Over the last few years Humble Bundle and GoG have handed out dozens of free games, most of which I've yet to even try. I think it's time I at least acknowledged their generosity.
Satellite Reign is the spiritual successor to Syndicate, a genre-defining moment in gaming history from the 90s, written by some of the original team. So it must be good. It should be good. Right?
Honestly, I'm still not sure. Unlike other attempts to follow its predecessor, Satellite Reign is very much a remake, with modern visuals and some other features to add a layer of depth and complexity.
It looks amazing - the city is industrial, futuristic, and imposing, soaked with coloured lights, neon signs and constant rainfall. The streets are bustling and alive, with varied districts peopled with pedestrians, police patrols, drones, hovercars and animated billboards. The sound design is also excellent, further bringing the city to life and underscoring the nods to Bladerunner and other dystopian visions of the future.
And yet I can't quite shake the feeling that playing it isn't as enjoyable as it should be.
Maybe it's the interface, which is at times unclear and has tiny buttons that are difficult to click. Or the missions, which are burdened with unnecessary description and seem to be essentially all the same. Or the mission objective marker, which only appears when the target isn't on the screen. Or the way you can save at any time, but reloading always takes you back to one of the respawn points.
Maybe it's the bugs that I've encountered. On more than one occasion my characters became stuck inside a piece of scenery, the first time when I'd almost finished the tutorial, forcing me to restart. I got a Steam achievement simply for loading a save game, and another allegedly for five stealth kills during a huge shootout with dozens of armed guards.
Maybe it's the way that researching upgrades and earning cash happens in real time, which destroys the pace of the game by encouraging you to leave it running for ten minutes while you wait until you can afford the next good augmentation.
My other complaints are more subjective. There are a lot of loading screens when the game first starts. It requires a pretend user login before playing, which was a novel gimmick twenty years ago, but now seems like an actual thing, initially confusing and now simply labourious. Clicking on enemies to target them is fiddly and I often miss, instead issuing a command for my agents to walk into the line of fire. It feels... clumsy.
Or maybe it's simply that Syndicate worked best at that particular moment, when gaming hardware was relatively limited and there was nothing else like it. Perhaps my affection for it is rooted entirely in nostalgia. Maybe if I replayed Syndicate now, it might be rubbish, but I'd still enjoy it, because I wouldn't judge it by the same standards.
Satellite Reign doesn't have that luxury.