Saturday Morning Gaming: Satellite Reign is a modern Syndicate
We talked about Syndicate a couple weeks ago. A brilliant amoral video game where you use your cyber-enhanced agents to hack, kidnap, and assassinate your way to global domination.
I know that *I* have been wondering “why hasn’t someone tried to remake this?” and and, well, I have since found the game “Satellite Reign”.
This is a game that looked at Syndicate and said “We should remake that.”
It’s got a lot of similar beats. You create your own name and symbol just like in Syndicate:
And then you’re given your first agent and you have to go collect your other 3 agents and run your mission. The good news:
YOU HAVE CAMERA CONTROLS.
You quickly learn that each one of your agents has different skills and abilities. This one is good at combat (and has potential to become great at it), that one is good at hacking (less combat potential though), and so on.
Now here’s the bad news, I guess:
They’ve changed the theme of the game. You are no longer an amoral corporate controller hoping to take over the world, you are now the handler of a handful of ragtag cyberpunk protagonists who are taking on the corporations.
Whether or not this is an improvement is, of course, up to the player but I find myself thinking “oh” when I get a new mission and the preamble is about how we need to fight back.
I suppose that that is more in line with modern interpretations of cyberpunk, of course… but there’s a little piece of me that thinks that part of what made Syndicate so interesting was that you were playing a cold and ruthless protagonist rather than yet another plucky underdog.
Ah, well.
If you want to play the bad guy, you can still get the original. If the gameplay was what had you hooked, well, Satellite Reign gives you a lovely little squad-based RPG that has multiple ways to achieve any given objective.
So… what are you playing?
Ooooh, I’d forgotten about this game. It’s been in my library for ages. May have to break it back out.Report
Cool. There used to be so many games similar in ways to Syndicate. A lot of those old iso RPGs were fun – early PC, NES, SNES, Genesis, et al. I suppose some of the reason is because of the limits of computers, back in the day, which created rich strategy games that really have disappeared (though I don’t play PC as much now).
I miss those old RPGs. And the old strategy games, too. The old KOEI games. And MicroProse.
Master of Orion (and the even crazier Master of Magic). Whatever that sea trading/pirating game was, where you could sail the entire world and one trip back with exotic spices set you up for life. The original Warcraft (and Starcraft). All of the Japanese and Chinese historical/mythological games (I always liked Genghis Khan, Romance of the Three Kingdoms). I’m forgetting lots, because there were LOTS of these games.
I’ve played the newish Wasteland 2 recently, and it is very Fallout 1/2 (iso, turn-based, choices, RPG, random encounters, etc.). I’ll have to keep an eye out for this one (Satellite Reign). I recommend Wasteland 2, if you have an itch for the old Fallout 1/2 thing.
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I’ve been playing with Dalle2 (https://openai.com/dall-e-2/) recently, since I finally got access a couple of weeks ago. It’s interesting and very surreal a lot of the time. But fairly amazing, for what it does. Sign up for an account, if you don’t have one (they’re free still). They limit how many prompts you can do per month now (15), though you get 50 prompts for the first month. Of course, you can buy more prompts if you run out, because, of course. People do some fun things with putting computer/video game characters into other video games (Mario but in Metal Gear Solid, Realistic, HD, fine details, studio lighting from the side, strong contrast, shadows, …).Report
Yeah, I got mine a couple of weeks ago too.
My absolute *BEST* one was “statue of a bear holding a human skull”.
I’ve been playing with stuff that the DM could hand out. “As you walk down the hall, you see that there are carvings in the wall… they look like this.”
And then give the players a printout of “bas-relief of cave full of zombies holding torches”.Report
“I’ve been playing with stuff that the DM could hand out. “As you walk down the hall, you see that there are carvings in the wall… they look like this.”
And then give the players a printout of “bas-relief of cave full of zombies holding torches”.”
I think Dalle2 is perfect for stuff like that. I love it! And it would also be great for making quick prototype assets for games. Or images of characters. Or storyboards.
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I really like the Dall-E one of the bear and skull.Report
Yeah. I know that I should be doing something socially beneficial with the AI tools and the best thing that I can come up with is “handouts for D&D”.
Because, if that’s not an option, I’m just having Cap’n Crunch have a light sabre fight with Picard at Wrestlemania.Report
Yeah, but who gets to decide what’s beneficial and what isn’t? You do you. That’s best.
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Unrelated game rec: Wingspan (board game about birds). Still trying to figure it out. Very different. Love the artwork (like Auduban drawings). Fun to play, but also talk at the same time.Report
I’ve seen it on the steam and it’s been intriguing, I just haven’t made the jump yet.
I will now. (Or payday, anyway.)Report
Okay, it’s 40% off.
I’ll try it now.Report
Wow, I didn’t know it was a computer game. I have the board game of it, which is of excellent quality. I know you play board games, too, and was recommending the board game version.
Let me know how the computer game version is.
EDIT: And it has single (solo) player rules, too, though it’s different than a two player or a three+ player play.
EDIT 2: *AudubonReport
My wife and I played Wingspan with a couple of friends a few months ago — it’s a nice medium-complexity game with a great theme. Normally my wife would run screaming away from a game like that, but being something of a birder, she couldn’t help but be drawn in by the theme.
Apart from the electronic versions of the game itself, there’s also an app Wingsong that you can use with the physical game that can scan a card and play the song/call of that bird.Report
Thanks for the information on the Wingsong app! I will download that to use the next time we play WingSpan.Report