A couple days ago Starbreeze Studios and EA released their co-op demo of Syndicate onto the Xbox Live Marketplace and PSN Store. Unfortunately they don't plan on releasing a demo for PC because they wanted to focus their resources on releasing a solid PC version instead of using that time for a demo, that does seem to indicate that the game is console based, not PC, and that the PC version may just be a port, but that doesn't mean the PC version is guaranteed to be poor quality. The co-op demo is one level and let's you play with up to three other players. Much like many shooters these days you have profile that lets you unlock skills as you level up, customize weapons with blueprints and several other options. The demo lets you go up to level 10 and the full game will contain ten levels instead of one. If you are familiar with the original Syndicate game then try not to make associations with the new one, because it has very little to do with the original game, except for the sci-fi theme and focus on war between syndicates. This one is a FPS shooter that gives you a lot of options during combat, like hacking turrets, lowering enemy shields, raising your shields, healing your companions and many other abilities. It's easy to hate Syndicate, especially if you were a fan of the original ,but the demo was pretty entertaining.




Like I said before the demo gives you one level to playthrough, but you will have to play through it four or five times to get up to level 10. You have four different characters to select at the beginning of each match and they merely change what type of weapons you start with, otherwise you seem to have the same abilities and customization options. The demo level takes you and your team through an opposing syndicates base and your goal is to take down all of the opposing syndicates leaders. These guys come in the form of sergeants or higher ranking military soldiers that are quite a bit tougher than the normal sort that you run into. There isn't a cover system per say, but you can do it old school and actually crouch behind barriers or walls. You can pick up all kinds of weapons throughout the level but your starting ones are more than enough to do the job, most of the time. You can also find blueprints dropped by the enemy leaders that give you access to new hardware for weapons. The gameplay is a bit typical for a FPS but with some nice little sci-fi twists to it, but unless each co-op mission, of the ten, is far more varied than the demo one then it's likely to get stale very quickly. Although, I do like how much you have to rely on other players healing you and supporting you. Check it out yourself if you have an Xbox 360 or PS3. The game will be coming out on February 21st on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 and it will not have anything to do with Origin or EA online pass. Check out the demo page for more information and take a look at this trailer they made to showcase the demo.
Demo Page: http://www.ea.com/syndicate/1/demo