First reviews are in for this....reboot as a FPS :/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-21-syndicate-review_4

How many hours of SP fun do you reckon you will get out of it?.Is there a difficulty level(s)?

I've put about 3 hours into it so far and judging by a level list I am roughly a third of the way through, so I guess 9-10 hours? There are three difficulty levels. I am playing on medium, which is pretty rough at times and enemies take a ton of damage, so maybe play on easy?

I am in a new environment now and it's a really sexy game, I have to say. Mostly through effects rather than raw texture power, as is the usual these days, but still lovely to look at.

The SP campaign is really short. It takes around 5-6 hours to finish. It's on par with COD's length. THe game is pretty good though. It's certainly worth it. It's a solid FPS with a fun campaign and a great coop mode.

And to be honest, this game is MUCH better than the first Syndicate. Seriously, when people keep talking about how great the original Syndicate is it must be just nostalgia, because that game is terrible, even for it's time. I have played games older than Syndicate that are much better. I had to force myself to complete it because of how boring it was. Every mission felt exactly the same as the previous. I still haven't played Syndicate Wars (i don't even have it), though, so maybe that changes my mind about the series.

Sold.

(It's a Origin activatable, right?)

Yah, every copy is an Origin copy.

I beat it.

It... it doesn't really hold up well all the way through. For one thing nothing really changes, it's the same enemies and combat all the way through really. For another the endless waves of enemies in the same room grows extremely tiresome (obviously a budget saving issue). Lastly the story turns from interesting into nonsensical.

It's been a while since a game has collapsed for me so monstrously in the second half. I guess Far Cry is another example? For much different reasons though.

It's also shorter than I expected, the last 12 levels went about as fast as the first 8.

Overall still worth the $12 I paid for and a decent 5-6 hours of shooter fun, but it's downhill almost from the start and not as good as I thought it was a couple days ago.

I bought Syndicate at full price, for whatever reason struck me at the moment in the store (Hell, even I knew I was cheating myself into buying it). A week later or so, it went half price over Origin. Take that, my idiotic self. XD

That said, it's the kind of game that makes me ask: What the hell?!

The coop is wonderful, fun all the way, even though it's hard ask heck. Had they done some 20 more neatly tied missions and added a good buddy AI, it would have been utter awesome.

The single player, on the other side, is merely an arcadish shooter with enemies and bosses that are quite a bit tougher than they should. It's fun, but it gets boring sometimes too.

On the story side, it's impressive how all the wrong questions are raised. The agents have always been loyal half-machine men with emotions controlled by drugs. This is a game where all the questions it could have asked about the self would have built an awesome experience. Something along the lines of the bushido, a suicidal mission to avenge your boss, ending in a tragic, but honorable victory. Hell, they could have just copy and pasted the story of Lone Wolf and Cub (you playing an agent tasked by your late boss's child with carrying out a vengeance, for example).

It could have been so great. :(

But I had fun playing through it and some hours of its multiplayer mode.

The game is harder than it should be on normal, for sure. Every god damn enemy in this game is a bullet sponge, you have to empty full clips to take people down. Insanity.

From what you say it really seems like they focused on coop but then pushed singleplayer in marketing, which is kind of silly. Considering the franchise's PC roots they should have done an always online coop only shooter with microtransactions, probably would have made them a lot more money.

The coop is pretty much a variant on L4D with added research and experience/levels for the player. All the 9 levels are conceptually based on levels from the original Syndicate too, though the execution is completely distinct.

I'm not much of a multiplayer guy, but after reading about it, I just had to try it.

I'm not sure I would even try a Tribes Ascend scheme Syndicate game though.

Well a lot of people like that model, whether you and I do or not. Seems like it would have been more successful.

Yeah, I get that. A shame that games nowadays always float towards multiplayer...

Given my backlog (the so called "The Infinite List"), I'd rather stick to solid SP fun.

So did I just now.

The story really take a nosedive at the end. Starbreeze obviously took the "safe route" in storytelling and avoided a controversial ending. Which really doesn't fit the Syndicate vibe of the previous games.

What I did like however was the "repeated gunplay" towards the end. I played it with a gamepad and the combat was fun. Breaking, rushing, executing, backfiring, shooting, everything was very fluent and fun. The "DART" mode is fun to use. Very good controls for a shooter.

What I really liked were the countless call-backs to the original series. A crowning moment of AWESOME was for me personally when you get strap into the leonardo machine. And really extensive world building with logs and cards and all that. I like that stuff. It hardly found any use in the game itself, however.

All in all, fun shooter. Took me 4 hour to beat on Normal (at least that is what the Origin clock said, felt longer). Nothing memorable however, a lot of wasted potential.

Interestingly enough, the boss fights in this game where really well designed and should have been this way in DX:HR.