Monday Gaming Diary: Syndicate kicked to the curb, Binary Domain welcomed

I’ve been in a gaming rut for awhile now; finding solace only in Plants vs. Zombies and LEGO Harry Potter. I forced myself out of my funk this past week–with the help of writing an article for Gaming Angels about it–and finally cracked open Syndicate. Holy crap is that game bad.

I know that reviews haven’t been that favorable, but I rarely reviews before I play a game because I like to go into playing a game with a fresh, open mind. In this case, I probably should have saved myself the trouble. Essentially, Syndicate is a Deus Ex: Human Revolution copycat. It’s not a complete clone by any stretch of the means, but the similarities are to prevalent for me to see anything else. Unfortunately, Syndicate executes nothing very well. The premise is kind of cool, but the delivery is full of fail. I played halfway through the game and decided that life was too short to continue to play something that I didn’t even find fun. My stack of shame is too tall for that.

So I went back to Kingdoms of Amalur, and of course I did nothing but side quests and faction quests for several hours. I know there’s a real story in here somewhere, but I’m having a lot of fun not progressing the story.

And then everything screeched to a halt on Saturday, when I received my review copy of Binary Domain. Yeah, I know it’s late, but better late than never. Binary Domain reminds me A LOT of Gears of War–it even has a character who looks and acts like Cole Train–just with robots instead of ugly creatures. However, the game’s premise is far more interesting than just shooting robots, albeit if that is all it was, I’d be happy with that too. I won’t get into it any further as I’m playing it for review for GA, but I will say that the three hours I spent playing BD greatly surpassed the 10 hours I committed to Syndicate. Gameplay is fun, dialogue is funny, and the story is actually intriguing. Such a shame that the game did not sell well. I’m hoping it will turn into a sleeper hit, because I don’t think SEGA gets enough credit for its shooters.