Satellite Reign

The world is controlled by ruthless megacorporations, the most notorious of which is Dracogenics. A group opposed to Dracogenics drop four skilled agents into their largest city, with a simple mission: build up the resources needed to destroy the corporation for good.

Satellite Reign is a real-time tactics game set in a cyberpunk city, some 200 years in the future. You control four agents, each representing a specific class (Soldier, Hacker, Support and Infiltrator), and have a mission to take down and destroy an enemy corporation. Thanks to resurrection technology, your agents are functionally immortal, but each time they regenerate they lose some of their abilities. Fortunately they can be restored by cloning citizens (and, eventually, enemy soldiers), but this comes at its own price of morality, time and the risk of discovery.

The game takes place entirely on one massive map divided into four districts. At the start of the game you are restricted to the Industrial District and have to undertake missions for local criminal gangs and your own bosses. These can involve rescuing someone from custody, assassinating targets or (most commonly) stealing enemy inventions. You can research new technology, such as weapons or augmentations (implants), or equipment such as better armour or energy shields. All of this requires money, which you can obtain through doing missions or hacking ATM machines. This is essential because as you complete missions and move onto new districts of the city, the objectives become tougher, the enemy gain better equipment and the odds start stacking up against you. Research and development is key to you maintaining an edge over the opposition.

Missions can be accomplished in multiple ways. You can sneak into facilities through stealth, perhaps through an air vent or hacking the security cameras and blast doors. You can send in all four team-members or hold some in reserve and send in your infiltrator (complete with his insta-kill melee weapons and cloaking device) alone. You can mind-control enemy soldiers into helping you out by opening doors or providing a diversion. Or you can wade in with all guns blazing and overcome the security forces through superior firepower and tactics. A combined stealth/cover system is employed to help this. Combat is in real-time and can get quite frantic, although an optional bullet time mode can slow things down and allow for more relaxed use of tactics.

Graphically, the game looks gorgeous with some excellent neon-lit buildings and a strong aesthetic style. When you zoom in things get rather less impressive, but you'll spend most of it zoomed out to a reasonable level. The game also features some amazing rain effects, ambient sound and low-fi music, not to mention a cyberspace view which transforms the game into Tron.

The gameplay is generally excellent, with your agents controlled through simple mouse commands and keyboard shortcuts. Like all the best games, Satellite Reign's systems are individually straightforward, but when combined can lead to some splendid sandbox moments, such as when an infiltration goes horribly wrong and you find yourself trapped in an alley, but then the automated turret you hacked on a whim a few minutes earlier suddenly opens up on the enemy and scatters them. It is extremely satisfying to recon a target location, formulate a plan and then successfully execute it, dealing with problems along the way. But it is more fun when things go awry and you have to improvise. The game is tough (especially at the start) but fair. When things go badly wrong and your party is wiped out, you generally know exactly why, how and how you can learn from the experience to improve next time.

There are a few minor issues. The story is pretty much non-existent, relegated to briefings on data consoles and an occasional transmission from your off-screen support. This makes some parts of the game (particularly the eyebrow-raising ending) resonate less strongly than they should. Research is also solely time-dependent, which means if you want to level up and get ahead of the opposition, you can simply spend a couple of hours standing around completing research projects one after the other without actually doing anything else. There's also a few buggy moments, such as when a character passes through a solid door and ends up trapped on the other end, or can't traverse an airvent without getting stuck in an animation loop. These latter issues are very few and far between, especially now the game's received a few solid patches.

For the most part, Satellite Reign (****½) is tremendous fun. Its freeform gameplay, satisfying combat and tremendous sense of atmosphere combine to create something extremely appealing and strategically satisfying, which doesn't outstay its welcome. The game is available now on GoG and Steam.

Comparison with Syndicate

Almost every review of Satellite Reign I've read has commented extensively on its comparisons to the 1993 cyberpunk classic Syndicate, one of my favourite games of all time. I didn't raise this in the main review because I suspect vast numbers of people (the probable majority) playing this game have never played Syndicate and indeed may not have been born when it was released. However, these are my views on how the two games stack up.

Satellite Reign shares a similar visual aesthetic and control scheme to Syndicate, but is much more sophisticated. Satellite Reign has hacking, stealth and cover systems, all lacking from Syndicate. Syndicate is more limited because its missions really revolve around either combat or persuading someone to join you. A few missions could be completed without a shot being fired but these were few and far between. Syndicate was also played on fifty different maps, each supposedly part of a different city, but these were very similar with no major shifts in visual style to differentiate the cities. Satellite Reign has more character and variation in its one city than Syndicate, its expansion (American Revolt) or sequel (Syndicate Wars) combined. Satellite Reign's class system also works better then Syndicate's "four identical people, each toting eight miniguns" approach.

On the other hand, the originals did do a few things better. Syndicate allowed you to use vehicles and its weapons were much punchier. The Persuadatron was ludicrously good fun, and much better than Satellite Reign's more limited person-hacking mechanic. Returning to base between each mission, allowing you to re-arm and research at leisure, was also more enjoyable than the stretches of Satellite Reign when you're just standing in an alley waiting for your shields to recharge or for that new gun to unlock through research. Syndicate Wars also had fully-destructible scenery and allowed you to rotate the camera 360 degrees. Satellite Reign's inability to rotate it more than a few degrees is just odd.

Overall, Satellite Reign is the more sophisticated, varied and compelling game, but there's a few things the old games (can still be picked up from places like GoG) still do better. Certainly Satellite Reign is a more than worthy successor, and a must buy for anyone who was a fan of the original games.

New trailer for SATELLITE REIGN

5 Lives Studios have revealed a launch trailer for their tactical cyberpunk game Satellite Reign.

Satellite Reign is a "spiritual successor" to the classic Bullfrog games Syndicate and Syndicate Wars, created by some of the same personnel. Like those games, Satellite Reign is played from an overhead perspective and is set in an enormous futuristic city. You can rearm and equip agents between missions as well as engaging in research. The game expands on Syndicate's combat-focused gameplay by allowing hacking, stealth and corporate espionage. Your agents are also now specialists, with some being better at certain tasks than others.

The game will be released for PC, Mac and Linux on 28 August. The funky soundtrack to the trailer is "Infiltrate" by Protector 101.

SYNDICATE successor SATELLITE REIGN gets a release date

Satellite Reign, the eagerly-anticipated "successor" to the classic 1990s cyberpunk games Syndicate and Syndicate Wars, will be released on 28 August.

Designed by several of the same team-members as the original Bullfrog games, Satellite Reign is a violent cyberpunk strategy game with you controlling four agents on the streets of a massive, futuristic city. You control the action from overhead and can determine if your agents (each of whom has a specialty class) are to resolve a situation by stealth, frontal assault or hacking.

There are some differences to the original games, with the specialty classes meaning that grouping your agents together for full-scale warfare may not always be the best idea. The game is also continuous in the worldspace, with research and upgrades carried out in the city rather than through a separate option screen. There is also only one (albiet gargantuan) city rather than lots of different cities all over the world.

New SATELLITE REIGN footage

5 Lives Studios have revealed the first substantial ingame footage from their upcoming cyberpunk game Satellite Reign.

Satellite Reign is a successor to the classic 1990s games Syndicate, Syndicate: American Revolt and Syndicate Wars (and absolutely not the weak 2012 FPS from EA), made by some of the same development team. Like those games it will be an isometric game where you control four agents on the streets of a futuristic city, complete with vehicles, towering buildings and tons of civilians wandering around (who can be recruited to further your own ends, or blown up if you're a psychopath). Satellite Reign will add more specialised skills (such as hacking) and of course much shinier graphics.

Satellite Reign was due to be released at the end of 2014, but it's starting to look more and more like a 2015 release.

The SF of Gaming

Where would computer games be without science fiction? Alien bad guys, stonking great railguns, cyborg protagonists and post-apocalyptic landscapes are ten-a-penny in games. The number of games out there without any SF or fantasy elements is tiny; even the historical simulation Civilization games allows Gandhi to build an army of death-dealing laser tanks and then fly to Alpha Centauri, whilst the Crusader Kings series postulates fantastical alternate timelines where Wales is a European superpower.

Scientifically inexplicable.

That said, SF in games is usually scenery rather than the focus of the setting. The socio-economic basis of why the alien Lord Mental, with access to vast resources and commanding a star-spanning empire, needs to invade Earth in the Serious Sam series remains resolutely unexplored. And how do those suicide bomber guys scream when they don't have a head anyway? The science in science fiction is often questionable in books (and almost non-existent on TV and in film), and even moreso in games.

Still, exceptions exist. Here's a look at some games which attempt to use real science as more than just wallpaper.

Frontier: Elite 2 - Real Astronomy & Newtonian Physics

Released in 1993, Frontier was David Braben's ambitious follow-up to the classic, medium-defining 1984 space sim Elite. Frontier allows you to take on the role of the captain of a spacecraft. You can indulge in trading goods between star systems, fighting pirates (or turning pirate yourself) or undertaking missions for one of several interstellar powers (the Federation, the Empire or numerous independent worlds, as well as various corporations). You can switch between spacecraft and upgrade them.

Where the game was truly stunning was that it simulated the entire Milky Way Galaxy on just a single floppy disk. 100 billion stars were located in the galaxy, and the several hundred closest to Earth were placed in their (more or less) correct astronomical positions, along with a few hundred other major stars. You could fly to the Pleiades (though it'd take a while), check out Polaris or skim the surface of Arcturus. The game also used real Newtonian physics, complete with effectively infinite inertia once you had fired your engines in a particular direction, and space stations simulating gravity through centrifugal force. You could even fly over planetary surfaces and land at starports.

Of course, the game looks pretty primitive by modern standards, 99% of the stars in the game are randomly placed and named and the Newtonian physics make space combat unintuitive and almost ridiculously difficult to pull off (and the fact that few later space games - I-War and Tachyon's nods to it side - use real physics may be down to Frontier's problems). But the ambition and scope are there. It will be interesting to see if Elite: Dangerous, due in 2014, manages to solve the issues whilst retaining the immense scale, scope and ambition of its forebear.

Damocles: Mercenary II - Comets and Time Dilation

Predating Frontier by a few years, Damocles similarly depicts an impressive 3D universe which allows you to land and take off from planets. The setting is much more limited, with just a single solar system on offer. The spacecraft is also merely a way of getting from planet to planet, with the focus being on your character wandering around (in first-person 3D; a stunning achievement in 1990). The premise is that the comet Damocles is about to crash into and destroy the planet Eris and your character has to find a way of stopping it. The game presents several possibilities, from the direct (finding and blowing up the comet with a mega-powerful antimatter bomb) to the sensible (redirecting the comet away from Eris onto a safer orbit by blowing up another, uninhabited body nearby).

One of the more interesting things about the game is that your spacecraft can accelerate to near-lightspeed to get around the system, but this results in time dilation. You can travel right across the system in minutes, but the doomsday clock will tick down at a ridiculous rate. This forces the player to find alternate ways of travelling around (teleporters being the favourite alternative, but their locations are unknown at the start of the game) to avoid the problem.

Syndicate - Cyberpunk Dystopia

Also released in 1993, Syndicate was an action-strategy game set in a dystopian cyberpunk future, where the world is controlled by corporations who influence and pacify citizens via chips in their brains. These chips can be subverted by the player, allowing them to take control of huge crowds of people during missions to be used as cannon fodder or a distraction. This notion of human/computer interfaces is only lightly touched upon in the game due to control limitations, although it does bring in other SF ideas such as robot policemen and massive corporate advertising boards (influenced by Blade Runner). Most sinister is the way the game postulates a future where governments are rump states at best, with the real power held by corporations and their private armies.

A sequel, Syndicate Wars, moved the game into 3D in 1996. Recently, several of the design team for Syndicate and its sequel announced a Kickstarter campaign for a 'spiritual sequel', Satellite Reign, that will expand upon many of the ideas in the original game and allow for things like hacking and more freeform approaches to missions.

Hostile Waters - Nanotech Singularity and Social Revolution

One of the greatest (though also underplayed) strategy games of all time, Hostile Waters (aka Antaeus Rising in the USA) places you in command of an immense aircraft carrier with orders to liberate a chain of newly-risen islands from the control of a hostile power. What at first appears to be a remake of the classic 1987 strategy title Carrier Command (itself given a lacklustre, official remake in 2012) quickly turns into a different beast. Part of this is down to the compelling fiction, created by writer Warren Ellis.

The game postulates a technological singularity (in 2012) which comes to pass due to the invention of Creation Engines, devices which use nanotechnology to break items apart and reassemble them at a molecular level. Anything can be turned into anything else. Rubbish can be transformed into food, sand into diamonds. This immediately removes scarcity - famine, lack of resources - as an issue for everyone on the planet and would seem to herald a golden age. The owners of the means of production, who are effectively out of a job, resist by trying to regulate the introduction of Creation Engines, resulting in a messy, bloody global civil war. At the end of the war the 'old guard' are defeated and everyone lives in a world of plenty. Needless to say, some of these old guard launch a new assault using weaponised Creation Engine technology...technology which gets out of hand very rapidly.

Dealing with SF hot topics like nanotechnology, the Singularity (not exactly in a robust way, though, as the post-2012 society is still pretty comprehensible to us), life-extension via 'saving' consciousness on AI systems, the conflicts of closed systems versus open ones and ideology versus religion, the game's storyline is surprisingly deep though arguably flawed: the world also being a secularist paradise with billions of people abandoning religion seems a bit far-fetched, though there are hints that the new society has a sinister side as well. All the more remarkable is that this background is there purely to explain the game's use of standard strategy tropes, like being able to build vehicles instantly on the battlefield. The fiction is impressive and well-thought-out, complementing the amazing gameplay very well.

Portal - Science as Fun

Released in 2007, Portal was a small game but a hugely influential one. The game is based around the idea that you can create two linked dimensional portals on certain surfaces, allowing for intelligent ways to solve apparently insurmountable puzzles. Jumping across a vast chasm is possible by creating a portal on the wall behind you and another at the bottom of the chasm: falling into the chasm builds up enough momentum to shoot through the portal, over the top of the chasm and landing safely on the other side.

The portal technology is of course highly speculative, but it's a rare example of a gaming taking its central scientific/technological premise (no matter how ludicrous) and exploring it intelligently. The 'science!' theme, the impressive AI antagonist, the game's remarkable sense of humour and it's bigger, better sequel all help cement the game's reputation as one of the finest first-person action games in existence.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Augmentation and Cyborgs

This prequel to 2000's classic Deus Ex deals with a number of important near-future issues. As well as the standard cyberpunk government/corporation tension, the game explores the theme of augmentation and using technology to enhance human abilities in depth and with intelligence. The notion of how much of our bodies we can replace and remain human is also a key theme: does the corporation 'own' protagonist Adam Jensen because they paid for the augmentations that allow him to live? A rich and involving game (let down a little by silly boss fights).

BioShock Infinite - An Infinity of Possibilities

This recent game is set in an alternate timeline in which a huge flying city called Columbia was built in the early 20th Century thanks to the invention of quantum engines, technology that never existed in our world. As the game progresses, the protagonist and the girl he was sent to save find themselves passing through tears in the fabric of reality into other universes, including some similar to our own and others completely different.

The 'many worlds' theory of quantum reality is a common theme in modern SF, but this is the first time a game successfully explores the same theme with some intelligence and uses it to tie together the disjointed narrative in a manner which makes sense.

Wasteland 2 - Post-Apocalyptic Wildlife

The upcoming Wasteland 2, from some of the same team that gave us the Fallout games, is a post-apocalyptic romp which makes few pretences towards scientific realism in its backstory or how anyone survived the nuclear apocalypse. However, the developers have called upon the services of real scientists to help portray environments and creatures, leading to the creation of the fearful giant hermit crab, which hides within the shells of abandoned and burned-out cars and gives the players a nasty surprise when they wander by.

As we can see, there are a few games around which do make more use of science and real SF ideas than as just a cheesy explanation for insane ultraviolence. Hopefully this is something we will see more of in the future.

See also: Polygon has interviews with the scientists who have consulted and advised on games such as Wasteland 2, BioShock Infinite, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the upcoming Outlast.

SYNDICATE successor SATELLITE REIGN begins Kickstarter appeal

Back in 1993 Bullfrog released what may have been their finest game: Syndicate. In the game you controlled a team of four cyborg agents from an overhead perspective. They would go from massive cyberpunk city to massive cyberpunk city, carrying out missions that would help your corporation go from a modest start-up to a world-straddling conglomerate. The game was noted for the presence of large numbers of civilians, its living cities (complete with cars, trains and police), its atmospheric soundtrack and its huge arsenal of weapons. The game was also noted for its differing approaches: you could charge through all guns blazing, adopt a stealth approach of using long-range sniper weapons and hiding, or taking control of masses of civilians with a 'Persuadertron' device and using them to rush the enemy with overwhelming numbers. You could also research new technology and make more money between missions from a strategic gameplay mode.

The game spawned an expansion, American Revolt, and then a sequel, Syndicate Wars, in 1996. The sequel was similar, although it removed the limitations of having finite ammo and made all of the buildings in the game fully destructible. In 2012 Starbreeze Studios issued a new game called Syndicate, but this was an FPS lacking anything in common at all with the originals apart from some weapon names. Though on its own terms an okay shooter, the game was heavily criticised for lacking the intelligence and strategic gameplay of the original.

The creators of Syndicate Wars are now Kickstarting a 'spiritual successor', named Satellite Reign in homage to a weapon in Syndicate Wars (the Satellite Rain, which called in a laser strike from an orbiting armed satellite). The new game is similar, with again you using four agents from an overhead perspective. Rather than multiple cities, there is now one huge city and your agents can work for both moral and amoral corporations. Your four agents are also now more specialised, with some RPG elements creeping in.

The blurb:

"Satellite Reign is a real-time, class-based strategy game. You control a squad of four agents, each with distinct and unique abilities as they vie and battle for control of a fully simulated, living, cyberpunk city.

The game world is designed to facilitate emergent gameplay, giving you the tools and freedom to play how you want to play, so you can create strategies and scenarios that not even we had anticipated!

Customise your team with the strength to destroy your enemies head-on, or hack into their facilities to manipulate their infrastructure without them ever knowing you were even there.

Will you take down your enemies with brute-force? Covert espionage and infiltration? Or will you use propaganda to influence the citizens of the city and overthrow the controlling powers?

Satellite Reign will be released on Windows, Mac OS and Linux."

The team are asking for $350,000, which is fairly modest by Kickstarter standards. Their website is here.

SYNDICATE remake confirmed

It's been the worst-kept secret in gaming that Starbreeze Studios have been working on a new version of the classic cyberpunk strategy game Syndicate for the last two or three years. That news has now been confirmed.


Syndicate was originally released in 1993 and was released to immense critical acclaim (and is still very playable today). The game put you in charge of a small corporation seeking to destroy its larger rivals and conquer the world. The game was noted for its gameplay - controlling four agents and a ludicrous arsenal of weaponry from an isometric perspective - and its tremendous art design, depicting a dingy, Blade Runner-esque future world of downtrodden citizens and dark, neon-lit cities. An even darker and more atmospheric sequel, Syndicate Wars, was released in 1996.

The new Syndicate will be - predictably - a first-person shooter, but one which will try to recreate the squad-based mechanics of the first game by strongly emphasising four-play co-op. The game will also recreate several missions from the first game (one screenshot suggests the classic Atlantic Accelerator missions will be making a comeback). Whether the game is a linear, mission-based shooter or will have a strategic angle with a world map like the original is unclear at this time.

Of particular interest to SF fans is that author Richard Morgan has written the script for the game, adding to his previous gaming credentials on Crysis 2.

As a huge fan of Syndicate ever since I played the demo (released on a cover disk on Amiga Format magazine almost twenty years ago), the prospect of a new game is mouth-watering, especially since it's coming from Starbreeze, a very good development studio, with a story by Morgan. The loss of the isometric perspective is disappointing: I was hoping that an overhead view would still be included. More worrying is the lack of any news about the strategic component. Choosing your next battlefield, doing work in the lab and taxing the hell out of conquered territories to fund new technology research and dealing with the resulting rebellions was a huge part of the first game and its absence from this version would make the game Syndicate in name only. Here's hoping this element has indeed been retained.

Some more information on the game can be found here.

Three classic game remakes: MONKEY ISLAND 2, FINAL FANTASY 7 & SYNDICATE

There are three classic games currently under development or consideration that may raise a smile for old-time gamers.


Starting with the confirmed title, LucasArts has confirmed that Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is being re-developed for a Summer 2010 release on PC, X-Box 360 and PS3 (the special edition of Monkey Island 1 is also due on PS3 shortly).

Originally released in 1992, Monkey Island 2 is almost certainly the single greatest adventure game ever made, topping its predecessor with far more gorgeous graphics and some of the greatest music in the medium. The previous Monkey Island remake was a great success, but it remains to be seen if The Curse of Monkey Island (the third game in the series) will also be remade.


Next up is Final Fantasy VII. Whilst the seventh game in the series (although, like all games in the sequence, it is completely stand-alone with no connections to other titles aside from a similar control system), it was the first to be released for the Sony PlayStation console (and PC) and the first to be a massive smash-hit success in the West, thanks to its epic storyline, compelling characters and (for the time) jaw-dropping cut scenes, despite a ropey English translation.

A few years back, Square Enix re-rendered the game's opening cinematic for the PS3 as an 'experiment' that had fans gagging for a full remake. The company has revisited the possibility several times with no firm commitment, until a recent statement by Square's CEO that the company (who have just delivered and released Final Fantasy XIII) is now going to seriously sit down and see if the project is financially viable and technically possible. No guarantees, but this is an interesting move. A FF7 re-release lifted up to the graphical quality of the latest games (Final Fantasy XIV, an online multiplayer game, is already in an advanced stage of development) would no doubt be a massive success. More on this when Square announce their decision.

In the 'heavily rumoured' category, the well-regarded Starbreeze Studios have been jointly developing two projects for Electronic Arts, one being a new Jason Bourne game and the other being a revisiting of a 'beloved franchise', which insiders have apparently leaked is Syndicate. Recently the Bourne game was dropped (apparently for want of a movie to link it to) so the team could concentrate all their energies on the other title. If this is true, it sounds like the Syndicate remake (if that's what it is) could be stepping up into a full development cycle. If so, expect official confirmation in the near future.


Syndicate, released in 1993, was a major success on the PC, Mac and Commodore Amiga. Developed by Peter Molyneux's Bullfrog Games for EA, it was remarkable for its depiction of a series of cities (no less than fifty, some of them huge) the player's team of cyborgs would have to take over in an aggressive corporate war. As more cities joined the player's empire, more funds would pour in, allowing the research and development of more powerful weapons and cybernetic implants. The game was notable for its depiction of 'living cities' featuring civilians going about their daily business and reacting realistically when all hell broke loose (i.e. running away screaming when guys in threatening trenchcoats produced miniguns and let rip at one another), as well as vehicle use and the ability to use public transportation like trains and monorails, all many years before the likes of Grand Theft Auto. A 1996 sequel, Syndicate Wars, was also well-received and rumours have abounded of a new game in the series since then.

Starbreeze, the developers of the excellent Riddick games Escape from Butcher's Bay and Assault on Dark Athena, as well as the stand-alone title The Darkness, have excellent form and could produce an interesting Syndicate game. Even more interestingly, a new Syndicate game would also be a good fit for the cyberpunk author Richard Morgan, who recently started advising EA on three new titles (see previous post). It remains to be seen if this will recreate the original game's overhead, isometric viewpoint or move to a full-3D mode or some mix of the two.