I actually don’t think remakes are an inherently terrible thing. In between the flood of Footloose and Arthur remakes are gems like The Departed or The Thing. At the very least, I no longer bristle at the idea of a remake, whether movie or video game; I prefer to actually check them out and judge each one on its own merits. After all, the last time games saw a revamp/revival of a long-dormant property resulted in the excellent Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And Syndicate has a lot going for it: The cyberpunk aesthetics mesh well with its literal take on corporate warfare, and such factors work in tune with a first-person shooter. And it’s from one of the more inventive developers of first-person games, Starbreeze Studios.
Yet, I finally play Syndicate, and my heart sinks a bit. It opens in a generic urban environment where the artists demonstrate a grievous overreliance on bloom lighting. I encounter foes who studied at the “rush straight for the player” school of design. At some point, the cramped corridors and generic aesthetics mean that I actually find myself going back the way I came in an apartment complex… only then to encounter a first-person jumping puzzle. This beginning is a far cry from The Chronicles of Riddick‘s inventive and neck-breaking dream sequence or the lovingly over-the-top chase of The Darkness.
