Friday, January 8, 2016

SATELLITE REIGN

LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES...



Back in summer 2013 5Lives Studio succeeded at kickstarter with Satellite Reign, the "spiritual successor" of Syndicate Wars (video).

I couldn't have been more excited myself, was this the first campaign I ever backed and became part of. Now - well, actually already about 5 months ago - the game got out (for example) on Steam.

Despite me having had access to very early versions of the game playing them vigorously over the years, I still was very excited to play the finished version of it. Why? - Because - not least due to the rare forum posts - I was hoping the developers were hiding a lot of stuff from us few alpha and beta players. I almost prayed that the final game will be different from the early builds. Unfortunately it wasn't...


WAIT... DID I KNOW WHAT I WAS GOING TO GET?


While Satellite Reign definitely did a great job with the graphical environment, the class-based tactical gameplay, the setting and an astonishing soundtrack, there are unfortunately a few things missing to make this game really stand out in my opinion. Some of those negative points include for example the story, of which there wasn't any, if you ask me, but also too repetitive thus boring missions. Admittedly, the great gameplay possibilities and completely situational AI behavior make every mission unique in terms of what will happen, but the goal of the missions always remains the same: Get in, steal something and/or kill somebody and get out! All the game's "objectives" play inside of designated areas that are always separated by walls or other obstacles from the real city. While this is a good design choice that benefits production and also gives players who tend to get overwhelmed with real open worlds a more structured angle of approach, in this game it sadly deems the city to something that is just there but gets hardly noticed. - A shame given how visually appealing and deeply atmospheric they have actually mad it. Unfortunately the game doesn't convey the feeling of an adventure going on inside the real city because there is nothing to do there.

Although it can get pretty tactical I guess most people brute force their way through the game. Honestly, one single agent is just too weak to do anything alone. And since the game is not very reluctant once an alarm has been triggered, which means that an almost unlimited amount of enemies keeps spawning in the closest garage and keeps charging at you... well, as I said, you either have all four agents or only the Sniper who can become invisible. Personally I don't see any other option. Either way, as soon as you enter the second district of the city you will most certainly get a feeling of déjà vu and find yourself doing exactly the same as before, just with stronger enemies.

What disappointed me the most in this game however was not such a trivial thing as repetitive missions. With an immersive game world like that, I don't care about that. At some point I actually like it. For me the game's deepest problem is located within the fact that it might have been a bit to overambitious for a studio the size of 5Lives.


"YOU'RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BOAT."


As I said, I had a close look on the game during the whole development process. What shocked me most was that the very first alpha I played was actually not that much different from the final release. Don't get me wrong I know how much work is in there (even the things that most players usually don't see) and I also understand development cycles, but at the end of the day I am left with a game that to me didn't hold what it (intuitively) promised above all; being a better and modern Syndicate Wars. I see a product that had to be finished under great time and mostly money constraints. I see a city that got too big because of kickstarter campaign goals and thus took way too much precious time to complete. I am sure at some point about a year ago 5Lives had to make a decision. - To me it seems they decided to strip their game of any feature other than promised in their campaign and just concentrated on delivering. Of course I am merely speculating.

Take a look at this video (link):



Here you see one of the first videos from the development where they showed how the character augmentation screen/menu would be like. Isn't that awesome!! I must have watched that video a thousand times back then. Why? - Because that screen is precisely what is the most important aspect about Syndicate Wars or - if you will - any spiritual successor of it.

This is how it looks in the final game (sorry for the german text. The localization update must have messed up my system - oh how I hate localizations! Learn english people!):




A poor, text-based menu almost like taken from an 80s text adventure. No, not that hard, and usually I don't have a problem with reading - especially the good old text adventures! But the point is that this menu is nothing but a cheap version of it, and that doesn't only go for augmentations but also for weapons, items and skills.... this is all you see and there is nothing, nothing else! - No more fancy "under the skin" cyborg implants, no animations or even models. Do you remember how it was in the predecessors? How each single weapon got projected as hologram and As soon as you put a head (CPU) on your agents they became alive and started to breath! - I remember, one of the rare moments when I actually peed in my pants thanks to a videogame...

Yes, we are talking about development, some features go others come, but honestly dropping this very screen - a screen that I think 5Lives knew of its importance - seemed like ripping the heart out of the whole game and even makes the old menu shine in comparison. We all know that the Syndicate series is not only about running around in the city and shooting "bad" guys. Syndicate Wars as well as Satellite Reign are games with a very distinctive strategic component! And like in any other strategy game, the base building / unity management screen is the focal point of any character development and thus immersion to the game. - Even if the characters seem like mere cannon fodder and probably are totally replaceable. Upgrading them, nursing them, educating and customizing the very units you play with is exactly what makes a good strategy game! We, the god-like commanding players, need that connection to our soldiers or else there is no depth to any of it. With this menu, where you can do nothing more than click a text/skill A to replace it with text/skill B so that character C can have text/skill C, one of the - if not the - key component of the game is completely gone, despite all our expectations.

I wished they would have stayed with the old menu and also that they did something similar to the weapons and the skills, but as I said, obviously they didn't have enough time for it. This is what I meant with "I hoped that they were hiding something from us" and to further paraphrase: "I expected the real magic to be shown only in the release version".



"NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!"


Like I said, there are more negative or rather neglected points to Satellite Reign but I think this review is already getting too long. Overall the game is great and absolutely worth getting it for that price! I think this is as close as we will get of a strategic cyberpunk game that feels like Blade Runner and plays like an actual game - a game from the 90s. Yes, it is terribly sad to see how it failed to get close to probably even half of its total potential and it is sad to speculate why that is the case. At the end of the day nobody should criticize 5Lilves too much for they did absolutely amazing work on that game. Oh and by the way: They are still keeping it up! - Despite the fact that it wasn't reached in the campaign, they are at this very moment actually working on implementing cooperative multiplayer (post from November 2015)! Can you believe that? How can we not draw our hat before 5Lives Studios!

Let me finish this post by wishing you all once more a happy new year! Now that 2015 has finally passed I would like Satellite Reign to be remembered as a game from that year; from a time where almost anybody can make a game but only very few have the money to really make it. A time where the gap between few multi-million AAA productions and millions of - well - B+ indie games was never bigger. A reality that leaves us gamers and developers with only one crucial and striking truth: Similar to how most developed societies completely lost their middle classes by now, so did the game industry lose its sweeping and productive AA studios.

In my opinion Satellite Reign is not a success story. - Well, not the one I hoped for at least. But it is the closest professional attempt to work on a AA production and to rekindle that flame of independent quality, traditional gaming, innovation and immersion I have seen in a while!
I think this is what we should remember about 2015; A game like Satellite Reign, that per definition at least tries to shape the face of gaming... and not games like Halo 5, Fallout 4 or Battlefront!


Play more! Dance more!

... just listen to this formidable Soundtrack! :)

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