the syndicate reboot is a game that you basically don't hear about anymore, even from people that played it, it came and went and left basically no impact, and i think thats a shame, back in the day i played it at a rental because i loved the art style, very JJ abrams cyberpunk but it had a mirrors edgy look in some levels and that was honestly enough to sell me, doubly so since rentals were so cheap (god do i miss them) the campaign is relaly cool and has a ton of fun mechanics all it's own, but i'll cover it another time. i mainly want to focus on the game's co op mode, a side-mode with 4 heroes, its own set of levels and a lot of cool vibes. you get 11 levels here set all across the world, almost all of which have their own vibes and objectives, though many also share them, such as gathering items, escorting a drone and clearing an area, sadly though i was only able to beat two of these levels as the game was just not built for solo play and i don't think any, but one in particular was litterally impossble to solo, are able to be finished this way as they just throw far too much for one person to handle, even on the easiest difficulty and getting even 1 other person in for this was more than i could manage, and i got 3 other people in to play vampire rain.

the mode has a fairly in depth progression system and was clearly supposed to be something you really grinded, you have rpg upgrades, long Research trees for weapons and abilities and 4 characters to choose from, almost like a mini left 4 dead, and it's cool honestly, somehting i could have absolutely gotten into back in the day, it's got depth for sure, the characters are fairly surface level, the main man i tried was boring as hell, but i also tried a woman with a mohawk who talked like the biggest gamer sterotype, the 9 stages all have fairly distinct themes with the exception of northern terratories and western europe, both of which felt almost like different variations on the same stage and neither was exactly all that interesting, although the rain did look fantastic, you had sunsetty waterside views in the scandanavian level, dawn sun in a kowloony china level complete with subway tunnels for its ending objectives, mirrors edge style highrise action in new england with sunny views and flying cars passing by, seaside lab sunshine in the mozambique stage, some fairly fancy sophistfuture office levels in argentina, a oil rig style lab at the atlantic accellorator and skyrise sunsetty views in the future mall in colorado. all of the levels look fantastic, the game has a great amount of variety and each level felt really fun to just appreciate the small details in them when you could and they're a decent length too, when in co op they can run for about 20 mins a run which is a good pace, though solo the ones i did finish took multiple hours and some i just gave up on after an hour of stalling, there isn't a lot of music to hear, despte the levels being very atmospheric which is a shame, but all the levels had really good sound design.

as mentioned the game is just not built to solo, objectives that clearly require 4 people being done solo is very tedius, some bosses take far too much damage with only one person shooting and several are outright impossible alone, even with 2 they would be very difficult so i do not think it's possible to fully finish alone, but i did have fun when i did try, the weapons are all fun, you get a good variety, with a lot of standard guns and a few cool scifi weapons like laezerguns and electric cannons held by boss enemies, some levels even let you rip with a gatling gun such as mozambique, i imagine with the difficulty toned down with multiple people that the mode could be a real blast, you can even hack various things around the level, although not as much as the main campaign and a lot of ther time its just limited to hacking enemy shields that you cannot damage without, which alone can be very tedious, it is sad to see this mode go, it seems to require a connection to even play solo so by the time i even have this live it may genuinely not even be possible to play anymore, and that's a real shame as many of these are unique to this mode and they all look and sound fantastic, the solo campaign is still well worth playing but this added so much more content and value to the experiance that it's a shame to see it go.