
Anxiety? Yes, because this early, incomplete build demonstrates that the 5 Lives team know exactly what they doing, and all we can do now is wait, nervously, to see if they pull it off for the full game.
Aiie!
]]>Satellite Reign comfortably cleared its £350,000 Kickstarter target in July of last year, but that this Syndicate-inspired tactical cyberpunk game didn't extend its tally into the millions was perhaps the first sign that i) the crowdfunding service isn't a magic well full of money and ii) that we don't live in the best of all possible universes.
One of the signs that our universe is still very good however is the first pre-alpha playthough of the game, embedded below. It's dark, stealthy, cyberpunk, tactical, Syndicate Syndicate Syndicate. I like it.
]]>"I wonder what's going on with Syndicate remake/spiritual sequel Satellite Reign?" I asked myself yesterday. "It's been a while since we heard anything about it. Oh God, maybe it's dead, oh no, please", I panicked, before realising that "heard" would involve "games sites covering it", which meant that I simply hadn't checked in on it for a few months, which meant that I should go and do that right now. So I did. And I'm glad I did.
]]>Want first proper in-game, in-mission footage of spiritual Syndicate remake Satellite Reign? With agents and cars and civilians and cities and miniguns and all? Step right this way.
I think you're going to like what you see.
]]>Aha, good to see the spiritual Syndicate sequel (the real one, not that dreary cash-grab from Starbreeze a couple of years back) breaking cover again after its successful Kickstarter. The good stuff - an early glimpse of Satellite Reign's unfinished world, with its newly animated civilians scampering about - doesn't kick in until 6m40s mark, but let's not be churlish - it's always fascinating to see how videogames get made. Especially when it involves quite as much brutal puppy sacrifice and breaking into DARPA bases as the 5 Lives team gets up to. Frankly I'm amazed they're prepared to show all that in public. And so much nudity too! Whatever makes a more comfortable working environment, I guess.
]]>The Steam Greenlight machine keeps right on churning, and I have to say: it's getting a little more efficient. Initially, batches of new games were wheezing out in sickly trickles, but now we're getting 15-game shotgun bursts every couple weeks. There's still plenty of room for improvement of course, and it remains to be seen whether or not Valve can keep pushing this pace, but it's good to at least see some baby steps in the right direction. With that said, let's dive into this week's selection. Standouts include Syndicate spiritual successor Satellite Reign, the ever-popular (and hilarious) Viscera Cleanup Detail, open-world zombie sandbox 7 Days To Die, extremely ambitious god game Maia, and quiet, thoughtful ghost romp The Novelist.
]]>After much gnashing of teeth and tearing of our sackcloth, the Kickstarter we all wanted but no one was funding has made it. Satellite Reign has reached its £350,000 funding. In fact, with three days still to go, it's over the target by another £20k already. So there is to be a new cyberpunk game from the creator of Syndicate Wars. How was that ever a close thing? They celebrate with fireworks.
]]>You do realise this guy made Urban Chaos and Startopia, right? Here's the Kickstarter.
]]>Perhaps it's my insomnia, but I'm feeling rather emotional. There was something that made me want to well up in my interview with Satellite Reign lead, Mike Diskett. Even with the fall of Mucky Foot on his CV, it seems unfair to say that Diskett has had a tough time of it – he's a talented programmer working on numerous successful (and not so successful) projects over many years – now living in Brisbane. But there's something else simultaneously tragic and beautiful going on here, which is bound up with the two empty decades since Syndicate Wars. It's something about the dreams of what games could be. Diskett believes and lives that simulation dream. He is one of the pioneers at the heart of the idea of open worlds and living systems.
“Behaviour,” he told me, “not scripting.” I could have wept.
]]>As predicted, Satellite Reign has appeared on Kickstarter, promising to make the Syndicate-style game we always wanted. Watch these chaps get a million quid in no time. Slick-as-rain pitch video below.
]]>So it seems like there will be two contenders for the Hey, We Forgot About Syndicate In All This Nostalgia throne. One is Cartel, which Paradox are now beginning to tease fairly strongly, and the other is a fragment of information squeezed the news that Syndicate Wars man (and so appropriately named for a '90s developer) Mike Diskett is UP TO SOMETHING. The first images of the thing he is up to, Satellite Reign, have appeared on a Swedish site, fz.se. They're just concept art, but Oh My God concept art. Satellite Reign, which is without much doubt an impending Kickstarter, could well cause me to inject drugs into my augmented espionage agent once it is announced.
HOW ABOUT THAT FOR A EUPHEMISM.
More images below. Click for slightly larger. (But not much larger.)
]]>Which classic '90s game have we been asking to be remade, and has yet only had a dodgy FPS to its name in recent years? Was it a game programmed by this man? Was it one of the best cyberpunk games ever conceived?
And what's this teaser trailer below? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE HAPPENING IN JUNE?
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