Comments on: Thoughts: Satellite Reign

By: Strudel

Strudel — Sat, 05 Sep 2015 14:43:21 +0000

I was so looking forward to this, and nearly bought it earlier in the week, but I guess I’ll just pass it buy (at least until it’s on epic discount) and play some of the other games I’ve yet to get round to.

As rubbish as I was at Syndicate, I did love what little I played of it, and it’s a shame this hasn’t turned out better; like you said, the concept seems like it could be really good.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 13:05:26 +0000

If you read the Syndicate manual it’s actually all very silly. The corporate-world-gone-mad and the reduction of everything to bottom lines and profit margins is pitched rather tongue in cheek. There’s still something a bit chilling about it, though, especially when you throw it together with the violent experience of playing it. GTA provoked outrage in the press four years later for pretty much exactly the same thing, but Syndicate was mowing down innocent bystanders in the crossfire first.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Thu, 03 Sep 2015 12:57:32 +0000

That’s the thing – when you measure it by the Early Access yardstick Satellite Reign is actually pretty solid. It’s bugged and unbalanced and lacking in detail, but it’s more or less feature-complete, has a coherent structure and there are no *serious* bugs.

I don’t doubt that all of these issues were obvious during Early Access, but it’s completely acceptable for an Early Access game. They only *become* issues once a game is pushed into full release, and when you announce the release date less than a month before you actually release the game there’s precious little time for these issues to be flagged up as actual problems rather than par for the course.

(There’s also the tendency of Early Access developers to view dedicated polishing and bugfixing time as a wasteful extravagance, but I could write a whole post about how Early Access in practice is bad for the development process as a whole. And anyway, it’s not like triple-A isn’t guilty of the same attitude.)

By: Ninja Foodstuff

Ninja Foodstuff — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 09:58:46 +0000

It really makes me wonder about the whole Early Access thing. Was it that none of the people playing the game during its alpha/beta had any insight as to any of these problems, or just that the developers didn’t pay attention to it.

By: railbydefault

railbydefault — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 03:50:16 +0000

Great read. One of my first, and only early PC game playing experiences that has stuck with me is Syndicate. It came with a Bullfrog 4-pk that also included Themepark, Power Monger, and Simcity. I remember it as this amazing adventure of me trying to learn how to play it, giving up on it, and then coming back to it. Ultimately I figured out how to play(to an extent) and it was glorious fun and, from what I remember, better/deeper than any of the games I had played before it. Admittedly I didnt have much in the way of PC gaming exp, but when I did, and of that which I was able to play-Sydicate will always hold the first spot for a game that truely amazed and engulfed me at every turn. Themepark and Simcity were equally great, but without the grit and relation to reality that Sydicate had(I say that knowing its nothing like real life, but the reality, coldness, and aforementioned grit is what I suppose I attribute to being “reality-like” vs the others).